Sup. Jackie Fielder will have her first opportunity at Question Time Tuesday/11 when she asks Mayor Daniel Lurie about the displacement of drug sales from the Tenderloin into the Mission.
The political issue is a matter of some dispute. But there’s no doubt that since Lurie started sending massive infusions of cops into the Tenderloin and Sixth Street, drug sales around the 16th Street BART station have increased.
No surprise: Addiction is a complex social and economic problem that can’t be solved by law enforcement alone—and I suspect Lurie’s answer is going to be: We’ll send in more cops.
He tried that, last week. The result of a massive raid involving cops and sheriff’s deputies: Four arrests, and one ounce of contraband.
But the War on Drugs approach continues. The Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee holds a hearing Thursday/13 on legislation that would urge Lurie to use his new emergency powers to implement a “Drug Market Intervention strategy.” That’s the term used by a John Jay College professor who has consulted with various cities. Sups. Bilal Mahmood and Rafael Mandelman want him to come here.
From the Chron:
Under the strategy used by Kennedy’s team during the crack epidemic, officers arrested violent dealers and hosted interventions with nonviolent dealers. During those interventions, which consisted of law enforcement officers, social service providers and the dealers’ friends and relatives, officers offered the nonviolent dealers an ultimatum. If they continued to deal, police had built criminal cases against them that they were ready to pursue. But if they agreed to walk away from dealing, the cases were suspended. The social service providers then offered to help the dealers make lifestyle changes through housing, drug treatment or employment assistance.
Kennedy’s approach reportedly worked decades ago in Nashville and High Point, North Carolina (population 114,000).
A significant number of the people selling drugs on the streets of SF are themselves victims of human trafficking. Others are addicts selling to support their own habits. Offering “lifestyle changes” in this climate is a bit of a stretch.
Oh, and where exactly are they going to get housing or treatment, when the city doesn’t have enough facilities to treat people who are seeking help on their own?
There’s also some data suggesting that the approach has never worked. From a Feb. 2025 international study:
The findings are stark. In no single case we evaluate have major external shocks or disruptions through enforcement, or lack thereof, been shown to have any demonstrable lasting impact on drug markets either locally or globally. Even in major successful enforcement cases, such as Sky ECC, spikes in seizures typically abate as criminal markets adapt and broader drug markets were largely unaffected. While we observe some potential short-term displacement of trafficking routes and disruption of operations, we expect limited, if any, long-term trend shifts in drug supply or demand.
Meanwhile, Fielder is suggesting a different approach: The “Four Pillars” strategy that originated, and has some visible success, in Zurich.
That approach focuses on public health as much as law enforcement; the four “pillars” are prevention, therapy, harm reduction/survival support, and only last, law enforcement.
From a report by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst commissioned last fall by former Sup. Dean Preston:
Though a foreign city with many differences, Zurich, Switzerland shares a number of things in common with San Francisco. About half of San Francisco’s size, Zurich also has a drug addiction problem that included rampant public use in parks and public spaces in the 1980s and 1990s. To address the health needs of the user population and to try to stem drug consumption in public spaces, activist health care providers, non-governmental organizations, a member of the city council, and citizens began to provide clean syringes to individuals using in public and advocating for a harm reduction approach to the problem. Years in the making, this movement influenced a national discussion on the topic and, ultimately, adoption of a multi-pronged approach to substance use known as the Four Pillars, now the official policy of Zurich and the entire country of Switzerland.
In a press release, Fielder said: “We cannot continue to displace problems from one part of the city to another, or use one or two strategies when more are needed, and the Four Pillars is a roadmap for how we can solve this crisis once and for all.”
The committee hearing begins at 10am; the full board meets at 2pm.
The San Francisco Police Commission will hear Wednesday/12 a report from the Internal Affairs Division on internal discipline. The report shows that IAD closed 693 cases in 2024, involving 280 employees, the vast majority of them sworn officers. The city currently has 1,537 active duty cops, so that means about one out of every five officers had some sort of disciplinary issue last year.
Most end with fairly minor actions—only four cops were fired, and 25 retired or quit. The ones who retire or quit are typically eligible to find work in another police agency, since their disciplinary records are sealed.
Among the more interesting elements of the report: Black officers make up 8.7 percent of the department, and 19 percent of the disciplinary cases. White cops make up 43 percent of the department, and 36 percent of those cases.
This is the sort of thing the commissioners ought to be asking about. But since Mayor Daniel Lurie fired the commissioner most likely to dig into these sorts of details and raise those sorts of questions, I suspect the scrutiny on the department is going to drop off significantly.
That meeting starts at 5:30 pm.
Local newspapers are dying for a lot of reasons. The economic model that used to sustain them—printed classified and display ads, and robust community subscriptions—has shifted. But there’s another reason: Vulture funds, which seek to buy businesses, cut costs radically, and squeeze out the last possible dollars before shutting them down, have taken aim at local newspapers.
Alden Global Capital is one of the most active, and it’s seized and gutted papers all over the country. Journalist Julie Reynolds has been following the company and exposing its actions for years, and Director Rick Goldsmith has created a documentary, “Stripped for Parts,” based on her work.
You can see the movie at the Roxie Thursday/13 in a benefit for the SF Public Press. Doors open at 5:30. The details are here.
