Sidewalk alert! 20 pounds of excreta found dumped in San Francisco neighborhood
What are the chances of running into a 20-pound bag of poop on a sidewalk? For people passing by one certain corner of San Francisco street, the month of June ended with a chance encounter of a massive pile of wrapped excreta.
Believed to be that of a human, three bags of feces was dumped in an abandoned corner in the city’s gritty Tenderloin section on Saturday. A foul odor permeated from the bags that prompted a handful of complaints to the city’s customer service line and its phone app for identifying crimes, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The alleged dumping site gained notoriety quickly when a Reddit user posted a screenshot of a report made to San Francisco's Citizen app for identifying crimes. "Twenty pounds of feces dumped onto sidewalk," the report called out.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Works told New York Post that the bag of poop was removed later in the day. A DNA sample to determine whether it was human or animal feces was not taken.
The plastic-wrapped poop was the latest in a line of ridiculous complaints to have baffled the authorities in the past decade. A spokesperson for 311 told the news agency that three reports of the human waste at the corner were made to the city's customer service number and app on Saturday.
According to data from the city’s 311 system, human waste-related complaints in San Francisco has skyrocketed to 400 percent from 2008 to 2018. In 2017, more than 21,000 reports were received. A local media reported that thousands of homeless people living throughout the city without regular access to restrooms is a prime cause.
But such a large amount of discarded waste like the load left over the weekend is “not typical,” according to a spokeswoman for 311. She told the newspaper she had “no idea” why the bag was abandoned at a busy street corner.
The original Reddit post went viral with dozens of responses.
“And everyone thinks all the performance artists have been pushed out of the city,” one user wrote. “Sh-t happens, but this is ridiculous,” another added.
The user who posted an image of the bag noted that it had not been removed as of 8 pm Saturday. It was met with humorous responses. One read; "how do you get that much shit into a bag? Was it a bucket liner, or was there a shovel involved, or even a funnel?"