San Francisco\u2019s high-tech surveillance center \u2014 propped up with funding from Silicon Valley \u2014 just got another $3 million boost from Salesforce, one of its many private benefactors.<\/p>\n
Close to $1 million will go toward two new drone-docking stations and the development of \u201ccounter-drone\u201d technology for the Real Time Investigations Center. The center helps the police department find suspects on the streets and aids arrests using drones and Flock Safety automatic license plate reading cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The department did not say what the \u201ccounter-drone technology\u201d would look like, and a spokesperson for the foundation could not offer details. The technology is generally understood<\/a> to be tactics that detect, track, and neutralize other drones, presumably those that are hostile or unauthorized and disrupt police activity.<\/p>\n The remaining $2 million will go toward \u201cadditional technology, software, infrastructure, and operational needs in future years,\u201d according to a July 16 memo<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are proud to work with our cross-sector partners in the local business community to support public safety improvements in San Francisco, giving SFPD effective and proven technology tools that allow our city to remain a national leader in the field, while responsibly balancing safety with privacy,\u201d said Ixchel Acosta, CEO of the San Francisco Police Community Foundation, in a statement.<\/p>\n Salesforce sent the funds<\/a> through the San Francisco Police Community Foundation, a law enforcement fundraising nonprofit whose top donors<\/a> are tech companies and billionaires. A spokesperson for Salesforce declined to comment.<\/p>\n Other donors include Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, former YCombinator partner Michael Seibel, Michael Moritz\u2019 family foundation Crankstart, and J Capital principals Ted and Kathleen Janus, the latter of whom is a former senior advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Salesforce announced its donation to the police foundation in May.<\/p>\n Larsen famously became a key sponsor of the surveillance unit with an initial $9 million donation<\/a> in 2025, and in that same year moved the center\u2019s headquarters from the aging Hall of Justice to a former Ripple Labs office in the Financial District.\u00a0<\/p>\n That was the year after voters approved Proposition E, a ballot measure championed by then-Mayor London Breed, which expanded police<\/a> authority to use drones and facial recognition cameras without approval from the police commission or Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n The police department is also expanding its \u201cDrone as First Responder\u201d program \u2014 where trained officers at the surveillance center deploy drones from various takeoff sites around the city \u2014 to better support the Mission Bay police station serving SoMa, according to the July 16 memo.\u00a0<\/p>\n SFPD flight logs<\/a> show drone activity from 2024 to 2026 has concentrated heaviest in three neighborhoods: SoMa at 1,056 flights, the Mission at 942, and the Tenderloin at 698 as of May 31.\u00a0<\/p>\n Abdul Alomar counts himself lucky to have never experienced a break-in and hasn\u2019t seen any police drones, but they\u2019ve flown more than 40 times this year and last over the Tenderloin block where he runs Ember Grill, a halal burger joint on Larkin Street. Recorded reasons for the drone flybys included: reports of gunshots, a purse-snatching, a carjacking, robberies, and vague entries simply stating: \u201ccriminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n He has mixed feelings about the drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nice to hear that something is being done. Crime is always in the back of our minds. But we\u2019ll have to see what the results are over the next few years,\u201d Alomari said. \u201cIt definitely raises privacy concerns. I\u2019m really big on privacy, and in this day and age you can argue there\u2019s no more privacy. We have Flock cameras everywhere. We have drones everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Police have told other news outlets<\/a> the drones aren\u2019t used to find crime but help with active criminal investigations. They\u2019ve touted<\/a> myriad drone-related arrests between May and June, including four enforcement operations on the 700-block of Mission Street where drone operators worked with retail stores to arrest 29 suspects.\u00a0<\/p>\n That included theft suspects (otherwise known as \u201cboosters\u201d) and middlemen (\u201cfencers\u201d) who allegedly purchased stolen merchandise to resell.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Police drones have flown through the Japantown neighborhood at least 23 times between this and last year, according to the flight logs. Recorded reasons for the flybys mostly pertain to unspecified criminal investigations.<\/p>\n Brandon Quan, deputy director of the neighborhood\u2019s community benefit district, said he\u2019s seen a substantial decline in property crime in Japantown since the pandemic \u2013 when vehicle break-ins were one of the most persistent issues. But he said he isn\u2019t sure how much the city\u2019s surveillance unit has helped that trend.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that progress reflects a combination of factors, including our close partnership with Northern Station and the work being done by the District Attorney\u2019s Office,\u201d said Quan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco\u2019s high-tech surveillance center \u2014 propped up with funding from Silicon Valley \u2014 just got another $3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-406487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}