A San Francisco law designed to clear the sidewalks of homeless people inspired bitter debate when it was approved by voters in 2010, but records obtained by The Chronicle show police have rarely enforced it in recent years.

The city’s “sit/lie” ordinance allows police officers to issue a ticket or misdemeanor citation to anyone sitting or lying on the street between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Fifty-four percent of voters supported the law despite complaints it would criminalize the homeless.

Sit/lie infractions peaked at 1,011 in 2013, but since that time they have steadily declined, falling to 114 last year, according to Superior Court records. Misdemeanors tracked by police spiked at 195 in 2016 and then similarly declined by almost half the next year.

“The department and city realized many years ago that we cannot arrest our way out of the homeless crisis,” said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a police spokesman.

Officials say the department now focuses on steering homeless people to shelters, one-stop Navigation Centers and health services, prompting the reduction in citations.

“Keep in mind, arresting someone for a misdemeanor essentially gives the suspect a new ticket and a court date,” said Sgt. Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman. “They don’t actually go to jail. They get the new ticket and are sent on their way from the scene.”

But does a drop in sit/lie citations alone reveal the story playing out on San Francisco streets?

Overall, San Francisco has 36 “quality of life” laws, and police have been using another tool — California Penal Code 647(e) for improper lodging — to relocate or prosecute homeless people, said Brian Pearlman, managing attorney for the San Francisco public defender’s misdemeanor unit.

“The whole thing is really just a waste of time because you are just shifting people around the city,” Pearlman said. “If you don’t have any shelter and you keep moving along, you are not going to get cited, so it’s kind of silly.”

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, called the practice “wholly ineffective and inhumane. ... Homeless people are running frightened at this point and quickly leaving when police are near because they are confiscating people’s survival gear and doing the 647 misdemeanor charge.”

Former Mayor Mark Farrell led several high-profile street sweeps over the past year, including one in April that removed about 40 tents from the Tenderloin.

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But, according to records we obtained, incidents of alleged lodging without permission peaked in 2016 with 533 and are now at about half that number. The biggest jump came in 2015, when the number exploded from 29 cases to 242.

Randy Quezada, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the reduction in citations is a testament to new cooperation between city outreach workers and law enforcement, with an aim to shift from tickets to shelters and services.

“We are getting better at coordinating every day,” Quezada said. “The cops are really taking to this new approach.”

Nationally, the legal pendulum has also swung away from clear-the-streets laws. Last month, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided that any ordinance outlawing sleeping outdoors is unconstitutional if homeless shelters aren’t available.

California, the court said, cannot “criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless.”

While the judges said a city could not ban sleeping on a sidewalk at all hours, they were less clear about partial bans such as the sit/lie ordinance.

How Californians

are killed, and why

California’s annual report on homicides is a typically grim document, but reasons for optimism can be found amid the bloodshed.

While the state saw 1,829 killings in 2017 — a startling number to be sure — the death rate represents a 6 percent drop from 2016 when adjusted for population growth. The homicide rate went down 21 percent over the past decade and has decreased by more than two-thirds since 1980.

The news was even better in the Bay Area, where the 15 largest cities enjoyed a dip from 277 homicides in 2016 to 235 last year.

Still, statewide progress in cutting the death toll has slowed in recent years and murders are still taking a disproportionate toll on young men of color. Guns are a central theme of the violence.

The state report contained insight into who killed whom in 2017 and how they accomplished the deed. Here are some of the findings:

•Gangs blamed: Authorities said 30 percent of killings with a known motive were gang-related, 33 percent were traced to an “unspecified argument,” 8 percent were a result of domestic violence and nearly as many deaths were tied to robberies or rapes.

•Guns do the job: A firearm was used in 71 percent of killings in which the weapon was known, and the gun was typically a pistol.

•Big gender and racial gaps: Eighty percent of those killed were male. In cases where a victim’s race was known, 45 percent were Latino, 27 percent black and 19 percent white.

Of those arrested for homicide, 48 percent were Latino, 25 percent were black and 20 percent white; 88 percent were male.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 37 percent of California residents are white, 39 percent Latino and 6.5 percent black.

•Victim ages diverge: Latino and black homicide victims tended to be younger, with 45 percent of Latino victims and 40 percent of black victims ages 18 to 29. White victims were older on average, with 60 percent over 40.

•Young men still dominate booking logs: Half of people arrested on suspicion of murder were from age 18 to 29.

•Domestic violence stark: Males were more likely than females to be killed by a stranger — 39 percent of victims versus 13 percent. But women were far more likely than men to be slain by a spouse — 21 percent of victims versus 0.3 percent.

Female victims were killed in their home 52 percent of the time, while the biggest proportion of male victims lost their lives on the street.

•Death Row grows, a little: California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, and many prosecutors have lost their taste for seeking capital punishment. Still, nine men and two women were sentenced to death in 2017. Five of the defendants were tried in Riverside County.

Life changes fast

A man who spent nine years and three months behind bars awaiting trial on murder charges walked out of jail a free man Thursday evening, apparently becoming the first beneficiary of a new California law that significantly narrows the felony murder rule.

Neko Wilson pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of robbery and other charges on unrelated cases. He hasn’t technically been sentenced, but the most time he could get for those crimes is nine years, meaning he’s already paid his dues.

“It’s just a little overwhelming,” Wilson said on Friday. “I’m blessed, you know, to have a second chance.”

The wheels of justice’s sudden change of pace shocked Wilson. It’s been nearly a decade since prosecutors accused him of helping to plan a robbery that resulted in the double murder of Fresno County couple Gary and Sandra De Bartolo. But just 18 days after Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB1437, Wilson was eating tacos with his family.

The new law allows prosecutors to charge a suspect with murder only if he or she actually killed someone, solicited the crime or acted with “reckless indifference to human life” when someone was slain. The law is retroactive and could vacate the murder convictions of hundreds of inmates across California.

Wilson said he’ll now put his paralegal certification to work and help others entangled in the criminal justice system. He’s planning to work for his twin brothers’ Modesto nonprofit group Advocates for Justice.

San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Jacque Wilson, Neko Wilson’s brother and attorney, said Thursday that he too was in a state of disbelief. His brother went from a potential death sentence to a potential life sentence to freedom.

“As a public defender you think you know a lot,” Jacque Wilson said. “And you don’t.”

Roundup: The biggest crime news from the past week

• The Diocese of San Jose released a list of former clergy members who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. However, the diocese failed to note that one of these former priests is currently in San Jose’s Main Jail on molestation charges filed after he was banned from the church.

• The city of Oakland canceled its popular First Fridays street party for next month after a shootout injured six people.

• A record number of East Bay inmates have been registered to vote in the November 2018 midterm election.

• Two men were arrested and one was critically wounded after being shot by a federal police officer at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park.

• A long-running sting operation targeting illicit massage parlors in San Jose shut down more than 100 businesses, but details were light on how many people were arrested.

The Scanner is a weekly feature from The Chronicle’s breaking news team featuring stories from the crime beat. Follow the team on Twitter: @meganrcassidy, @EvanSernoffsky, @SarRavani, @Josh_Koehn, @ctuan, @gwendolynawu, @ted_d_andersen