The city of San Francisco has created a new "poop patrol" to clean up its streets because everyone there is really tired of seeing massive amounts of shit all over the sidewalks.
The new program will include a team of six people using pressure washers and steam cleaners to scrub feces from the city's sidewalks, according to San Francisco Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon. The "Poop Patrol" — "I guess that is its official name," Gordon said — will begin work in September, focusing on areas that have generated high numbers of complaints about sidewalk poop.
"We know that there’s a problem and people want it cleaned up," Gordon told BuzzFeed News Tuesday.
The scope of the problem is actually quite staggering. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's public works department has received 14,597 complaints about feces just since Jan. 1. The situation received renewed attention last month after a 20-pound bag of human feces was discovered sitting on a sidewalk, prompting multiple complaints to the Public Works Department.
The complaints have coincided with an explosion of calls about other street problems, such as public drug use and discarded needles, in a city that was once considered among the most beautiful and livable in the US.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that the city's "cleanliness has been impacted by human waste on our streets."
"We have increased the number of public restrooms and added street cleaners, but now we have a dedicated team to tackle this poop problem," Breed said.
