The San Francisco Police Department admitted Thursday that its drug interdiction efforts are displacing dealing from one neighborhood to another.
Commander Derrick Lew, who oversees the city’s drug task force, said at a public hearing that moving users from one neighborhood to another—say, from the Tenderloin to 16th and Mission—is “a known symptom of the plain fact that we don’t have the resources to blanket the entire city.”
He talked about, for example, blanketing Union Square with cops, but said that “success in that area will mean displacement.”
Under questioning from Sup. Jackie Fielder, Lew said there is no solution to displacement (“we can’t arrest everyone”), but that “dispersal,” which means sending drug problems to a wider area, is “easier to deal with.”
Fielder noted that Assistant Chief David Lazar had earlier said that if treatment is not available, the police would arrest people, but not hold them; that is, they would be headed right back to the streets.
“Do you think it’s an effective use of limited resources to just arrest people,” Fielder asked.
“I do,” Lew said.
It was a remarkable hearing, one focused on Fielder’s efforts to get the city to adopt the “Four Pillars” strategy that has been so successful in other places, including Zurich.
The upshot of the hearing was that the city’s current strategy isn’t working—and according to several public-health experts who testified, isn’t going to work.
Programs that might work, including drug-use sites, are off the table right now, several members of the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center acknowledged. Some of that is because of threats from the Trump Administration, but it’s also the result of Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoing legislation that would have allowed that effective alternative.
So the city continues to try to arrest its way out of the problem.
But as numerous speakers noted, using the police to address addiction problems is counterproductive, since it tends to drive people away from the services they need.
In fact, since Mayor Daniel Lurie took office and moved to a police-first approach, the number of fentanyl deaths is up 50 percent.
The Government Audit and Oversight Committee hearing lasted several hours, and provided elected officials and the public a detailed discussion of one of the city’s most pressing crises. As Fielder said in a press statement:
This is about saving lives. Neither displacement nor dispersal is a strategy. This is responding to the reality on our streets and about restoring dignity.
Sup. Bilal Mahmood, who was a co-sponsor of the hearing and whose district faces some of the most serious substance problems in the city, wasn’t in the room. He was, however, available for the opening of a new Nintendo Store at Union Square, which was happening at the same time as the hearing. Sup. Danny Sauter, who is on the committee, left to go to that event.
