Sit/lie law primarily enforced in Haight Effectiveness questioned as repeat offenders cycle in and out of jail

Lawrence Rosenberg (right), 54 years, enjoys an alcoholic beverage in front of the Red Victorian restaurant on Haight Street. Kyle Anderson is at left. San Francisco's controversial sit lie law, which makes it against the law to sit or lie on a city sidewalk, is being enforced exclusively in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. less Lawrence Rosenberg (right), 54 years, enjoys an alcoholic beverage in front of the Red Victorian restaurant on Haight Street. Kyle Anderson is at left. San Francisco's controversial sit lie law, which makes it ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 42 Caption Close Sit/lie law primarily enforced in Haight 1 / 42 Back to Gallery

His long strawberry blond hair matted and his jeans caked in dirt, Lawrence Rosenberg cracked open a beer on Haight Street on a recent morning and promptly broke a second law by sitting down on the sidewalk as he did it.

"I'm a vet," the 54-year-old homeless man groused. "I'll sit anywhere I want! This is America!"

It may be America, and even the most liberal city within it, but Rosenberg couldn't sit anywhere he wanted thanks to the city's ban on sitting or lying on sidewalks. Within moments, Officer Alec Cardenas zoomed up on his motorcycle to investigate.

"Where's the can at? You sitting on it?" Cardenas asked, noticing Rosenberg had stealthily hid the evidence. "Stand up. Stand up. Stand up!"

Police data from the first year of enforcement of the controversial sit/lie law, passed by 54 percent of voters in 2010, shows the encounter was standard practice - in the Haight. Although the ban applies citywide, the vast majority of citations are issued in the neighborhood where the push for the law originated. The same behavior is mostly ignored everywhere else. But even in the Haight, the law's effectiveness is still hotly debated. And the same chronic offenders are being cited again and again - one woman received 46 citations in the first year alone - though little is being done to keep them off the streets over the long term.

A first-time offender would probably get warned, but Cardenas quickly determined Rosenberg had $26,000 in warrants for not showing up to court dates for previous violations. This time, he was nabbed for violating the open container law, handcuffed and guided into the backseat of a police car that had driven up with its lights flashing.

A red double-decker sightseeing bus motored past, and tourists sitting in the open-air top gawked at the scene that has come to symbolize San Francisco perhaps as much as cable cars and sourdough bread.

Haight merchants' outcry

Politicians hoped in 2010 to make the city's sometimes wretched streets more palatable for business owners, tourists and residents by banning sitting or lying on sidewalks citywide between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Officers must first warn offenders to move along before citing them and are also supposed to provide information for obtaining social services to get off the streets.

Initiated because of outcry from some merchants in the Haight that groups of thugs with pit bulls were frightening passers-by and hurting business, the law was approved in November 2010 and began being enforced by police officers in spring 2011.

The Chronicle, through a public records request, obtained sit/lie statistics for the first year of enforcement including all recorded instances of warnings for breaking the law, citations and bookings into county jail.

The law is being enforced, with police handing out 422 formal warnings and 333 citations in the first year. Eighteen times, repeat offenders have been arrested and booked into county jail.

But the statistics also show that despite the law applying citywide, it is being predominantly enforced in the Haight. Of the 333 citations handed out, 231 were distributed by officers at Park Station, which includes the famous street. Of the 18 bookings, 14 were in the Park Station boundaries.

Police districts where street behavior is also a problem hardly enforce the sit/lie ban at all. The Tenderloin Station handed out 16 citations and booked nobody. The Central Station, which includes most of Union Square and downtown, issued 16 citations and made three bookings.

Police Chief Greg Suhr said that's appropriate considering sit/lie enforcement is based mostly on calls for service. Haight Street merchants and residents are more likely to call police to report somebody sitting or lying outside their shops and homes than, say, a Tenderloin merchant who probably has more pressing concerns.

"The issues of crime that they deal with are different than the issues of sit/lie in other districts," he said. "Having been captain of the Bayview, I know months would go by and we wouldn't have anybody contacting us about sit/lie. ... There aren't a lot of people who spend time lying on the ground in Bayview."

Indeed, the Bayview Station handed out no citations and made no bookings in the first year of sit/lie enforcement.

Mixed reactions

For Rosenberg, the homeless man arrested on Haight Street on a recent morning, it was a plea from a local merchant that prompted the response. But it wasn't from staffers at the Red Victorian - a bed and breakfast that bills itself as "San Francisco's living peace museum" - though that's the building Rosenberg was leaning against.

Instead, the call came from next door. Cicely Ann Hansen, owner of Decades of Fashion at the corner of Haight and Belvedere streets, proudly copped to calling the cops.

"The Red Vic doesn't do anything - they're hippies. They think people have human rights," said Hansen, using her fingers to put air quotes around "human rights."

"I pay the rent here," she said. "I'm the one who gives the city $50,000 a year in sales tax. Where are my rights?"

Hansen said she loved the Haight in the 1960s and counted Janis Joplin and the members of the Grateful Dead as friends. But she said the neighborhood isn't the same anymore and that she's tired of having clearly crazy street people scare potential shoppers away.

"I'm not going to put up with it," she said.

Haight Street merchants were vehemently divided over the sit/lie ballot measure and don't even agree if the law has changed anything.

"I haven't noticed much of a difference. I still see people sitting down," said Basim Zaidan, 33, a clerk at Frank's Discount Center, which has a big sign reading, "No Sit&Lie! No Open Containers! No Excuses!" in its window.

"I feel kind of bad for some of these kids, but some of them are troublemakers," he said, noting store staff often tells them to stand up and move along.

