No one knows what S.F.’s new drug RESET center will do 

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San Francisco’s new 24-hour drunk tank, known as the “Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation, and Triage” center, is set to open on Monday, but confusion remains over how it will operate. 

Mission Local received conflicting opinions about whether people will be arrested and brought to the $14 million warehouse space on Sixth Street, whether patients there will be free to leave, and whether they will be able to access medication there. 

Addressing street conditions has been a key goal of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration, and the RESET center’s backers have touted it as an alternative to jail or hospitalization for people who are picked up by police while publicly intoxicated. 

Initially, the facility will only host people from District 6, which includes the South of Market neighborhood.

But on the eve of the facility’s opening, concerns about the center’s legality, and confusion around just how it will work, remain. 

At a press conference on Wednesday prior to the site’s opening, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto and his staff, representatives of Connections Health Solutions which will operate the facility, Mayor Daniel Lurie and Department of Public Health Director Daniel Tsai offered differing ideas on the basics of how the RESET center will operate. 

Even the furniture became a point of contention. Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office calls the 25 spots in the facility “beds,” while Miyamoto and representatives of Connections called them chairs. Mission Local tested one out during a tour of the facility; they were cushioned and reclining, but chairs nonetheless.  

Are you being arrested? 

Lurie’s initial announcement of the center in January stated that individuals would be “placed under arrest” and transported to the facility. 

On Wednesday, Sheriff Miyamoto echoed this: “They are being arrested, they are being detained, they are being brought in and compelled to come to this facility,” he said.

Moments later, his chief attorney, Rani Singh, said the opposite to Mission Local. “We actually have probable cause to arrest, [but] we’re not arresting them.” 

People will be compelled to the center but will not be “booked” in jail, officials said.  

Lurie also seems to have changed his stance in recent months. Asked on Wednesday about city leaders’ resistance to using the word “detention,” he countered: “It’s a reset. That’s our one word.” 

Are you being detained?

Singh, like Miyamoto, said on Wednesday that those taken to the facility would be detained there, though they disagreed on the length of time. 

Connections Health Solutions’ chief medical officer Holly DuBois, on the other hand, seemed to disagree altogether. 

“This is a place to change course, not a place to detain,” DuBois said on Wednesday.  

Is the site a detention facility? 

A city attorney memo obtained by Mission Local in February flagged a “high risk” that a court would find the site to be a “detention facility” which, by state law, would be required to meet certain standards that the center currently does not appear to meet, like providing healthcare and food. 

While Miyamoto and Lurie skirted repeated questions on this memo and potential repercussions of not meeting detention facility standards, sheriff’s spokesperson Tara Moriarty called the city attorney’s finding plainly “inaccurate.” 

“This is not classified as a detention facility. It’s classified as a sobering center,” Moriarty said. 

Singh, meanwhile, suggested any legal issues could eventually be won in court. Singh said she “did the research” with the city attorney’s office on the memo, and pointed to a past court decision in favor of the sheriff’s department as an example of what might happen. 

Can people leave? 

Miyamoto said that people brought to the facility would be assessed as they sobered up, and if they are deemed able to take care of themselves, they would be “released from our custody,” typically within four to eight hours.  

Asked by Mission Local whether they could leave prior to that assessment and release, Miyamoto responded definitively: “No, they cannot.” 

Asked separately when people would be let go, Lurie echoed the four to eight hours timeframe. 

Moments later, Singh contradicted that claim, and said people could “technically” walk out of the facility immediately after intake, if they chose. 

“If they’re up and say, ‘You know what, I’m really actually okay’ — nobody’s going to stop them,” Singh said. “No one’s ever said anything different. And that has been my position from day one. So when you say people are saying different things, I don’t know who those people are.” 

Will there be prescription medication available? 

Public health director Tsai said that a “workflow” was set up to prescribe buprenorphine “very, very rapidly” to clients at the RESET center. 

But representatives of Connections Health Solutions seemed less certain. 

“Potentially someone could bring it here,” said Medical Director Kyle Jasper. He said that the facility will have over-the-counter medication at the ready, but prescriptions would happen elsewhere. 

Unsure, Jasper went to ask a colleague to confirm. 

That colleague said Connections could “get them started” on calling in a prescription, and an outside entity could bring in a prescription to the site. 

“Really, there’s not a lot of options for us to have it started here,” said the colleague. “So it’s more of the coordination and pathway to get them started, get them to the pharmacy, and get them into a community.” 

However, if the RESET center is deemed a detention facility, it would be required to provide adequate medical care, including detoxification treatment, according to the city attorney’s assessment. 

For now, everyone will have to wait and see, including the sheriff’s department.

“Until this practically comes into play, you can’t understand what legal risk is,” Singh said.