The Napper Tandy bar in San Francisco on Feb. 10, 2025. A car crash at the bar on Sunday, which injured six people, was the first major incident since city voters expanded police pursuit powers with Proposition E. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)
A police chase that ended in a crash at a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District on Sunday was one of the first major incidents since voters passed a controversial ballot measure to expand vehicle pursuits in March and could serve as a warning about its impact on public safety.
Six people were injured when a silver SUV smashed into the outdoor parklet seating at the Napper Tandy’s Irish pub, where football fans were watching the Super Bowl. Police said the Audi crashed through the outdoor area after an attempted traffic stop escalated across the city.
Sponsored
Officers responded to a call of a wanted vehicle near Stonestown Galleria just after 3 p.m. on Sunday, according to spokesperson Allison Maxie. The department’s investigation has identified that the vehicle was reported stolen out of Richmond.
Maxie said the pursuit began when the driver “failed to yield” to officers’ attempt to pull over the car, fleeing east to the Mission before crashing into the parklet near 24th and South Van Ness streets.
“The entire structure, the parklet, collapsed on all the people who were within that structure itself,” said San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Mariano Elias.
The remains of the parklet at the Napper Tandy Irish bar in San Francisco on Feb. 9, 2025. (Nisa Khan/KQED)
Fire officials triaged everyone in the parklet and found that six people — including a child — had minor to moderate injuries. They were transferred to a nearby hospital and are all recovering.
“I saw footage of the crash, I’ve spoken to witnesses, and it is a miracle no one died yesterday,” Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who was on the scene following the incident in her district, wrote on X.
During her campaign last year, Fielder was a critic of San Francisco’s Proposition E, which expanded the police’s ability to chase vehicles when it passed in March after being put on the ballot by former Mayor London Breed. Previously, officers could only pursue the vehicle of suspects in violent felonies, but Proposition E enables them to chase a suspect in any felony or “violent” misdemeanor — a term not defined in the California penal code.
The ACLU of Northern California led the charge against the measure, saying more police chases would endanger lives.
In a 2024 presentation, Lt. Bassey Obot reported that between 2018 and 2022, under the stricter pursuit policy, the SFPD was involved in 20 to 40 pursuits per year. During that time, two people were killed and 34 were injured. In 2023, a May chase in the Mission killed one person and injured four others, and in October, another person died in a chase near the Highway 101 off-ramp at San Bruno Avenue.
In April, Fielder told Mission Local that Proposition E “expanded the language to give SFPD basically free reign to pursue anyone in a car chase, despite a Chronicle investigation showing police pursuits frequently go wrong, killing an average of nearly two people a day.”
“I continue to have serious questions related to why SFPD needed to engage in a dangerous high speed chase in a residential neighborhood that sent six people to the hospital and could have killed someone,” she told KQED in a statement on Monday.
SFPD spokesperson Maxie said that the driver and a passenger of the SUV were arrested following the crash, and both had existing arrest warrants in other jurisdictions.
Taylor Ross, 32, of San Francisco, was arrested on five felony charges, including reckless evasion of a police officer, fleeing from the scene of an accident, and driving a stolen vehicle. She was also arrested on outstanding warrants — for assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft and carjacking, among other charges — in Alameda and Sacramento counties and San Pablo.
Eureeka Abrams, 29, of Bay Point. was arrested for resisting arrest, as well as an outstanding warrant in Los Angeles for grand theft.
Pedestrians cross South Van Ness Avenue near The Napper Tandy bar in San Francisco on Feb. 10, 2025. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)
This is the second time a vehicle has crashed into the parklet outside Napper Tandy’s, which sits near the corner of a bustling intersection. In April 2021, a red sedan crashed into the outdoor seating at the bar, hitting two people who were hospitalized with minor injuries.
An employee told KQED they did not want to speak about the incident, and owner Marissa McGarr did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether the parklet will be rebuilt.
Atul Gawande, who ran global health programs for the federal government, explains what the purge of USAID under Elon Musk’s DOGE will mean for Americans at home.
