Cracking down on San Francisco’s drug markets has been a key goal for Mayor Daniel Lurie since he entered office. A year and a half later, some city supervisors say that while some areas appear to be improving, his crackdowns haven’t solved the problem — drug-dealing and using has just been moved around.
Supervisors Rafael Mandelman, Jackie Fielder, Matt Dorsey and Billal Mahmood co-sponsored a Thursday hearing to demand a citywide plan for addressing the problem of open-air drug dealing, with coordination between departments and clear metrics. The four supervisors say they’ve watched drug enforcement in the Tendeloin and South of Market push the problem into each other’s districts.
But supervisors reached a stalemate at the hearing. Despite requests for a representative from Mayor Lurie’s office to be present, no one showed, leaving them with unanswered questions about the citywide coordination to address the drug problem.
“This is not exactly the meeting I was hoping for,” said District 8 Supervisor Mandelman, who called for the hearing and requested a mayoral staffer be present.
Lurie’s decision not to send anyone, Mandelman said, made it “hard” for supervisors to “feel like we are being engaged in a conversation about the impact of drugs in the neighborhoods that we represent.”
Instead several representatives from the police department, Department of Public Health, Office of Economic Workforce Development, and BART were present.
Last year, Mayor Lurie announced a commitment to crack down on drug dealing at troubled spots across San Francisco. However, as Mission Local has reported in the case of enforcement at the two Mission BART plazas, increased police presence temporarily halts illegal activity —until officers leave and conditions return to business as usual.
Police at the hearing said they know they’re playing whack-a-mole. Drug enforcement in the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods displaces drug users and dealers to other neighborhoods like the Mission, admitted SFPD’s Deputy Chief Scott Biggs. Biggs said that staffing shortages make it difficult to address the spillover.
“We’re not as fast as the activity shifting into other areas,” said Biggs.
The deputy chief presented data that showed arrests of drug users are significantly higher than those of drug dealers. When supervisors pressed him about the steep drop in arrests, Biggs said dealers are now more active at night, when enforcement is lower due to staffing shortages.
District 9 Supervisor Fielder has been vocal about how the Mission District has become a hotspot for displaced drug users, something that police have acknowledged.
“I’m not sure what the city’s strategy is for responding to drug use other than letting places like the Mission be a containment zone,” Fielder said. “I don’t know what it is but it would have been nice to have the mayor’s office be present to answer that question today.”
The hearing wasn’t Fielder’s first time asking for the city to create a clear strategy and plan to track metrics of success.
Last year she questioned the validity of the city’s drug crackdowns if the problem is just being displaced to other neighborhoods. She also criticized the city’s “catch-and-release” strategy and whether it was a good use of resources to arrest and release people without connecting them to drug treatment.
During the hearing the city’s health experts pointed to an increase in the number of people in treatment. Biggs said officers have been transporting individuals to the Rapid, Enforcement, Support, Evaluation and Triage Center, a sobering center, as an alternative to arrest and a pathway to treatment since it first opened six months ago.
However, recent reports show that the center is empty most of the time. In order to be accepted to the RESET Center, individuals must be 18 years old, arrested for being under influence of alcohol or a substance, free of active warrants and not exhibiting violent behavior or medical needs — requirements that Mandelman said are barriers for individuals seeking help.
Mandelman, whose term is up at the end of the year, recommended the hearing continue to the full board and said he hopes the city can offer a response before he leaves the body in December.
“I do think this is — if not the most important — one of the most important issues facing the city,” he said.
Strategy: push people around from one neighborhood to another, jail them, seize their stuff. Do not provide real housing, addiction treatment, or mental health care.
Then later, throw up hands: Huh. We have no idea why, but that didn’t work. Maybe we need more jail.