At a press conference on Thursday morning, Mayor Daniel Lurie, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott and Sheriff Paul Miyamoto celebrated a raid on Wednesday night at 16th and Mission streets, and reaffirmed their commitment to crack down on drug dealing at “troubled spots” across San Francisco.
The total haul from Wednesday’s operation: Four arrests and an ounce of drugs.
Asked about the significance of such a haul, neither Scott nor Lurie answered directly, but still called the operation a success.
“This is a relentless pursuit to crack down on these drug dealers that have really been a scourge to our city,” said Scott.
“We are sending a message that whether you’re on Sixth Street, dealing drugs, using, or if you’re on 16th and Mission, we are going to be relentless in our focus on cleaning these areas up,” said Lurie. He said today that lately he’s spent most mornings at 16th and Mission, checking the conditions of the alleys and the BART plaza.
Wednesday night’s “saturation operation” was a joint effort by the police and sheriff’s departments, as well as Public Works. It included street-vending enforcement and netted four arrests, all narcotics-related. The San Francisco Police Department advertised the seizure of 28.5 grams of drugs, almost exactly an ounce.
The police did not say what kind of drugs were confiscated.
The raid came just a day after Lurie filmed himself at the BART plaza, saying, “I see what you see … We’re going to start getting tough on those that are dealing drugs,” adding that the city would be “relentless” on enforcement. The plaza is often filled with street vendors peddling all manner of goods, much of it likely stolen, splayed out on the sidewalk.
The raid also came a week after a similar, albeit much larger, operation at Jefferson Square Park, which Lurie touted as an example of what the city is capable of achieving if these operations continue.
“[The park] has now been clean for the last week, and conditions have been vastly improved there,” said Lurie. “We are not claiming any sort of victory. We are just getting started. People need to understand that we are going to enforce the laws.”
But the San Francisco Standard reported this morning that, out of the 85 arrests conducted during the Jefferson Square Park raid, only three were for drug dealing. One of those three arrestees was released on-site, and two were booked into jail.
When asked about the long-term plan to keep dealers and users from going from neighborhood to neighborhood, Scott said the solution is simple: Follow them.
“The long-term strategy is that they go to other neighborhoods, then we have to go there as well. That’s something that we are working on and we’re getting better at,” Scott said. “This game that the dealers have been playing, it’s coming to an end.”
Scott and Lurie also signaled that the police department’s understaffing is always a challenge. The department has struggled to recruit new blood and faces a 509-officer shortage, according to a police spokesperson.
Lurie is asking for $61 million for police overtime for this fiscal year, despite a city report from December that found police overtime costs had surged amid poor oversight and abuse of the system.
Scott said his department is moving personnel around as a way of dealing with the understaffing issues.
“We’ve been granted some overtime to supplement our resources, and we’re using that effectively as well,” said Scott. “We have to make the best of what we have. I’m not going to sit here and make excuses about what we don’t have. We’re going to make the best use of what we do have.”
Lurie ended the conference by pleading for a fully staffed police and sheriff’s department and said that, at the moment, they’re using technology to bridge the understaffing gaps.
I welcome efforts to clean up the plaza, which is sketchtastic.
Question: Do they count pot as narcotics in these arrests? Big difference between an ounce of weed and an ounce of fentanyl.
Cannabinoids are distinct from narcotics, are not narcotics.
An ounce of weed is legal in CA. There are exceptions.
Not legal if it is bagged for sale or caught in a sale or used in public
It’s used in public legally all the time, and you can have 8 8th’s on your person legally no problem at all. If they have any other evidence of selling that is separately incriminating but having it bagged non-excessively isn’t going to get a conviction unless they’ve already been convicted of it. Using it in public isn’t per se illegal either.
Press release said “28.5 grams of narcotics” so, presumably, that doesn’t include cannabis or psilocybin. What it does include? No idea. Are we talking about 7 grams of crack from one dealer, 7 grams of crystal meth from another, and 14.5 grams of random and assorted pills from a third dealer? Again, no idea.
Crystal meth by definition is not a narcotic.
Looks like we all figured out the dirty secret they didn’t want to disclose it had to be weed and or mushrooms for them not to gloat about the seizure!
> “4. Key outcomes we look to build on include … the seizure of 368 pounds of fentanyl
…”
Only 367 pounds and 15 ounces left to go.
If only 3 of the 85 arrests in Jefferson Park were for drug dealing, what were the other 82 for?
People with warrants and if you watch the footage they announce that everyone inside the park is arrested for being there after 10pm.