A spring report for the Police Department prepared by four participants in the City Hall Fellows program - recent college graduates who work for a year in city government - found similar sentiments among Haight merchants.

The fellows surveyed more than 50 business owners and found that 58 percent of them said the number of people sitting in front of their shops had stayed the same or increased since the ban was approved. Sixty percent said the law hadn't helped reduce aggressive panhandling or loitering in front of their businesses.

But Suhr pointed out that calls for service based on sit/lie violations are down 50 percent from when enforcement began.

"Anything where complaints are down 50 percent gives us an indication that we're doing it right," he said.

A traveling problem

Roaming groups of homeless teens traveling through the neighborhood that once hosted the Summer of Love certainly haven't disappeared. On a recent morning, dozens of them - along with their backpacks, sleeping bags, shopping carts and pets - dotted the entrance to Golden Gate Park at Haight and Stanyan streets.

Raven Hadar, an 18-year-old woman sporting a shaved head, fishnet stockings and a black tutu, walked her kitten, Rocket, on a leash around the park's entrance. The Washington native is traveling down the West Coast and said she earns about $30 a day on Haight Street by panhandling. But the sit/lie ban makes it hard.

"Whenever I see a cop, I make sure I stand up," she said. "I have a feeling that if a normal-looking person like a yuppie was sitting on a sidewalk, they wouldn't be hassled. But since I have a giant backpack, I'll be hassled in no time."

In the entrance to the park, however, the sit/lie ban doesn't apply. Many observers say the problem has merely been pushed west from Haight Street, and it's been well documented the park entrance is a drug-dealing haven.

But some say as long as the large groups of rowdy youth are gone from the sidewalks, the trade-off is worth it.

"It was very intimidating to walk that gauntlet," said Tom Hsieh, a campaign manager for the sit/lie ballot measure, who sends his two children to a public school on Haight Street. "If people want to congregate in a public park in large groups, they're completely welcome to do so."

Politicians who backed the sit/lie ban said it was those groups of youth they were focusing on, but traveling kids know to just stand up when they see police officers or hang out in the park instead.

Police Department statistics show those most likely to be cited are the chronically homeless who are often alcoholic or struggle with other substance abuse issues.

But the City Hall Fellows report found that violators of sit/lie "are not consistently offered tangible referrals to services" as backers promised and instead were handed a half-sheet of paper that told them to call 311, which usually handles calls on when a Muni bus will arrive or complaints about potholes. The service isn't necessarily useful to a homeless person without a telephone.

Lt. William Roualdes, who supervises the Police Department's 17 homeless outreach officers, said officers are adopting one standard form related to homeless services to be handed to violators.

But he acknowledged the department doesn't track whether recipients access the recommended services or have any way of knowing if the sit/lie ban has led some to get off the streets.

Adachi condemns law

Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who vehemently opposed the sit/lie ban, said it hasn't eased the city's homeless problem despite politicians' hype.

"The sit/lie law was from the very beginning promised as a panacea for the city's homeless problem, and it really isn't," he said. "The cure is always wrapped up in a nice bow, and the reality when you open the box turns out to be something very different."

Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-Police Chief George Gascón were the drivers of the sit/lie ban. Newsom then lived near the Haight but has moved to Marin and is the state's lieutenant governor. He declined to comment, saying he tries to stay out of city politics.

Gascón is now the district attorney and said he's very glad he pushed the ban. He said he periodically visits the Haight and that the groups of young people with dogs intimidating pedestrians have mostly moved on. He acknowledged, though, that the larger goal of dealing with chronic offenders remains elusive.

"I don't believe we have arrived, and I don't believe frankly that we will ever arrive," he said. "It was never intended to criminalize the homeless, but it was intended to hold people accountable. I'm just as committed to making this work today as I was when I campaigned for it."

For those who turn down services and refuse to change their behavior, citations are supposed to come into play - but under the current system, they're almost meaningless. Those who receive citations are told to go to the Hall of Justice to get a date in traffic court, but almost nothing happens if they don't show up.

Gascón said the promise made almost two years ago to address long-term offenders should begin by the end of this summer. His office, along with the Police Department, Sheriff's Department, Adult Probation, the Health Department and the Superior Court have pledged to single out those who have at least 20 outstanding bench warrants over the past two years.

Sharing relevant information

A new computer system will allow each agency to share relevant information on the chronic offenders, and they'll be kept in county jail until they get a court date rather than being released to the streets and told to come back later. Many of their cases will be handled at the Community Justice Center, which processes cases more quickly than the traditional system and relies on the offender participating in community service or treatment programs instead of jail time.

But until then, the repeat offenders will keep cycling in and out of jail with no other consequences.

And so it went with Rosenberg, the homeless man with $26,000 in outstanding warrants who was arrested at 11:05 a.m. on a recent morning outside the Red Vic. According to the Sheriff's Department, he was released from jail at 4:23 p.m. the same day.

About the sit/lie ban The law prohibits people from sitting or lying on sidewalks anywhere in the city - or sitting or lying on objects on the sidewalks like backpacks - between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Exceptions are made for people having a medical emergency, sitting in wheelchairs, attending parades or demonstrations, sitting on fixed chairs or benches, waiting in line for services or children sitting in strollers. Violators must first be warned by police to stand up. If they refuse, the officer can issue a citation. The penalties rise with each citation to a maximum of a $500 fine, community service and 30 days in jail. Berkeley voters will decide on whether to adopt a similar sit/lie ban in their city in November. Other sit/lie bans exist in Santa Monica, Seattle and Santa Cruz.