San Francisco leaders push back against Trump’s National Guard threat

SAN FRANCISCO– SAN FRANCISCO — President Donald Trump continues to threaten to send National Guard troops to San Francisco, calling the California city a crime zone and saying its residents are crying out for help from the federal government.

But local and state leaders say that couldn’t be further from the truth, noting that overall crime is down and the city has begun to reverse its pandemic-downtrodden image. This week, downtown residents and workers expressed puzzlement and concern about Trump’s threat.

“This is a safe American city,” Mayor Daniel Lurie told The Associated Press last week. “We had that in San Francisco.”

The Republican president cited crime to justify the possible sending of troops to this city of around 830,000 inhabitants. He has deployed the Guard to fight crime in Washington, D.C., where he directly controls the National Guard, and in Memphis, where the Republican governor supports their presence. Los Angeles was the first city where Trump deployed the Guard, arguing it was necessary to protect buildings and federal agents as protesters fought mass arrests of immigrants. He has since said they are also needed in Chicago and Portland, Oregon.

Portland residents and leaders were surprised by the attention Trump paid when he described the city as besieged by violent protests. In reality, the nighttime protests were small and limited to the area outside a federal immigration building. Although there were some arrests for violence, the protests were much less intense than those that shook the city center in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.

In San Francisco, too, Trump appears to be relying on an outdated image of a city often targeted by conservatives.

“The difference is I think they want us in San Francisco,” Trump said Sunday on Fox News. “San Francisco was truly one of the greatest cities in the world. And then, 15 years ago, things went wrong. It woke up.”

His comments angered and disconcerted Kate Freudenberger, who works in retail.

“You walk around the city, it’s peaceful, there’s no insurrection,” she said Tuesday morning, adding that immigration authorities haven’t been as active in San Francisco as in other cities, “so there’s really nothing to unite us.”

Marc Benioff, chief executive of San Francisco-based software giant Salesforce, caused a stir when he told the New York Times earlier this month that he would welcome Guard troops to help crack down on crime before his major annual business conference. He has since apologized for his remarks, saying the conference was the “largest and most secure” in its history and that the Guard was not needed.

San Francisco is still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, which emptied its downtown and brought renewed attention to homeless people on the streets and open drug dealing. But the signs point to a city on the rise. Artificial intelligence startups are taking over offices and housing rental prices are rising. San Francisco has seen a 21% increase over last year in office visits, according to location analytics platform Placer.ai, and public transit ridership is at its highest level since the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal said this week that the city was breaking out of its “doom loop,” a story the mayor eagerly shared on social media.

The sidewalks are cleaner and the tent encampments have largely disappeared from view. In the Tenderloin, one of the most troubled neighborhoods, teams of city workers and nonprofits on Monday helped schoolchildren cross the street, walked around picking up trash or counseled the homeless. It was a different picture than during the pandemic, when hundreds of people camped on the sidewalks.

Still, the Tenderloin is a problem place for public drug use and dealing, as are the Mid-Market and Mission neighborhoods. But overall crime is down more than 26% this year compared to the same period last year, according to San Francisco police. Vehicle burglaries – which have upset tourists and residents – are at their lowest level in 22 years, Lurie said.

Lurie, a centrist Democrat who has tried to avoid confrontations with Trump by ignoring many of the president’s comments, said Monday he would welcome more federal help to stop drug traffickers and disrupt drug markets. But sending in the Guard wouldn’t accomplish that, he said.

“The National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to take fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” Lurie said in a statement.

In 2024, San Francisco voters gave police the power to use drones, surveillance cameras and other technology to fight crime. They also ousted politically progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in a 2022 recall election and installed Brooke Jenkins, seen as much tougher on crime than her predecessor. Lurie has pushed to hire and retain police officers, and applications for entry-level police officers are up 40 percent over last year.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has said it will forcefully push back against any deployment, as it did when Trump first ordered the California National Guard into Los Angeles against Newsom’s wishes. California Attorney General Rob Bonta promised to “be in court in a matter of hours, if not minutes” in the event of a federal deployment.

Lawsuits filed by Democratic officials in Chicago and Portland have so far kept troops from taking to the city’s streets.

Libby Baxter, a retired nurse, said Trump sent the National Guard to Democratic cities to create “chaos and unrest” and she fears the same thing could happen in San Francisco.

“I believe it could happen if they come to San Francisco because we are a very tolerant community, but we can’t stand for someone to come in and try to dictate or take over parts of our city,” she said.