Voices: River City

It's an election year in California, and conservative Democrats are working to distance themselves from progressive movements with a renewed vigor for tough-on-crime policies. As a result, they're finding themselves with some far-right bedfellows. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has issued yet another police occupation of the Tenderloin District. After a high-profile looting of high-end retail spaces in Union Square last November, the mayor flooded the space with officers for three weeks, to the tune of $2.4 million in police overtime expenses. As Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips noted, officials didn't respond with anywhere near the same fire just days before, when shootings took place in the city's poor neighborhoods.   Rather than fund statistically promising initiatives to curb gun violence--such as Oakland's Operation Ceasefire--conservative Democrats facing reelection throughout the state are bending to the will of affluent donors and working to bolster police forces. This comes after two year