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San Francisco’s political establishment rounded on Marc Benioff over the weekend after the Salesforce founder backed the idea of sending in the National Guard to clean up the city’s streets.
By late Sunday Benioff took to Twitter to clarify that he believed the best people to manage public safety in San Francisco was… San Francisco, and that “Salesforce is proud to support the Mayor through the Partnership for San Francisco.”
Benioff, previously seen as a broadly liberal benevolent benefactor to the city by the bay, seemed to follow the path of his fellow tech CEOs in cozying up to the Trump administration, just ahead of the company’s Dreamforce conference in the city.
In an interview with the New York Times, published Friday, Benioff said he avidly supported Trump, who has said he was considering sending the National Guard into San Francisco, as he has to other Democrat-led cities.
“I fully support the president,” Benioff said. “I think he’s doing a great job.”
Benioff, who has pumped money into the city’s UCSF Children’s Hospitals, apparently liked the idea of the National Guard landing in the city, saying it would reduce crime.
“We don’t have cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” he was quoted saying. He noted that Salesforce has to pay for “hundreds of off-duty law enforcement officers” to patrol the convention area.
He also said San Francisco needed to “refund” the police, and said the City needed to add another 1,000 officers to the police force’s current 1,500 strong workforce.
San Francisco has become notorious for its homeless problem and open air drug taking, with Republicans excoriating the city as an example of failed Democrat governance. At the HashiConf conference two years ago, organizers advised attendees to take company provided buses to travel the two blocks from the conference venue to the conference party – we walked and survived.
But this belies the fact its crime rate dropped to a 20 year low in the first half of this year.
Benioff appeared to ease back on his criticisms over the weekend, posting on X to say that the responsibility for keeping the City safe lay with “city and state leaders”, and praising the City’s police hiring program.
“Salesforce is proud to support the Mayor through the Partnership for San Francisco, and we’re investing $15 billion in our city over the next five years because we believe deeply in its future,” he wrote.
He added, “When I was recently asked about federal resources, my point was this: each year, to make Dreamforce as safe as possible for 50,000 attendees, we add 200 additional law-enforcement professionals… Year after year, San Francisco is at its safest during Dreamforce.”
Nevertheless, Benioff’s NYT comments shocked San Francisco politicians, who fiercely opposed the notion of being “invaded” by National Guards.
A spokesperson for SF Mayor Daniel Lurie said the city was boosting the police force to 2,000. “We are moving in the right direction and will continue to prioritize safety and hiring while San Francisco law enforcement works every single day to keep our city safe.”
SF district attorney Brooke Jekins wrote on X, “@KristiNoem and @realDonaldTrump have turned so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups.”
State Senator Scott Weiner wrote, “We neither need nor want an illegal military occupation in San Francisco.”
The teams for California Governor Gavin Newsome, who has San Francisco roots, and former speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi decided to keep schtum. Though perhaps they were applying pressure through other means.
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Elon Musk jumped on to X to endorse the National Guard moving in and condemning downtown San Francisco as a “drug zombie apocalypse”. Though one he’s quite happy for his X and Neuralink employees to endure.
Jenkins added, “If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents, use excessive force or cross any other boundaries that the law proscribes, I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”
Presumably that was also aimed at the National Guard, not Dreamforce attendees. ®
