“Public Safety” Mayor Eliminates City's Most Successful Public Safety Program
The only community ambassador program run by the City is about to be shut down. If Mayor Daniel Lurie and the new conservative Board of Supervisors have their way, the Community Ambassador Program (CAP), operated by the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs (OCEIA), will cease to exist.
For those who have grown tired of billionaires slashing successful government programs in the name of “efficiency,” the Mayor’s decision to kill this program is not sitting well. Here we have an innovative, publicly run alternative to policing that’s been highly successful as a jobs program and a community safety program. Instead of scaling it up, politicians are tearing the program down and fully defunding it.
A Successful Program That Transformed Neighborhoods
Bringing CAP to District 5 was transformative. In Haight-Ashbury, for example, a neighborhood where police and homeless youth had been at odds with regular standoffs, arrests, and complaints of excessive force, OCEIA’s community ambassadors calmed the streets by getting to know homeless youth, housed residents, local nonprofits, and merchants. For homeless youth in particular, police can be triggering, while friendly unarmed ambassadors are not. This let SFPD focus on serious crimes, and let the community work on Haight Street to be handled by those best equipped for it: case managers, outreach workers, and our City-run community ambassadors. This is real government efficiency and led to positive results across the district.
When I took office in December 2019, my staff and I mapped out what a real alternative to policing could look like: multi-lingual ambassadors, from the communities they served, highly trained, accountable, and subject to public oversight. Little did we know: San Francisco already had this exact program, it just didn’t operate in our district.
San Francisco was ahead of the curve. While other cities were starting their ambassador programs in 2020, we already had a highly successful, nationally-celebrated model that had been operating for a decade.
Expanding the program quickly became one of our top budget priorities in 2020. We scored a huge win in our first pandemic-era budget, and brought CAP to Hayes Valley, Haight-Ashbury, and the Western Addition. When our colleagues learned about our advocacy for CAP, they pushed to have their districts included, and soon, for the first time in over a decade CAP expanded to new neighborhoods in the city.
Why the Community Ambassadors Program Works
CAP is the only City-run non-police community ambassador program in San Francisco. Many of the ambassadors in the program are residents of the neighborhoods they serve. Many are bilingual, and each ambassador team is tailored to meet the linguistic needs of the community. They’re a critical part to a holistic public safety plan which San Francisco needs.
The ambassadors provide 1-on-1 community safety for people in San Francisco, and have engaged in hundreds of thousands of safety interactions each year. They offer safety escorts, assist merchants, report emergencies, crime, hazards and street issues, reverse overdoses, guide tourists, conduct wellness checks, and provide referrals. Serving as a bridge between the community and the City, they work to meet local needs. The program has also provided critical jobs and job training to San Franciscans, and many former CAP ambassadors can be found in other jobs across City government.
Most City programs receive a mix of reviews and have their supporters and critics. Not so with CAP. I’m hard-pressed to think of another City program that has received such universal praise.
A Successful Approach Becomes a Target
In June 2024, then-Mayor Breed tried to slash the program. We organized a campaign to save it. We introduced a resolution demanding that the program continue. Supporters rallied at City Hall. Current and past ambassadors told their stories of lives saved and lives transformed. Supervisors from multiple districts talked about their positive experiences with the CAP. The Board of Supervisors, often divided on public safety strategies, passed our resolution unanimously. Breed was forced to reverse the cuts. The program was saved. Or so it seemed.
It is hard to fathom that a nationally recognized program, backed by the entire Board of Supervisors, that improved neighborhood safety would be targeted by a new mayor who claims public safety as his top focus. Yet that is exactly what happened.
In May 2025, Mayor Lurie released a budget that didn’t just cut the program, but fully defunded it starting in 2026. This means that the culturally-competent, highly-trained, multi-lingual OCEIA ambassadors will no longer be in the Mission, Bayview, Chinatown, and all of District 5. Despite the enormous implications, no major media has reported the story.
Vision for Public Safety
A visionary mayor would invest in this proven model, scaling it up and celebrating it as an innovative and nationally-recognized alternative to outdated, ineffective, and costly approaches to public safety. Instead, the Mayor is punishing innovation and efficiency, causing over sixty public servants to lose their jobs, and taking away one of the most successful public safety programs San Francisco has ever seen. One has to ask: why?