San Francisco sheriff’s deputies cite distracted drivers in citywide crackdown

San Francisco Sheriff’s Office deputies fanned out across the city to cite distracted drivers in a crackdown aimed at curbing phone-related crashes on streets where every missed glance can end in a collision. The operation produced numerous warnings and citations and put fresh attention on a problem city leaders have tied to pedestrian, cyclist and driver safety.

The enforcement push lands as San Francisco keeps trying to stabilize a street-safety record that remains stubbornly grim. The city adopted Vision Zero in 2014 with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and reducing severe injuries, yet a 2025 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury report said 2024 was the deadliest year on city streets since 2007. That same report said traffic citations fell every year after the San Francisco Police Department signed on to Vision Zero, bottoming out near zero in 2022 before ticking up only slightly since then.

City Hall has responded by trying to reconnect enforcement with data and coordination. San Francisco’s 2025 Traffic Enforcement Plan says the goal is to leverage data and citywide partnerships to reduce traffic crashes and violations. A Street Safety Executive Directive created a Street Safety Initiative Working Group led by the Mayor’s Office and involving the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the San Francisco Police Department to coordinate transportation and public-safety efforts.

The city has also acknowledged that the basics of tracking enforcement can be uneven. Vision Zero benchmarking materials say warning and education data are difficult to track and compare across cities, which makes an operation that uses both warnings and citations especially useful for measuring what officers are seeing on the street. That matters in San Francisco, where officials continue to frame traffic violence as a public-health problem as much as a policing issue.

Mayor Daniel Lurie highlighted the city’s broader enforcement strategy on April 29, saying San Francisco’s first-in-the-state automated speed camera program had produced an 80% decline in speeding at 33 camera locations across the city. Together with the sheriff’s distracted-driving crackdown, the city is signaling that it plans to use both officers and technology to pressure drivers into slowing down, putting down their phones and treating San Francisco’s streets as shared public space.