City Hall is making big moves on cops, courts, buses, and the street that defines this city — and today we find out if any of it actually holds together. Welcome to The San Francisco Daily Fix — I'm Cassidy, with Devin. Today: a new public safety chief, a jury verdict that should embarrass the DA's office, a $3.1 billion Muni budget, and a fresh push to save Market Street. It's a lot of reform energy for one Wednesday — the question is whether any of it is more than a press release. We'll tell you which ones have teeth and which ones are still just vibes. Let's get into it. First up, this comes from ABC7 San Francisco:
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has appointed Steven Betz as the city's new public safety chief, following a significant crime decrease under his administration. Betz will work across public safety departments to reduce crime through the Rebuilding the Ranks initiative and disrupt open-air drug markets through the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center.
Mayor Lurie has tapped Steven Betz as San Francisco's new public safety chief — Betz was already serving as assistant public safety chief and spent years as an attorney for SFPD before that, so this isn't exactly a left-field pick. And the headline number here is a 25% overall crime drop in 2025. That's not vibes — that's the kind of result that earns someone a promotion. Betz is also going to be driving the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center, which is the city's main tool for actually dismantling open-air drug markets instead of just shuffling them around. The Rebuilding the Ranks initiative is the other piece — that's Lurie's push to get SFPD staffing back up after years of attrition. Betz will be the point person coordinating across departments to make that happen. A lawyer who knows SFPD from the inside, then goes and runs public health operations for the mayor's office — honestly that's exactly the profile you want. Someone who understands both the legal constraints and the operational reality. I'm cautiously optimistic. Now, a very different public-safety story — this one from JJ Lansing and Tim Redmond:
Pierre Constant was acquitted of all charges in 2026 after 18 months in jail for an assault he did not commit. His public defender claims that the police and district attorney’s office failed to provide timely evidence that exonerated him. The case is another example of District Attorney Brooke Jenkins' handling of cases that make no sense, overcrowding the jails and increasing the cost of public safety.
48 Hills broke this one — Pierre Constant spent 18 months in pretrial detention, was acquitted on all charges, and his public defender says the DA's office sat on exculpatory evidence the whole time. That's not a close call. That's a man's life. And the alleged mishandling starts at the arrest — police apparently built a photo lineup around what Constant looked like, not what the suspect in the security footage looked like. That's not a mistake, that's tunnel vision with consequences. The DA's office also withheld the victim's medical records and drug test results — Brady material, basically. For people who don't know, Brady violations are when prosecutors suppress evidence favorable to the defense. Courts take that seriously. Or they're supposed to. Brooke Jenkins ran on being tough and competent. Locking up the wrong guy for a year and a half isn't tough — it's expensive, it's unjust, and the actual assailant presumably walked free the whole time. That's a failure on every metric she claims to care about. On the transit side, here's Oleksandr Batrak:
On its SFMTA approved budget page, the agency says the budget closes immediate shortfalls. They are $307 million in FY2026-27. That fiscal year starts on July 1. The FY2027-28 shortfall is $344 million. Also, it includes modest increases in Muni fares, parking fees and fines.
The SFMTA board just signed off on a $3.1 billion two-year operating budget — that's $1.5 billion for fiscal year '26-27 and $1.6 billion for '27-28. The agency is staring down shortfalls of $307 million and $344 million respectively, and the fix involves hiking Muni fares, parking fees, and fines. Here's the pattern: SFMTA chronically overspends, ridership underperforms, and the working stiff who depends on the 38 Geary every morning gets hit with a fare hike to paper over management failures. This isn't a budget, it's a bill sent to the people who can least afford it. To be fair, $655 million in capital spending in year one suggests they're not just patching holes — there's actual infrastructure investment baked in. Whether the fare increases are sized right or just politically convenient is the real question. And on Market Street, this is from SFGATE:
San Francisco needs a unifying plan to bring together a patchwork of policies aimed at revitalizing the downtown Market Street corridor, starting with more investment to the Mid-Market neighborhood west of Powell Street.
Market Street revitalization is back in front of the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee — stakeholders, city departments, the whole coalition — calling for one unified plan instead of the patchwork we've had for years. Here's the history: Market Street has had *plans* going back decades. Streetscape plans, better Market Street, car-free pilots — the graveyard of good intentions. The problem was never vision, it was execution and coordination across too many agencies. To their credit, Planning, Public Works, OEWD, and SFMTA all showed up and presented real investments — lighting, bikeways, business grants. And Supervisor Melgar made the point that some of this is structural: the retail industry changed, not just the street. The Uber-Lyft debate is a perfect microcosm — people are still arguing about whether to let rideshare onto Market Street while storefronts sit empty. Get the enforcement infrastructure right, then open the street to more uses. The sequencing matters. We’ve got links to everything we talked about today in the show notes, so if one of these stories stuck with you, that’s the place to go deeper. Thanks for spending part of your Wednesday with us. That’s The San Francisco Daily Fix for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.