It’s been more than six months since the city pledged to clean up the homeless camps and open drug dealing that were holding residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin hostage. And while tremendous progress was made initially, the tents are creeping back in and the drug dealing remains in full swing.
On Friday, there were 38 tents and 26 makeshift structures on the sidewalks.
“That’s way down from the 448 we had in May, but it is also a big increase from the daily count of 20 or so tents that we had in the fall,” said Rhiannon Bailard, chief operating officer for UC Hastings College of the Law, which is located in the Tenderloin.
The Tenderloin tent counts are done by Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that works with the city helping the homeless.
In an unprecedented move that embarrassed City Hall, UC Hastings joined with neighborhood residents and business owners to file suit in federal court in May, seeking to force the city to get the tents off the sidewalks, find housing for the homeless and stop the brazen, open-air drug dealing.
The two sides reached an out-of-court settlement, and in no time the city moved aggressively to get homeless people into hotels or designated sleeping sites that have been set up in the neighborhood and include toilets and other services. Public Works also stepped up its street and sidewalk cleaning.
In recent weeks, however, the number of people “sleeping rough” has begun rising again, and so have the tents, Bailard said.
Rene Colorado, executive director of the Tenderloin Merchants and Property Owners Association, agreed.
“There have been improvements. Larkin Street and Golden Gate Avenue were riddled with tents and drug dealers,” he said. “Right now, they look like streets from any other American city. But then you turn the corner and you can’t walk down the sidewalk because five, six or more drug dealers are blocking the way.”
It’s not for lack of policing.
According to the Tenderloin Police Station’s Twitter feed, on Jan. 17, “Operations by Officers from TL, Southern, Northern, & Narcotics have resulted in 5 dealers in custody over last 2 days. 4 of 5 booked are known/repeat dealers. One has been booked 5x in 7 months. 4 of 5 are violating SA (stay away orders), (are) fugitives, (or) have open cases and/or on probation.”
Operations by Officers from TL, Southern, Northern, & Narcotics have resulted in 5 dealers in custody over last 2 days. 4 of 5 booked are known/repeat dealers. One has been booked 5x in 7 months. 4 of 5 are violating SA orders, fugitives, have open cases and/or on probation. In pic.twitter.com/YtpT0Hsup1
— SFPD Tenderloin (@SFPDTenderloin) January 18, 2021
And on Jan 19: “44 felony bookings in the Tenderloin in the last week including 18 drug dealers.”
Yet even after Tenderloin police officers made a record 600 drug arrests in 2020 and took 18.1 kilos of meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl off the streets, dealers routinely return to their corners while awaiting trial, or after having been convicted and put on probation.
And fatal drug overdoses continue to outpace COVID-19 deaths in the city.
“Drug dealing, drug use and the associated large groups gathering is as bad or worse, which continues to be awful, dangerous and entirely unacceptable,” said Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the neighborhood.
In his search for solutions, Haney set up the Street Level Drug Dealing Task Force. In December, the task force released a preliminary list of recommendations, which included conventional ideas such as making drug treatment on demand more readily available and targeting upper-level suppliers.
Other, less conventional ideas likely to inspire debate included trying to get people who come to the Tenderloin to buy drugs “to make purchases elsewhere or via delivery” — in other words, DoorDash for fentanyl. Another idea is to create a special court and jobs programs for undocumented dealers who have been trafficked to San Francisco to sell drugs.
Task force member Tom Wolf, himself a recovering addict, said the recommendations are still under discussion but underscore the fundamental philosophical rift both within the task force and throughout the city.
“People on the task force come from all kinds of different places,” he said. “You have those who favor no incarcerations and the total decriminalization of all drugs and people like Tenderloin Capt. Carl Fabbri who have a different take, and they clash.”
Jeff Cretan, spokesman for Mayor London Breed, said the city is “absolutely still focused on the Tenderloin, including getting there this week to address re-encampments on Willow Street and Ellis Street. But city workers have also been all over the city, resolving 126 large encampments between June and December that resulted in over 1,400 people from those encampments moving to shelter.
“The mayor has been clear: Do the work to get people into shelter or housing and into treatment if necessary, and arrest the dealers who are tormenting the community,” Cretan said.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s patience is wearing thin.
“The tents are coming back, and the dealers just get shuffled from corner to corner,” he said. “The city needs to re-address the situation.”
Quote of the week: “Sometimes when you’ve made everybody mad it means you’ve found the sweet spot of compromise, sometimes it means you’ve got a mess on your hands, and I think our situation is more the latter,” San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency director Steve Heminger, on Tuesday’s vote to cut by half the proposed five-year, $600 million Market Street makeover between the Embarcadero and Octavia Boulevard.
The vote to scale back the 2.2-mile project comes as the agency faces a $140 million deficit next fiscal year.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGO-TV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier
"in" - Google News
January 24, 2021 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/3sRmTIG
Tents are back in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, and scoring drugs is easy - San Francisco Chronicle
"in" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MLa3Y1
https://ift.tt/2YrnuUx
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Tents are back in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, and scoring drugs is easy - San Francisco Chronicle"
Post a Comment