The San Francisco Police Department has reportedly quickened their response times compared to statistics from 2023. That year saw long, glaring gaps between emergency calls being placed and officers arriving on-scene. From May 2025 to April 2026, the citywide median response time for top-priority calls was 8.3 minutes. In Chinatown, the median response time was 6.7 minutes, and in Visitacion Valley, 11.6 minutes. On the other hand, responses to less-than-life-threatening situations are still insufficient, especially in the city’s more troubled neighborhoods.
No cherry picking
Generally speaking, dispatchers divide 911 calls into one of three categories. Situations wherein someone’s life is in immediate danger, like shots fired or an assault in-progress, fall under Class A. Burglary and property damage would be Class B while crimes posing no immediate threat fall under Class C. Understandably, Class A calls take top priority, and in 2023, SFPD faced criticism for glaringly long response times to them.
Wait times for first responders to emergent 911 calls did shrink, but the San Francisco Chronicle has identified another shortfall. Residents of the Tenderloin, Western Addition, Mission Bay, and South of Market are no less underserved. Unlike other San Franciscans, they continue to wait at least twice as long for first responders to Class B and C calls. SFPD still surpasses the citywide median response time by noticeable if not considerable intervals. In that respect, their numbers aren’t much better than they were three years ago.
In these four neighborhoods, median 911 response time was in excess of thirty minutes, and in the Tenderloin and Soma, forty minutes. Meanwhile, the average response time for emergency services in the Haight clocked in at 16.4 minutes.
Imagine being late to work even though you have a motorbike and authority to blow through red lights. It’s on you at that point. Creative commons.
As for Priority C calls in the Tenderloin, SoMa, Western Addition and Mission Bay, the response time is even longer. The median wait time for emergency services in Soma was 115 minutes. In Mission Bay, residents waited 138 minutes on average for cops to arrive—more than two hours.
Passing the blame
Though SFPD blames their slow response times on staffing issues, the streets of Soma and the TL tell another story. With Mayor Lurie's blessing, the cops have been eagerly cracking down on drug dealing and illegal sidewalk vending in those neighborhoods. A mini-raid happens fast. One or two squad cars roll up on a sidewalk sale. Five or six cops get out. Each fluffs a trash bag and starts scooping up all the merchandise arranged at the curb. Toothpaste, shaving cream, tubs of pomade. Anyone dumb enough to stick around, much less intervene, gets questioned. You’ll see the same on Mission. Our tax dollars, hard at work to recover product lifted from Walgreens.
The data paints an unflattering portrait of discriminatory cops indifferent to their jurisdictions. Compare those hundred minute wait times to waits in other high call volume neighborhoods like the Mission. Average response times there: 23 minutes for Class B calls, and 57 minutes for Class C calls. Information used to draw these conclusions points to one of its own. The quantity of 911 calls in certain neighborhoods has little to no bearing on how soon cops actually arrive. In fact, this only inflames local beliefs that SFPD treats these neighborhoods like receptacles for San Francisco’s more unsightly elements.
The topic was debated at City Hall in late May. SFPD Crime Strategies Division Project Manager Jason Cunningham announced plans to expand the Southern Precinct’s borders. That precinct presently encompasses Mission Bay and Soma. Soma West Neighborhood Association Director Shaun Aukland argued the problem lies with neither the number of officers nor the size of the precinct, but how officers are deployed. Expanding the precinct and adding personnel, he noted, will not expedite police response times but only worsen the issue. Aukland cited SFPD’s history of poor response times to calls in Soma through years of changing boundaries and command.
Numerous other speakers at the hearing also argued that police are also called upon to handle problems for which social service workers would be better equipped.
“We don’t need to keep shifting the problems back and forth between SoMa and the Tenderloin,” Aukland said. “We want to heal both neighborhoods.”
