San Francisco has a traffic safety problem. People are getting hit by cars. People are dying on our streets. So naturally, SFPD's bold new strategy is... a sting operation targeting cyclists on Market Street.

Yes, really. Officers reportedly set up en masse along Market, pulling over bike commuters for rolling through red lights — even when no pedestrians or cars were anywhere near the intersection. One cyclist described getting ticketed alongside two others at the same light, then counting at least 15 cops and multiple additional stops on her way to work. This wasn't community policing. This was theater.

Let's be clear: nobody is arguing cyclists should blow through busy intersections at full speed. Reckless riding is dangerous and should be penalized. But there's an enormous difference between a commuter carefully yielding at an empty intersection and someone barreling through a red at 20 mph. As one local pointed out, California already updated its jaywalking law with AB 2147 to reflect this exact common-sense distinction for pedestrians — you only get cited if there's an "immediate danger of collision." Why not apply the same logic to bikes?

The resource allocation here is baffling. As one SF resident put it bluntly: "Meanwhile families, young children, and old people keep getting obliterated by cars with almost no traffic citations. What a joke." The city's own high-injury network data shows that cars — not bikes — are responsible for the overwhelming majority of serious injuries and fatalities on our streets. You'd think the "larger strategy to improve street safety" would start there.

Another local nailed the absurdity: "Of all the things we need money for or things the police would be better off doing, this is what we choose as a priority?"

Meanwhile, cities like Paris are investing billions to make cycling safer and more accessible, ripping out car lanes and building protected bike infrastructure. The result? Fewer traffic deaths, less pollution, and streets that actually work for people. San Francisco loves to talk about being a world-class city. But world-class cities don't deploy 15 officers to ticket bike commuters while drivers rack up a body count largely undisturbed.

We need enforcement that's proportional to the actual danger. Ticket e-bikes and scooters terrorizing pedestrians on sidewalks — plenty of residents are begging for exactly that. Crack down on drivers who speed through school zones and blow through crosswalks. But staging bike stings on Market Street isn't a safety strategy. It's a misallocation of scarce public safety resources dressed up as progress.

San Francisco's budget is tight. Our police force is stretched thin. Every dollar and every officer-hour spent on low-risk bike stops is one not spent on the things actually killing people. That's not fiscal responsibility — it's safety theater.