San Francisco forming 'poop patrol' to keep sidewalks clean
In a city where filthy sidewalks are many residents’ No. 1 complaint, San Francisco City Hall has come up with a new way to deal with No. 2.
It sounds like silly elementary school banter, but it’s real. San Francisco is about to launch the poop patrol.
Within the next month, a team of five public works staffers will begin patrolling the alleys around Polk Street and other hot spots in a vehicle equipped with a steam cleaner.
The patrol’s mission? To spot and clean piles of feces before anybody complains about them.
“We’re trying to be proactive,” explained Public Works director Mohammed Nuru. “We’re actually out there looking for it.”
In a city where people called 311 to report feces a whopping 14,597 times between Jan. 1 and Monday morning, public piles of poop are serious business.
For the record, that’s about 65 calls regarding sidewalk excrement every day. And it’s 2,427 more calls on the stinky subject than were made in the same time period last year.
The poop patrol idea sprung from conversations between Nuru and Mayor London Breed, both of whom have expressed disgust with the filthy conditions of our sidewalks.
“I’ve been talking to the Department of Public Works director on a regular basis, and I’m like, ‘What are we going to do about the poop?’” Breed said.
“He and I talked about coming up with some different solutions,” she continued. “I just want the city to be clean, and I want to make sure we’re providing the resources so that it can be.”
She and Nuru said a lot of the waste on the sidewalks comes from dogs, and dog owners need to do a far better job picking up after their pets.
A solution to all the human waste on the sidewalks would be to install more public bathrooms so homeless people don’t have to use the sidewalks as toilets.
Breed did commit a sliver of the city’s new $11.1 billion budget to install toilets, allotting $1.05 million to construct five Pit Stop public toilets and expand operating hours at five existing locations.
There are 22 Pit Stop toilets around the city, but many of them are open only until the late afternoon or evening. There are few options for homeless people to relieve themselves overnight.