Defensive Crime Fighting in the Tenderloin
I became aware of the inherent strategic shortcomings of progressive-led anti-crime efforts from my own experience in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The Tenderloin has long been considered a high-crime neighborhood. After the rezoning battles of the early 1980s, the focus shifted to crime. Although most of the neighborhood’s crime involved property break-ins and disputes between drug dealers, enough seniors had been mugged or rolled to motivate people to organize an anti-crime campaign.
Because of these residents’ concerns, I became involved in the development of neighborhood anti-crime efforts. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s street-level office had relocated to a high-crime corner, so I needed only to look out our window to see why residents felt threatened. The primarily elderly residents of the Cadillac Hotel, located right across the street from our office, were particularly upset about drug dealing close to their building; some had been robbed right outside the gates. The hotel’s nonprofit owner, Reality House West, was headed by Leroy Looper, a charismatic leader and savvy tactician who had risen from a life on the streets and in prison to transform the Cadillac from an eyesore to a neighborhood jewel. Looper responded to his tenants’ complaints about crime by forming the Tenderloin Crime Abatement Committee (CAC). The CAC met monthly at the Cadillac Hotel. When Looper asked me to participate, I readily agreed. At the time, I was almost alone among progressive social change activists in getting involved in anticrime efforts. Gradually, however, Looper brought in representatives of religious groups, refugee organizations, and other social service agencies.
In addition to my admiration for Looper and desire to support residents’ concerns, what attracted me to the campaign was the high percentage of African Americans participating in the CAC. The Tenderloin’s African American residents had participated little in the long-running land use battles, and I thought their involvement in anti-crime efforts might encourage community participation in other issues. The fact that Looper and key Cadillac Hotel management staff were African American contributed to the CAC’s high level of ethnic diversity.
During 1984 and 1985, I regularly attended CAC meetings and ended up presiding over many of the meetings, which were festive occasions. A Cadillac Hotel resident would prepare a buffet lunch. Everyone in the audience had the opportunity to comment on the issues being discussed, and the district police captain and beat officers would provide updates on crime statistics and respond to concerns raised at the meeting. The CAC reflected the type of ethnically diverse, broad-based community empowerment effort that social change activists in all fields aspire to create. The committee stressed the need for employment, training, and substance abuse programs and for other strategies that would address the underlying causes of crime.
There was a consensus, however, that until such systemic programs were in place, a stronger police presence was necessary. Many of us naively believed that the Tenderloin residents’ opposition to crime in their community would bring increased government funding for programs to ameliorate the preconditions causing high levels of crime. Looper, the community’s most revered leader, always saw economic development and increased local employment as key to reducing neighborhood crime. The CAC was not demanding more police simply as a tactic for obtaining economic development assistance; rather, we believed that expressing serious concern about crime would stimulate a broader influx of resources into the Tenderloin.
The committee decided to publicize the community’s resolve with a “March Against Crime.” Marches are now commonplace in low-income neighborhoods, but such events were somewhat rare in 1985, and we expected—and received—tremendous media coverage. One goal of the march was to demonstrate that the Tenderloin was a residential neighborhood whose residents and businesses deserved the same level of police services as inhabitants of other communities received. We also sought to show that the Tenderloin housed victims of crime, not simply perpetrators. As long as the public believed that Tenderloin residents were themselves to blame for crime, and thus tolerated thefts, drug deals, and muggings, there would be less support for anti-crime measures and other programs designed to help the neighborhood. The march was the perfect tactic for a community trying to reverse long-held but erroneous public attitudes about it.
CAC activists were thrilled by the success of the event. We felt the march had not only accomplished its goals but also galvanized community activism around fighting crime. Attendance at CAC meetings increased steadily, and it seemed as if police visibility rose in the area. Crime appeared to be the new issue necessary to maintain resident activism after the historic rezoning victory. The North of Market Planning Coalition began increasing its emphasis on crime, which soon became its chief focus and organizing vehicle. A Safe Streets Committee was formed. Although it was unclear whether the neighborhood’s anticrime efforts were actually reducing crime, many residents felt empowered because top police brass appeared to take their concerns seriously.
By 1987 we still had not received the hoped-for assistance for attacking crime’s economic underpinnings, but most of us attributed this lack to the pro-downtown policies of the reigning Feinstein administration. We believed that a new, progressive mayor would deliver neighborhood-oriented economic assistance to the Tenderloin, and when Art Agnos succeeded Feinstein in January 1988, we all thought the Tenderloin was poised for a major turnaround. I shifted away from the crime issue after 1986 and returned to focusing on housing and homelessness, but I continued to support the neighborhood’s campaign against crime and won a formal commendation in 1986 from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for my crime-fighting efforts.
On March 1, 1990, Mayor Agnos announced that a police station would open in the Tenderloin. I was initially excited by the announcement, as the community had finally received something tangible after years of anti-crime advocacy. I saw the police station as a building block that would be followed by additional government efforts to improve the neighborhood’s social and economic climate. But I soon learned that the police station was all the Tenderloin would ever get.
The problem was that the Agnos administration did not look beyond the portion of the neighborhood’s agenda demanding more police. The other anti-crime strategies on the table—such as employment, job training, economic development, and assistance in attracting new business—were essentially viewed as throw-ins garnishing the primary demand for a more visible police presence. Our failure to develop an achievable action plan for attaining goals other than “more police” allowed outsiders to think such goals were not central to our overall agenda. I know from talking to Agnos soon after the station opened that he truly believed he had given the Tenderloin what it wanted most. He seemed surprised to learn that we had never claimed the crime problem could be solved solely or even largely by police, and that the community considered the rest of the anti-crime agenda even more important. He did not have to tell me that for elected Officials striving to make an immediate, visible anti-crime impact, providing additional police officers or a police station is a comparatively inexpensive strategy that always takes precedence over more systemic, nonpunitive anti-crime initiatives. Responding to the demand for more police frees politicians from committing the resources necessary for a more comprehensive anti-crime program.
The announcement of the new police station (which opened in a temporary location before moving to its current space in 2000) marked the high (or low) point of the Tenderloin 1980s anti-crime efforts. Leroy Looper, as shrewd a tactical activist as ever walked the streets of a major city, saw his own expectations for a government-assisted economic revival of the Tenderloin fall victim to the “more police, more arrests” approach. Looper’s Reality House West had opened a Sizzler restaurant in the Cadillac Hotel’s commercial space in the mid-1980s in an attempt to jump-start the Tenderloin’s economic revitalization. Looper always assumed that city government would appreciate this investment in the neighborhood and would assist similar businesses seeking success in the economically