Nearly 1,400 discarded syringes have been removed from around two plazas in San Francisco’s Mission District as the city works to improve street conditions and prevent drug overdoses.
Supervisor Jackie Fielder, whose district includes the two BART plazas, told Mission Local that community ambassadors have responded to as many as 1,538 hostile street situations since January.
The ambassadors—street-based workers who handle certain emergency calls—have also reversed 15 drug overdoses and collected 1,390 needles, Fielder said.
“This shouldn’t be a statistic that we’re proud of because of just how large it is,” Fielder said. “But they collected 1,390 needles off the street.”
The effort to address open-air drug use, illegal street vending and other problems near the Mission’s BART stations has involved Fielder, Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city officials.
In March 2025, after Lurie promised a crackdown on drug dealing and illegal fencing, police increased their presence at the two stations. The plazas later hosted community pop-up events intended to make them more welcoming and family-friendly public spaces.
Fielder sought additional support in July, writing to Lurie to request round-the-clock community ambassadors at the 16th Street and 24th Street BART stations.
According to Mission Local, Lurie’s office turned down the request because of its cost.
In the same letter, Fielder urged several city agencies to provide data that could help assess the progress of Lurie’s 90-day initiative to improve conditions around the stations.
Fielder said she now intends to send another letter to the mayor’s office seeking more ambassadors, additional street cleaning, police foot patrols and improved data on visible drug use—information that would not depend solely on 911 calls.
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“My long-term hope is that street conditions are acceptable to visitors and residents alike,” Fielder said, according to Mission Local. “We’ll know that we got there when people are not complaining about Mission Street conditions in my inbox.”
Fielder also announced on Instagram the launch of the city’s “16th and 24th Street BART Plazas Activation Dashboard,” an online tool designed to help track whether conditions around the stations are improving.
The dashboard compiles information on illegal fencing, drug activity, 911 calls, street-cleaning requests and other conditions at both plazas.
City officials expect to update the dashboard each month with information gathered by multiple agencies.
The data starts in March 2026 and covers the period surrounding Lurie’s 90-day push, announced in June, to address conditions near the Mission BART stations.
Dashboard figures show that drug-related 911 calls rose from 19 in March to 35 in May, then dropped to 17 in August. Trash-related calls to the city’s 311 hotline increased from 88 in March to 113 in August, while street-cleaning requests within one block of the BART plazas declined from 420 to 316 over the same period.
Fielder has acknowledged that eliminating street-cleaning complaints altogether is probably unrealistic.
“It’s probably not feasible to get to zero street-cleaning requests in the Mission. But, I would like to see us get much fewer 311 cleaning requests,” she told Mission Local.
