San Francisco Mayor Wants Federal Help With Crime Problem

After years of promoting policies that reduce criminal penalties and scale back funding for police, Democratic-led communities across the United States are mired in a seemingly inescapable pattern of crime, drug addiction, and homelessness.

Instead of taking stock of the decisions that led to the current situation, however, the mayor of one such city is instead calling on the federal government for a bailout.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed recently sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey in which she laments the “unprecedented police staffing shortage” and calls for assistance.

She claimed that “San Francisco is doing everything it can to address these public safety challenges,” though the letter does not mention her administration’s $120 million cut to the budgets of local law enforcement agencies.

To her credit, Breed later realized the folly of her “defund the police” policies and advocated for more funding — but officers have been reluctant to sign up for a job enforcing laws in the crime-ridden city.

“As you know, we are dealing with multiple serious public safety challenges locally, from a fentanyl-driven overdose epidemic, open-air drug dealing, property crime in our commercial and residential neighborhoods, increasing gun violence and prejudice fueled incidents,” the mayor wrote.

While San Francisco has long been a bastion of far-left extremism, that trend has only intensified in recent years. For example, city leaders have advanced a plan that would hand out payments of $5 million each to Black residents without any semblance of a plan to absorb the staggering cost.

In a 2020 report, the Hoover Institute explained: “Progressive Democrats have dominated San Francisco’s city government for the last 20 years, a time during which homelessness, drug abuse, the cost of living, and the city budget have skyrocketed.”

Now that Breed has realized that local leaders are in over their heads, she wants the federal government to help.

“Our local law enforcement is doing its best to enforce against drug dealing, however, the scale of the problem is beyond our local capacity,” she wrote to Ramsey. “We need additional and ongoing support from the Department of Justice to arrest and prosecute drug dealers.”

It is unclear what, if anything, the U.S. attorney’s office will agree to provide in response to the request.

“We have received Mayor Breed’s letter and we are making arrangements to meet with her to discuss concerns,” said spokesperson Abraham Simmons.