San Francisco voters — the same people who made their city the first in America to ban facial recognition — now overwhelmingly support police drones, live surveillance cameras, and dispersing open-air drug markets, a new poll shows. When progressive governance turns your streets into drug markets, even the truest believers reconsider the surveillance state.
The poll, released by advocacy group GrowSF and conducted by FM3 Research among 662 likely voters, found 72% support police using drones and live cameras during active investigations. Two-thirds backed real-time monitoring of crime hotspots like the Tenderloin's drug markets. And 75% said police should simply disperse the drug markets altogether. The numbers are a near-total reversal from 2019, when the city banned government use of facial recognition and passed some of the most restrictive surveillance laws in the country. After George Floyd's death in 2020, then-Mayor London Breed moved to redirect police funds to community programs. The experiment produced exactly what critics predicted: chaos in the streets, and now a public clamoring for the tools to clean it up.
In 2024, voters approved Proposition E by a narrow 54-46 margin, rolling back the surveillance restrictions. The SF Democratic Party and the ACLU fought the measure, warning it would threaten civil rights. Since then, SFPD has deployed drones — funded by Ripple co-founder and billionaire Chris Larsen — and routinely posts footage of drone-assisted arrests for auto burglaries. Police credit Flock Safety cameras, now blanketing the city, with helping catch suspects fast.
GrowSF, founded in 2020 by tech workers Steven Bacio and Sachin Agarwal, has been a driving force behind the shift. The group is backed by billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, Larsen, and Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan. It helped recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin and defeat Supervisor Dean Preston — two faces of the progressive governance that voters are now repudiating. Bacio said the polling sends a "clear" message that "residents want city leaders to continue modernizing the police department and deploying every effective tool available to keep them and their families safe."
Not everyone is cheering. HuffPost, covering comedian John Oliver's recent segment on police surveillance, highlighted Rialto, California, where police tap into over 150 private business livestreams through Fusus technology. Oliver's team obtained 30,413 pages of access logs and found police checked cameras at fast-food restaurants more than 100 times — including a two-hour session across five Chick-fil-A cameras — and spent "hundreds of hours" accessing cameras at a local Days Inn, including one pointed at the hotel pool. Oliver called it "weird." The department claimed some access involved monitoring wider areas or cameras left running in the background. The anti-surveillance group DeFlock says 98 cities have rejected automated license plate readers as privacy concerns mount nationwide.
Still, San Franciscans have seen enough chaos to make their peace with the cameras. The poll found 69% support monitoring high drug-use areas to prevent overdoses, and 67% back surveillance to stop illegal dumping. Yet a narrow majority also said homelessness and public drug use have stayed the same or gotten worse under Mayor Daniel Lurie — suggesting the tools are popular, but the results remain in question.
The deeper tension: a city that championed civil liberties now trades them for basic safety, because the people entrusted with public order failed to provide it. Once you hand the panopticon to police, you don't get to take it back when the streets are clean. San Francisco is about to find out what that bargain costs.
