Mission Police Station was a dump.
Unlike its predecessor over in the industrial part of the District that had its visual and police cultural foundations in the Gothic Pillar examples of the Boston or New York City police precinct houses , this “new” place tried to fit in the local residential and apartment-house-centric ambiance by being architecturally and visually bland, boring, ugly, and anonymous.
It almost worked.
Except for the 3-inch-thick bulletproof windows, the 12-foot-tall razor wire roof top fences, and the huge 2-foot shiny brass letter name plate on the front staircase that is.
A few doors to the south was a Spanish language Evangelical storefront type of church, while the same distance in the other direction found a sex-toys and video booth store called (appropriately enough) “Good Vibrations.
Yes, the cops were between Jesus Christo and a latex dildo factory.
In the spirit of sharing community resources, the church choir, and the un-marked X-rated delivery trucks used the Police Parking Only spaces out in front of the station.
Some members of the community had other agendas, and periodically a cluster of badly spelled profane insults would be spray canned on the front of the building, while the more serious types once threw an explosive satchel charge on the roof ( before the fence went up), and would occasionally drive by shooting out street lights, and punctuating parked police cars.
Read the all-too-true book called “Zebra” by Clark Howard if you want more details.
This stuff was only a hiccup in local relations that only slowed down slightly when the SFPD Gang Task Force joined by a group of Mission District veteran cops who “leaned back” one frantic Friday Noche’ by towing a great many cars and roughly arresting every known hoodlum in sight. (Also, by serving a large number of ATF and DEA Federal search warrants way too early in the morning on the following Saturday one April.)
The Stations rear door wasn’t as popular with un-happy civilians. Down the steep concrete ramp was secure parking for police VIPS and for both large prisoner custody wagons. The Sally Port door here was ominously thickly armored with a couple of gun muzzle ports at eye level as finishing touches.
At this moment in that the city was now suddenly on a police officer hiring binge of massive proportions, with Mission being a leading rookie grinder mill, when some new concrete was poured in the stations parking lot, a welcoming sentence was graven in the fresh surface.
: We don’t hesitate; we TERMINATE” was the happy greeting that newbies stepped over every day before going inside for lineup.
In context, of the 80 or so “regulars” who worked at Company D during that time frame, most of these guys were Korean War Veterans (Marine Corps Suh!) while the rest were “Greenies “(Army).
Inside, no expense had been spared to make this occasionally heated brick and mortar building look less like a rural barn or a derelict former 1941 FDR Work Project era warehouse.
The men’s locker room took up 1/3 of the building so that the now 120 assigned total officers had a place to gear up, and occasionally noisily shoot bullet holes into the old green metal high school surplus football lockers and the acoustic tile ceiling.
The single stall woman’s restroom was at the other end of the barn and was key locked for the captain’s wife when she visited, or for his elderly civilian secretary who everyone called “Mom”.
This Federally inspired hiring frenzy suddenly had 25 new female officers unexpectedly getting their initial rookie assignments to the Mission a few weeks prior. This initially led to two rows of the men’s lockers being “reserved” via a blue plastic tarp, rope, duct tape and small warning sign contrivance.
Opening the large locker room windows (or by tuning on the building’s semi-working heating system on a cold December morning) led to embarrassing and frequently hysterical tarp-fluttering.
( “ Nice tattoos Marliene! “)
The same feebly attempted stop-gap accommodations in the previously men-only bathroom and shower area led to more hilarity until somebody called the City Attorney’s office.
Permanent room dividers / additions took only 18 months to start off.
The most recently graduated Police Academy class, the “ 147 Enforcers” , arrived lugging duffle bags of gear issued very late on the previous evening, and until the station crew took the time to look in the security camera over the rear door, we stood nervously shivering at the bottom of the car ramp in the too typical San Francisco cool gray blowing fog climate at 0430 AM.
City-wide, there were 3 Field Training Officer sites. The remaining 6 stations were just as happy with this setup.
Northern Station was in the Western Addition housing project area side which was balanced out locally by the elegant Pacific Heights and the Filmore Street Jazz club areas.
Central Station was, and always be, the Seven Families of Chinatown, with a smattering of North Beach Cosa Nostra Mafia-inspired Italian Capo’s for flavor.
Besides the wonderful and diverse locales, the amenities for working cops also were on different pages in the same tattered multilingual book.
Northen Station was a recently converted Safeway Mega food store, with several hundred parking spots, and a refurbished cold storage room that appropriately enough became its own cell block (called “the cooler” naturally)
Central was wedged into the ground floor of a converted multistoried civic parking lot and had several floors of the remaining lot space to use for police car parking, (and to shelter the barely off-duty cop beer drinking parties from prying tourist eyes.)
Mission had maybe 8 dedicated rear lot spots for its 14 careworn radio cars, 5 more street-level in the back on the curb cutout next to the dump- truck sized green metal dumpster, and then an unknown number in the already hopelessly congested local civilian parking spots.
Off duty alcohol inspired activities at the Mish were held on the flat roof over the assembly room, which was pathetically decorated by numerous large picnic table sized umbrellas, and hung with many thousands of purloined Christmas tree twinkle lights.
Grumbling residents got to (try) and deal with suddenly a lot more automotive issues.
If Joe Citizen went to the Customer Service Window at the front of Mission to complain about the 30 or so double parked cars blocking his car in, chances were pretty good he’d be pleading with the owner of one of those same cars who was working that window as punishment duty.
Our solution?
We hung a big sign over a shoe box that was unceremoniously nailed to the wall under that window ledge desk that was cleverly positioned so only the cops in the business office could read it.
It said: “Double parked on the street? Leave your keys here! “.
Because the Meter Maids used Missions Bathrooms (and drank beer at the same Cop Bars nearby) there were many delicately non-enforced rules over vehicles creatively parked within 2 blocks of the Station.
Sidewalks were fair game as long as you took your cars license plate off beforehand.
Not too subtly, Mission Station was west of its name-sake Mission Street, right where the streets (and the property values) started to climb skyward towards Twin Peaks, while the Spanglish speaking Barrio and the ultra-violent “Gangland Flats” were slightly east of Mission,
Noe Valley, populated by the thousands of picturesque calendar friendly Victorian homes clustered about, could (literally) look down the hills at the Station that was a protective barrier to the Nortenos and Surdenos gang violence that produced the echoing gunfire most every night.
Some of the more waggish history attentive cops (several of whom had emigrated west from Texas) who worked at the Station suggested quietly that it be re-named “The Alamo Station”. Hand drawn posters on the walls mocking this unfortunate similarity were laughed at but quickly removed by nervous supervising police administrators.
Every March 6th, which was “Alamo Day” in Texas that commemorated the fall of the Alamo Mission fortress was an exceptionally loud party day at Mission Station with (mostly) black powder fireworks being detonated frequently on the roof.
Officer participants were cautioned to “police the area for brass handgun cartridge casings” because reloads to issued police ammunition was more expensive otherwise.
The custody block at Mission was never short of its fire department over-maximum capacity.
Our Drunk Tank that was rated for 10 people, usually held 40 on a typical Friday evening, while the other 4 “felony cages” should hold 10 each, and but more occasionally 20.
There was no female custody pen, so several City Park Bench replicas had been fitted out with lead plumbing pipe modifications, and the gals would be multi-cuffed in the open squad room, where they could cat-call and insult the cops that brought them temporarily to bay.
Whether it was called by its official city designation as “Company D” for David or “Delta Company” by the military veterans, it was for my home for 8 years.
10-7
