New data shows San Francisco police are writing more tickets than they have in years.
It’s all part of the department's response to city leaders demands to make the streets safer.
Watch NBC Bay Area News free wherever you are
WATCH HERE"I think we need to congratulate them appropriate celebration when they're moving in the right direction,” said San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman.
Mandelman has been on a mission to get the SFPD to ramp up its enforcement of traffic violations for several months now.
The traffic division has a program called "focus on five," directing officers to prioritize enforcement on the five moving violations that most often lead to accidents.
According to San Francisco fire data, officers have written out more than 300 citations for these violations this year compared to last year.
Mandelman, bicycle and pedestrian safety advocates said that they are happy that San Francisco police are increasing their traffic enforcement efforts. But they added very quickly, it's not enough."
"We are still significantly below 2020 levels. And 2020 levels were way below 2014 levels,” Mandelman said.
While the citation numbers are up, they are nowhere near the prepandemic citation rate.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news with the Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
SIGN UP In recent years, the SFPD has been writing about 20,000 total citations per year. But back in 2014, it was about 120,000.
The police department has cited a few reasons for the drop off.
Among them, a shortage of officers and a 2015 law that requires them to carefully detail who they stopped to help prevent racial profiling.
Traffic safety advocate Luke Bornheimer said San Francisco has been making big efforts to recruit more officers and pay them better. He added that residents deserve to see some results.
"If we're going to be paying the police department to be doing traffic enforcement, it's good for them to be doing more of it. And many people don't know but all police officers can do traffic enforcement,” he said.
Bornheimer said the city's investments in other traffic calming strategies are also helping, make city streets safer.
The police, city leaders and safety advocates all said that automated speed and red light cameras will also help.
