San Francisco business owner slams Mayor London Breed for downplaying crime and homelessness with temporary effort to clean up the crime-ridden city for APEC: 'It's horrible... it's just a lot of drug heads'

A San Francisco business owner has slammed Mayor London Breed for downplaying crime and homelessness during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

Tom Wong claimed she had temporarily arranged to have the city tidied up for the summit before it was left to return to normal when officials left.

He told FOX&Friends drug dealers and homeless people were back on the streets within a day of the conference coming to a close last Friday.

Wong said: 'It's horrible. I just drove through the Tenderloin, and it is just a lot of drug heads, drug dealers, and they're all out, they're all out in the neighborhood.

'It is crime-ridden… drugs everywhere. There's needles everywhere. There's poop everywhere again.'

It comes after Mayor Breed claimed the city had made progress in its fight against crime over the last few years.

She said: 'When you look at the data of what is happening with our crime numbers over the past five years, they are showing a decline.'

She defended the city's reputation during ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday, saying the improvements include 'car break-ins, burglaries, and other challenges that people are talking about'.

San Francisco held the APEC summit last week, drawing more than 20,000 attendees including President Joe Biden and China's president Xi Jinping. 

In the span of a few days, the city scrubbed seven intersections in the notorious  Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods - a decision that California Gov. Gavin Newsom defended ahead of the APEC summit.

The cleanup left multiple overrun hotspots virtually unrecognizable, and left many asking why similar efforts had not been enacted sooner.

Newsom explained how officials had 'raised the bar of expectation' for the state of the city's streets, after finishing a $312million taxpayer-funded beautification project that has seen dozens more parks constructed across California.

Appearing alongside Mayor Breed and other officials, Newsom admitted that the clean-ups were only done to provide a good impression for visiting world leaders 

He said: 'I know folks say, 'Oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town.''

'That's true, because it's true - but it's also true for months and months and months prior to APEC, we've been having conversations.' 

Despite the official's claims that the clean-ups were not temporary, business owner Wong said the crime-ridden city were back to their original form this week. 

'It's less than 24 hours, and it's back to the same thing,' Wong said. 

'It's just a shell game. Hide the homeless. The dignitaries are here, and when the cameras are on, hide it, pan all to the left, so you don't see all the deplorable state that the city's in.' 

'They just need to own up to their failed policies, and we want something that will fix our homelessness, our crime issue, our drug issues,' he added.

Robberies are up 14 percent so far this year in the Golden Gate City where mayor London Breed last month demanded cuts of 18 percent from next year's police budget.

Reported deaths from drug overdoses reached 620 in the first nine months of the year, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, up from 540 for the same period in 2020.

And the city stands to lose $200 million a year in revenue through its business exodus - which has seen major hotels and retailers flee the city center.

Last week, a Czech television crew covering the summit were held up at gunpoint and robbed of their equipment.

Journalist Bohumil Vostal and his colleagues were filming at 5pm on Sunday outside the well-known City Lights bookstore when three masked men attacked them.

'They were heading at my camera man, aiming a gun at his stomach, and one at my head,' said Vostal, speaking to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Vostal said the equipment was worth $18,000 - and they also lost an entire day's footage.

'I'm one of those many people who used to read Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road,' and I was so much looking forward to visit your city,' he said, saying they had had a fabulous day until that point.

Vostal and his crew had captured shots of the Painted Ladies in Alamo Square; interviewed gallery owner Jonathan Carver Moore; and met with community figures in the Transgender District near South of Market and the Tenderloin, he told the paper.

Vostal's cameraman went to Best Buy to purchase replacement equipment, and on Monday morning, Breed met Vostal to offer her apologies.

'All the people of San Francisco are almost blaming themselves, like they are so sorry for something they didn't do,' he said.