San Francisco Moves Ahead With Sobering Center Despite Legal Risk Memo

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has given a green light to the city’s latest pilot program tackling outdoor drug use, signing legislation on Tuesday allowing a new sobering center to operate in the South of Market neighborhood beginning this spring.

The Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation and Triage, or RESET, Center will be used as an alternative to jail, where police can drop off people who are publicly intoxicated. It arrives on top of several initiatives Lurie’s administration is taking around drug use and law enforcement, but also comes as staff in the City Attorney’s office have warned the facility could be a liability.

The facility could carry a “very high legal risk,” Mission Local first reported, because the center could be seen as an unlicensed detention facility.

But Lurie is not deterred.

“The RESET Center allows our officers to arrest those engaged in public drug use at a speed and volume we have never seen before,” Lurie said during a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday. “If you use drugs on our streets, we will arrest you. But with this new resource, we will also give those suffering from addiction a real chance to choose recovery.”

San Francisco’s Sheriff’s Office plans to oversee the $14 million pilot program with help from the Department of Public Health. The Sheriff’s Office will contract with Connections Health Solutions, a health company, to run the facility slated to open at 444 Sixth St., next to the Hall of Justice.

The idea is intended to offer police a faster means of moving arrestees off the street and resuming their patrols, without waiting through a lengthy booking process. People who are arrested can go to RESET to sober up and leave, or go to jail to be booked and charged.

But questions around the facility’s legality stem from its nontraditional format. The site itself is not considered a jail or detention center; however, it’s also not a voluntary drop-in site. People who are brought there after being arrested are free to leave after they sober up, officials said, but if they leave sooner than that, they could be arrested again outside.

Law enforcement officials said they plan to first focus on arresting people who are publicly intoxicated in the SoMa neighborhood and bring them to the 25-bed RESET center, where a nurse and other behavioral health staff will be on site 24-7.

Sheriff Paul Miyamoto disputed the idea that the center is legally risky during the press conference.

“What we are doing is absolutely legal. We’re taking people off the street, taking them into custody for public intoxication,” Miyamoto said.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a self-identified recovering drug addict whose district includes SoMa, called the RESET Center “the single most important policy shift in San Francisco since the advent of the fentanyl crisis.”

“I know I’m not alone in the recovery community in believing that nothing San Francisco has done over the years to tolerate public drug use has helped anyone — not our neighborhoods, not our businesses, and, most of all, not anyone on the street struggling with a fentanyl addiction,” he said Tuesday. “I’m convinced [the RESET Center] will improve street conditions, diminish drug-driven lawlessness and save lives.”

But not everyone in City Hall is on board with the plan. Supervisors Jackie Fielder and Connie Chan voted against moving forward.

RESET is just the latest in a series of programs and initiatives Lurie’s administration has launched since taking office, with varying success, as part of his Breaking the Cycle initiative. Many of those have increased law enforcement’s role in responding to drug crises. The city has also consolidated its street response teams under one department and completely cut off some street-level harm reduction programs.

A year ago, the mayor opened a triage center on Sixth Street, which is known as a hot spot for street-level drug challenges. However, the pilot program there ultimately wound down after little use from law enforcement as an additional drop-off site for arrestees, although some drop-in guests told KQED they enjoyed the site’s free coffee and chairs to rest.

Last spring, the city also opened a drop-in stabilization center in the Tenderloin at 822 Geary St. That facility is still operating and has shown greater success at connecting people struggling with addiction to immediate care.

“For too long, San Franciscans have been told that we must choose between clean, safe neighborhoods and compassion for those struggling on our streets,” Lurie said. “The RESET Center is a health-focused facility designed to care for publicly intoxicated individuals by moving them off the street and into a safe, controlled environment. It provides hope by giving individuals a chance to sober up and be connected to treatment.”