Supervisors to Probe San Francisco’s Crackdown on Outdoor Drug Use and Dealing

Updated 4:45 p.m. Tuesday

After last Wednesday’s overnight mass drug arrest, one San Francisco supervisor is demanding a hearing to reassess the city’s approach to tackling outdoor drug use and dealing.

Mission District Supervisor Jackie Fielder plans to announce the hearing at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors Meeting, urging the city to consider a successful strategy in Zurich’s “Four Pillars Strategy” that combines drug prevention, treatment, harm reduction and law enforcement. Her call follows San Francisco police’s recent crackdown on drug users and dealers, following Mayor Daniel Lurie’s promise to reduce drug-related activity in public spaces.

“People have been displaced because of enforcement actions around the city to the Mission. And [residents] want to see people get help and connected to treatment. They want to see the end of public drug use,” Fielder told KQED. “That’s why I’m calling for this hearing because we can’t take a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach. That’s exactly how we got here. We need something comprehensive so that we’re not continuing this cat-and-mouse game.”

Fielder’s push for the Four Pillars strategy comes after a November report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst, which found the city has already adopted some elements of Zurich’s approach. Like San Francisco today, Zurich faced a public drug use crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the report highlighted a key gap: San Francisco’s lack of sufficient collaboration between police, health officials and social service providers, which were essential to Zurich’s success.

Police arrested nearly 90 people last Wednesday night at Jefferson Square Park, many for loitering or having outstanding warrants on drug-related charges, and seized about 550 grams of narcotics, according to the Police Department.

The operation took place after residents complained about increased drug use and dealing at the park, which is located directly across the street from the Department of Emergency Management’s headquarters.

Since January, local law enforcement has increased pressure in areas like the Sixth Street corridor in South of Market and the Tenderloin, both of which have become widely known as visible hot spots for outdoor drug markets.

The escalated police approach has so far included increased arrests of drug users and dealers, alongside the establishment of a new triage center on Sixth Street where people can walk in to get connected to various social and health services. The site is also intended to serve as a police command center, where officers can hand off people they arrest or detain for drugs over to sheriff’s deputies. However, police have not yet used the site for any arrest processing, according to SFPD officials.

As a result of the heightened pressure in certain neighborhoods, drug markets have shifted into new parts of the city, including near the 16th Street BART station and, until just before Wednesday’s raid, Jefferson Square Park.

“We had a lot of community concern about what was happening, and we believe a lot of it was because of the pressure that we put on the Mid-Market and Tenderloin and people looking for somewhere to go where they can hang out and do these types of activities,” Police Chief Bill Scott told KQED. “Operations like these will continue throughout the city for as long as necessary.”

Lurie’s homelessness policy chief, Kunal Modi, acknowledged some of the shortcomings of the city’s approach to Sixth Street over the weekend. While the area has seen improved street cleanliness and more arrests, Modi noted in a post on social media platform X that the city’s limited shelter and treatment bed capacity has stunted efforts to connect people with housing or medical services. He also admitted that the increased enforcement has displaced challenges to other parts of the city.

Following Wednesday night’s raid at Jefferson Square Park, more than 50 people were quickly released. Addiction and homelessness experts, as well as Fielder, have raised concerns about the longer-term strategy for dealing with street-level challenges.

“What is taking place is a return to very failed policies of the past, and we’re not going to see any improvement in the issues that folks are really concerned about in San Francisco, like housing and poverty and street-based drug use,” said Anna Berg, a licensed clinical social worker and the program director for the Harm Reduction Therapy Center. “We know that the highest rates of overdose occur post-arrest and incarceration.”

Scott said drug treatment services were offered but did not say whether anyone accepted them. SFPD did not respond to requests for further data or information.

“The city right now is going all in on just enforcement and some attempts to connect people to treatment, but it’s unclear what exactly those offers are,” Fielder said. “We need to scale up our treatment system and invest in prevention as well. If we don’t, we will continue to see displacement to all parts of the city.”

While other neighborhoods have seen increased drug activity, Jefferson Square Park has remained relatively calm in the aftermath of last week’s police raid, according to nearby residents like Sebastian Luke.

“I walk around every day. The park has been quiet and clean; it’s been calm since the raid,” said Luke, who witnessed and documented the mass arrest operation.

“San Franciscans deserve safe neighborhoods, not open-air drug markets. We heard the community, and this operation shows what’s possible when agencies work together to take real action,” Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, whose district borders Jefferson Square Park, posted on X the day after the raid.

However, the block-by-block enforcement approach is also costly — something police will be forced to confront as the city stares down a nearly $900 million budget shortfall and departments are required to make deep cuts.

“It’s a very resource-heavy type of operation, but we do plan to do more because it’s a good way to at least intermittently deal with that displacement,” Scott told KQED.

Supervisors representing the Tenderloin and South of Market recently put forward their own proposal for how the city could tackle outdoor drug markets. Their approach, inspired by a model developed by law enforcement expert David Kennedy, focuses on clearing drug markets by arresting violent drug dealers and giving nonviolent dealers a choice of either mandatory social programs or jail time.

Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Bilal Mahmood, who introduced the idea, told KQED that they see the idea working within the Four Pillars model.

Fielder said she’s still researching her colleagues’ proposal but likes elements of it, including efforts to increase job training programs to redirect youth and adults away from the drug trade.

Supervisors Shamann Walton, Matt Dorsey, Bilal Mahmood and Chyanne Chen plan to co-sponsor the Four Pillars hearing, according to representatives from Fielder’s office.

“If we just focus on [law enforcement], we’re going to continue to see lopsided and geographically narrow and intermediate success, not long-term successes,” Fielder said. “That’s what the Four Pillars is all about, long-term solutions and not just headline-grabbing actions that we’ve had for many decades in the city.”