Ripple Labs giving SFPD surveillance unit another 5 years of free rent, worth $5.5M

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. The gift is valued at $5.5 million. SFPD’s Real Time Investigation Center, a high-tech unit that investigates suspected crimes from afar using Flock license plate readers, street cameras and the department’s drones, has been in a downtown office building for a year and half , rent free. Ripple founder Chris Larsen is a big proponent of police technology — he funded a sprawling network of cameras across San Francisco and bankrolled a 2024 measure easing regulation of surveillance. He and Ripple gifted the department 14,759 square feet of office space at 315 Montgomery St. in 2025. The department may now stay there through March 2032. The first sublease with Ripple, according to then-police Chief Bill Scott, was meant to be temporary until the SFPD found a more permanent location. This new resolution, introduced Tuesday by Mayor Daniel Lurie and co-sponsored by Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman, would extend the sublease through Mar. 31, 2032, with the option for either party to cut the agreement short in 2030. The extension, Larsen told Mission Local, was made “longer term for planning purposes.” The Real Time Investigation Center, Larsen said, has been an “incredible resource” for public safety and for the city’s turnaround. The center “has been successful in preventing numerous police pursuits by following suspects at a distance and making strategic arrests that reduce risks to the public” the resolution for Ripple’s gift notes. According to police spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky, the Real Time Investigation Center has contributed to at least 1,700 arrests. “SFPD’s Real Time Investigation Center has been a crucial resource in helping fight crime in San Francisco,” Sernoffsky wrote. “We look forward to continuing our important public safety work with this generous support.” The technology operated by the SFPD’s surveillance unit, however, has not been without pushback . Flock cameras in particular have been a contentious issue this election cycle, despite support from the city’s democratic establishment. Lurie and the SFPD recently advanced new policies on Flock and on drones in attempts to respond to privacy concerns. The initial gift of free office space was valued at around $2 million. 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 their drone-as-first-responder program. According to calculations submitted alongside the resolution to extend the sublease, rent for the space comes out to just over $1 million per year, or approximately $5.5 million for the full extension. This new gift must be voted through at the Budget and Finance Committee before reaching the Board of Supervisors for a final vote. It is expected to pass.