SAN FRANCISCO — Officials in San Francisco on Wednesday commemorated the year since the start of a multi-agency crackdown on drug sales in the Tenderloin and South of Market, praising the program’s results and vowing that the crackdown would continue.
According to Mayor London Breed’s office, San Francisco police seized 199 pounds of narcotics, including nearly 90 pounds of fentanyl, 48.2 pounds of methamphetamine, 15.5 pounds of cocaine and 8.39 pounds of heroin.
Along with the drug seizures, 3,150 people were arrested over the course of a year as part of the crackdown, including more than 1,000 suspected dealers.
The figures do not include arrests and seizures from other neighborhoods in the city.
On May 29, 2023, the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center was launched, engaging local, state, and federal agencies to address drug trafficking, public drug use, and the illegal fencing of stolen property.
“We have achieved an unprecedented level of coordination to tackle the drug markets on our streets and we are not giving up,” Breed said in a statement. “The partnerships we’ve built are keeping fentanyl out of our neighborhoods, and as new technology is deployed and more officers join our ranks, our efforts will only grow stronger in the coming year.”
At the start of the crackdown, police were initially deployed along 7th Street near Mission Street and Market Street near United Nations Plaza. The final phase will concentrate police and other city services around the plaza and the San Francisco Public Library at night.
“Our officers have made tremendous progress over the past year in dismantling San Francisco’s pernicious drug markets,” said Chief Bill Scott. “We will continue to step up our efforts to make arrests and get these toxic drugs off our streets.
On the prosecution side, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ office announced that 394 narcotics charges have been filed this year through May 25, and 344 cases have been filed. During the same period, there were 101 narcotics convictions and 70 guilty pleas in other cases.
However, arrests, seizures and prosecutions only paint part of the picture of conditions in the Tenderloin.
“There is no evidence that incarceration by law enforcement can help or change the circumstances of people who use drugs, and the same is true here. Even if we take some substances off the street, we still have a lot of substances on the street, people can still get drugs,” said Michael Diszepola.
Michael Diszepola helps people with substance abuse get the services they need here at GLIDE Memorial Church in the Tenderloin.
“For us, we want to look at the circumstances under which people are using drugs on the street, or people with mental illness are on the street, and how can we make access points available to them,” Diszepola said.
Diszepola and the rest of the GLIDE staff work every day with people who often buy drugs off the street.
He said one of the biggest health concerns they see is the type of medications available in the city.
“The reality is that the supply is not safe,” says Diszepola.
Diszepola said what he believes needs to be done to help more people is a fuller, more flexible approach to getting people with substance abuse problems off the streets and into treatment.
“We just have to continue to invest in these types of programs and what we’ve seen is to some extent a demonization or a polarization of them. It’s either this, it’s either law enforcement or harm reduction, and that’s not what we’re seeing. feasible We think that all options should really be available,” said Diszepola.