Thank you Lurie! 16/Mission & surrounding area needs to be #1 priority. Please continue day & nightly enforcements until it’s gone.
There are drug dealers parked in cars in the Alley by Pancho Villa, we need 24hr enforcement. Not only is it a no parking zone, but it’s also the staging for drugs. Arrest them, ticket & tow their cars.
Where is Fielder on all this???? MIA or ready to spring into real action? No more pandering programs, just get rid of all illegal (& legal) street vending, drug dealing, and trash. Residents are sick & tired of it.
If SFPD understaffing is a problem, then we should be seeing 3/4 effectiveness in policing when we are seeing nothing close. From the effectiveness of SFPD, I’d imagine that we’d need to quadruple the size of the force to see such outcomes. Does anyone want to blow $4b on policing when we could just gift cash money to poor people so they could do their substances behind closed doors?
Fund Muni first, Mr. Mayor!
MUNI deficit backers are the real drug users. Hopeless!
Looks like he’s not as smart as he pretends to be. I guess money gets you far but not far enough in competence to know if he wants to busts drug use, he needs to target his own friends who uses them.
This is so silly. The plaza is always chaotic but most of it seems to stem from the same type of thing that goes on at 24th Street BART, namely the selling of random stuff clearly boosted from Walgreen’s or whatever store. And as at 24th Street, the “vendors” tend to block the sidewalk at the bus stop, which can make it impossible to run for a bus and can be dangerous when you get forced off the sidewalk and into the street. But I guess Lurie wants to make his name (certainly not his bones, the empty suit) with “drugs.”
Haven’t you seen “The Wire?” More “dope on the table” to look good in press photos is not the goal.
Jokes aside, I am happy to read about this operation. I don’t think the small “haul” is a reason to mock it. Making narcotics arrests at 16th & Mission signals that not anything goes or can carry on in the open, as it has the last few years. It’s a start.
Go to Howard St now, group of four or five, you know what they are up to, where is that Fed Agency the orange hair guy keeps talking about?
Campers,
Lurie’s a quick learner with no fear and he’s going to figure out that he’s in an LE Black box pretty soon and start just glancing at the City’s history to find the solution …
Bring back the Patrol Specials !!!
Hand out 300 slots tomorrow on SFPD’s bill and you’ll find that most of the new Patrol Districts Licenses will be granted to retired SFPD.
Specials were always best cause their whole Mission was and is to walk their fiefdoms and get to know everyone.
It is a simple fact that SFPOA has made their members amongst the highest paid in the nation with the lowest risks.
To do the work they should be doing we have outfits like Urban Alchemy (whom I love) and then we have the Community Benefits Districts to hire people to do DPW and Park and Recs jobs and on and on.
Lurie will come around.
go Niners !!
h.
It’s not drugs there, it’s the stolen merchandise for sale there. Everyone knows the drugs are now on Mission between 5th and 8th St at night. Are the police too scared?
Why is there a 10 PM curfew in that park? Oh, right. In an effort to deter the unhoused from resting there, Scott Wiener and Phil Ginsburg cooked up regulations to shut them down.
After all, any decent person would be at his or her gala at that hour!
So people are arrested for a victimless crime (of just being in a park after 10 PM) so that police can search to see if they have any real offenses on the books.
Is this the way we want to expend resources?
Is this what city government proudly stands for?
Woo hoo! A whole oz of drugs! Gold star stickers for all the cops on that one!!
1 ounce of fentanyl is more than sufficient to kill over 14,000 people.
It’s not usually pure fentanyl or anywhere close to that. If it were the overdose rate would be like 99.99% for each and every use. So they got an ounce of something, we don’t even know if it’s fent because they didn’t say, they said “an ounce of drugs” – it could be anything. Pure fent doesn’t make sense for street deals.
For Chief Scott,
Bill, as I promised at the last meeting of the Police Commission, I filled out the card to renew my Press Pass and went to 4 places and spent 40 dollars before Joe Eskenazi suggested I try Dore’s on Mission near 21st and I got service and unbelievably beautiful gallery of weddings they’ve done and that was for the two one inch squares one for you and one for me.
So, I dropped them off at Mission Precinct this morning and they laughed at me and said they couldn’t guarantee that my pics and application would ever get anywhere period and I laughed and said try anyway cause I don’t need a piece of paper with my picture on it to write about crime or get permission.
Then, two cops phoned me and I told them that I knew you and they laughed at me again like your name meant nothing to them which made me want to see your name on a ballot more than ever.
go Niners !!
h.