Cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs is offering to extend its rent-free office space to the San Francisco Police Department for another five and a half years, a gift valued at $5.5 million, Mission Local reported.
SFPD's Real Time Investigation Center, a unit that investigates suspected crimes from afar using Flock license plate readers, street cameras and the department's drones, has been stationed in a downtown office building for a year and a half, rent-free. Ripple founder Chris Larsen and the company gifted the department 14,759 square feet at 315 Montgomery St. in 2025. The department may now stay there through March 2032. The first sublease, according to then-police Chief Bill Scott, was meant to be temporary until SFPD found a more permanent location. A new resolution, introduced Tuesday by Mayor Daniel Lurie and co-sponsored by Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman, would extend the sublease through March 31, 2032, with the option for either party to cut the agreement short in 2030, Mission Local reported. Larsen told the newsroom the extension was made "longer term for planning purposes."
Police spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said the center has contributed to at least 1,700 arrests. The resolution says it "has been successful in preventing numerous police pursuits by following suspects at a distance and making strategic arrests that reduce risks to the public." According to calculations submitted with the resolution, rent for the space comes out to just over $1 million per year, or about $5.5 million for the full extension. The initial gift of free office space was valued at about $2 million, and at that time the nonprofit San Francisco Police Community Foundation, which was founded by Larsen, gifted the SFPD another $7.4 million for the expansion of its drone-as-first-responder program, Mission Local reported.
The new gift must be voted through at the Budget and Finance Committee before reaching the Board of Supervisors. Mission Local reported that it is expected to pass; that is an expectation, not a completed vote. Lurie and the SFPD have recently advanced new policies on Flock cameras and on drones in attempts to respond to privacy concerns, the story said.