It’s really hard to understand what’s going on in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. For months we’ve heard that Mayor Breed is cracking down on the open-air drug taking and dealing. Although any form of criminal prosecution of druggies is opposed by the usual crowd of social justice warriors, Breed has commendably listened to saner voices, including those of the (often POC) residents of the Tenderloin, who want only to be able to raise their kids in safety.
Just yesterday, Breed was poised “to boost police intervention against Tenderloin drug use,” with one of her “top officials” saying if druggies “continue illegal behavior and don’t comply [with orders to stop], they could be arrested.”
Now, today—Saturday—Breed’s “stated shift in strategy has not yet been translated into much visible change on the ground,” while Breed’s Tenderloin emergency director told the Chronicle, “The goal [is] not arrest.”
So what’s going on? Breed’s instincts were correct: the criminal drug taking on the streets of the Tenderloin is outrageous and needs to be stopped. Breed is no rightwing hater; she is simply an average citizen charged with protecting the rights of the citizens she was elected to represent. She saw the need to clean up the Tenderloin, and acted to do it.
But she got hit by the same forces of progressivism that always stand in the way of enforcing the law. The leader of those forces in San Francisco is—not surprisingly—Chesa Boudin, the District Attorney who is up for recall in June because of widespread indignation at his failure to crack down on crime. Boudin was reported in the Chronicle as having said, “Arresting people addicted to drugs will not solve problems in the Tenderloin.”
That statement defies common sense. Consider a drug taker and dealer we’ll call “Phil.” He sits all day and night at the corner of Turk and Jones, peddling street drugs and occasionally shooting up himself. At least once a day, “Phil” is approached by a San Francisco cop and asked politely to cease his criminal activities. He’s also told about the nearby “Tenderloin Linkage Center,” where he can get a full range of services (and where “blatant drug use” and “addicts shooting up” were observed by a journalist).
But “Phil” doesn’t want to go to the Linkage Center. He wants to stay on his corner and continue to deal drugs. This situation drags on for months; day after day, cops roust “Phil,” who resumes his activities as soon as they leave. Had Breed’s promise been implemented, “Phil” and others like him would now be in jail. Instead, “Phil” is back at Turk and Jones, despoiling a neighborhood.
Reasonable people scratch their head and ask why. Why is it so difficult to stop “Phil” once and for all? He’s been given every reasonable chance to rehabilitate himself. San Francisco has at least $1 billion to address homelessness and drug dealing. So why is “Phil” allowed to get away with his anti-social behavior? The City doesn’t seem to have an answer, so one can only make inferences. There are so many apologists for people like “Phil,” including on the Board of Supervisors, that one can only assume Breed is terrified of them. It’s not clear that these defenders of drug dealing have a majority of the voters behind them. In fact, they’re probably in the minority; the recent recall of those three disgraced School Board members shows that San Franciscans are more conservative than previously thought. Were push to come to shove, it’s likely that most San Franciscans would back Breed, if she chose to get serious about the Tenderloin.
But instead, she back peddles. Meanwhile, here in Oakland, our own Mayor Schaaf and the progressives on the City Council are watching San Francisco closely. And what they’re seeing is this: there is no consequence for allowing homelessness, crime and drug dealing to continue unabated. Thus, freed from having to pay the political price for their criminal negligence, our elected officials do nothing, nothing to solve our problems. They could, if they wanted to. They could immediately invest much more money in law enforcement. They could detain and arrest the most flagrant violators of the law and throw them in jail, where they would pose no threat to us. They could—but they won’t. And we are all paying the price for their cowardice.
Steve Heimoff