Abdulla "Bear" Warith's wake-up call came, as usual, around 6 a.m. with a cheery hello from a lady in blue. Police Officer Kim La Salle was her name. Warith was none too glad to see her.

"Sorry, Bear, time to get up," she said quietly, leaning close to where his head peeked out from a grimy pile of blankets on the sidewalk.

"Mmph," Warith grunted.

He lurched up, crunching a broken beer bottle under his feet. In three minutes he had his blankets stashed on his shopping cart, and in came the main event of the morning - and the point of the rousting.

It was hose-down time for the city's new "Alley Crew" of street cleaners.

The crew's job is to wipe away whatever trash or junk Warith and his hundreds of homeless compatriots leave in the alleys of central San Francisco each night, so that by the time residents and workers ply the sidewalks they see as little of it as possible.

The crew, which works in two four-person teams accompanied by police who specialize in homelessness, was created Sept. 17 after months of increasing complaints to the Department of Public Works about trash and sleepers in the alleys.

Some say the complaints are driven by the boom in tech and other business downtown bringing in new people who resent the mess.

Not all of the trash is from homeless people. But the majority of it is, say police and street-cleaning officials. And so far the team has been a hit - with the non-homeless, at least.

Their job is a never-ending, nose-pinching struggle against garbage, urine, human feces, furniture, vomit and addicts' needles.

'Pardon me, sir'

Warith, 63, was one of three people still snoring on Alice B. Toklas Place, an alley between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street, when the crew showed up. A mound of poop lay at the gutter amid trash.

"I'm a Vietnam vet, damn it, and they treat me like this," Warith mumbled as he shoved his cart toward Polk. "Every damn morning."

Crew member Marquez Boyd fired up his steam-cleaning hose and began scouring the sidewalk while the others bagged trash. Warith stopped 15 feet away, then staggered to the rear of a car.

"Pardon me, sir, I gotta take a leak," he said to the nearest cleaner. He unzipped and sprayed down the pavement under the car's bumper.

"Look, I only do this if nothing's open and I can't find a bathroom," he said. Back at the campsite, Marquez scooped up the poop mound with a shovel and bagged it for his trash truck.

"That stuff wasn't mine," Warith said. "If I have to do No. 2, I do it in a bag and I put it in the garbage. It's not healthy or decent to leave that in the street, and I do have my pride."

It's clear not everyone shares that pride.

City Superintendent of Street Environmental Services Dariush Kayhan, who oversees the Alley Crew, said feces and urine are rampant at most cleanups, which is why the teams use industrial strength disinfectant along with the hoses. Everyone wears gloves.

But Kayhan sees his job as more than just cleaning up. His Alley Crew members can act as low-pressure homeless outreach workers, and they are hand-picked for their aptitude on that front.

"Our job is to clean the streets, but there is a real human component here, too," said Kayhan, who ran the city's homeless services before taking over his environmental job in 2012. "That's why we don't just spray down the sidewalks - we connect the homeless people we meet with outreach counselors, tell them about services and housing."

Tons of debris

The crew hits the streets from 4:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday through Saturday. Its territory takes in about 50 alleys and plazas north and south of Market Street, from Van Ness to the Embarcadero.

The city's regular street cleaners patrol the same general areas, so some alleys get as many as three cleanings a day.

Still, the Alley Crew's workload has mushroomed so quickly that managers are considering adding a third team. By Dec. 14, the crew had cleared 80,740 pounds of debris, was cleaning out 50 homeless encampments a day and had disposed of 650 needles, according to Department of Public Works records.

Citizen cleanup requests for the alleys the crew hits have dropped by about one-third since the summer.

"I've really seen a change," said Frylan Carbalm, who works with a construction firm on the Minna Street alleyway near Sixth Street. "There are always homeless, but it's not them that bother me - it's the trash. And at least there's less of that now."

Homeless advocates don't share the appreciation. They have long resented street cleaners, saying one of their main functions is to displace street people.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said she doesn't know of abuses by the Alley Crew, but has received reports of street cleaners spraying the homeless.

"We're going to be paying close attention to street cleaning efforts to document if there is any abuse," she said. "The more they clean, the more it disperses people. And those resources could be better used for housing and services."

Kayhan, who oversees all city street cleaners, said spraying people is forbidden. His team members said they couldn't imagine doing it.

"It's hard seeing people live outside, especially the younger ones, and we try to be respectful," Boyd said. "Like for instance, I could never see spraying down an actual person. That's just wrong."

'All human beings'

Crew member Lolita Roberts, 43, worked at shelters along with her street cleaning job until a few years ago. Many of the homeless people recognize her and gravitate to her when her truck shows up.

"I try to tell the guys out here, look, you have options, but you can't force anyone to do anything," she said, watching a police crew clear out an angry, swearing man's campsite on Stevenson Street near Sixth Street.

The man spat toward the crew as he stomped off. "He'll be better later on when he's calmed down," she said. "I know him. Some people have just had no luck. They're all human beings. You have to remember that."

Below Carbalm's construction work site on Minna, 54-year-old Correllas "Mother Love" Johnson took a referral card to a counseling service from Kayhan as the crew sprayed down his camp spot.

"I'm glad to see these guys," he said as he shoved his cart while wearing a bathrobe and slippers. "Being out here is hard, especially if you're gay. I want to get inside."

He scratched himself as the hose sent up steam clouds in the early morning air.

"Can't hurt to be clean, either," he said with a chuckle.