Why can’t police just arrest the drug dealers and enforce the law that prohibits the use of illicit drugs in public? Even San Francisco’s schoolchildren know where the dealers are and what they’re doing.
Because the city does not operate on a linear basis, and that was never more obvious than at the hearing on citywide drug market conditions.
At Thursday’s meeting of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, Board President Rafael Mandelman (District 8) and Supervisors Jackie Fielder (District 9), Matt Dorsey, (District 6), Alan Wong (District 4), Danny Sauter (District 3) and Bilal Mahmood (District 5) questioned other city authorities about whether recent gains represent durable change or simply the movement of activity from one corridor to another.
Mayor Daniel Lurie was invited but did not attend. Mandelman noted the absence directly, saying it “hits hard” at a moment when residents and visitors still encounter public dealing and intoxication on a regular basis.
Lurie has said publicly that the city still has more work to do, even while pointing to quieter daytime conditions in some areas.
Fewer dealers are visible in daylight in parts of the Mission and Tenderloin. Yet the trade concentrates after dark, especially South of Market around Sixth and Seventh streets, along Mission Street from 16th Street toward 24th Street and the surrounding blocks, and through the Tenderloin and Civic Center.
The hearing brought together representatives from the San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Public Health.
The central questions were practical: how resources are being allocated, whether measured progress is holding, and what additional staffing or coordination would be required to address markets that have not improved or have worsened.
Mandelman opened with an overview of changes. The Drug Market Agency Coordination Center (DMACC) was launched in 2023. Now there is a broader police use of technology, expanded treatment, a sobering center on Geary Avenue, and the RESET Center on Sixth Street, where officers can direct some intoxicated people as an alternative to jail.
Results, however, are uneven. Mahmood described the Tenderloin as “night and day” better in some blocks but worse in others, including lower Nob Hill. Mandelman said parts of the Castro have badly deteriorated.
Dorsey said it is frustrating to be told the city is on the right track when that assessment does not match what residents see everywhere. He returned repeatedly to police staffing. The department has begun hiring but remains roughly 720 officers short, about one-third of the force.
“Those numbers are real,” Dorsey said. “They affect the calls and what people are seeing on our streets. We’ve got to figure out a way to solve the shortfall.”
Fielder criticized the mayor’s office for not sending a representative. She also said conditions in her district are worsening but played down police staffing as a factor, noting that every department is understaffed. She added that counselors had been removed from some street-response teams and said public drug use is unacceptable, particularly near schools.
SFPD Deputy Chief of Field Operations Scott Biggs, presenting with the Department of Public Health, urged the board to keep recent history in view. Proposition 47, passed in 2014, reclassified many drug-possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. The later arrival of fentanyl altered both the potency of the supply and the character of street markets. From 2020 to 2023, he said, staffing fell while markets expanded, making them harder to disrupt once established.
Five years ago, Biggs said, the department lacked both the tools and the staffing to sustain disruption. Three years ago, encampments lined entire blocks, dealers operated with limited risk, and residents and businesses absorbed the consequences.
That period produced the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center (DMACC), which draws in partners beyond SFPD, including the Department of Emergency Management, the Department of Public Health, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office. Its work is divided into four branches: drug sales, drug use, unpermitted vending and neighborhood recovery.
Biggs added officers are now concentrating on disrupting the crowds that form between midnight and 5 a.m. Limited resources have also led to efforts to close businesses associated with those gatherings, producing some results.
Officers can arrest people who are intoxicated in public and deliver them to the RESET Center to sober up. In its six months of operation, the center has resulted in 2,300 related arrests. Whether it works as a pathway to recovery has yet to be determined.
Daniel Tsai, director of the Department of Public Health, agreed that some neighborhoods have improved while others remain difficult.
“The reality is, we provide health care,” he said. “All of us want dignity and respect, but we want forward motion into treatment.” He credited Mandelman with pushing for treatment on demand and said the city should “roll out the red carpet” for those who are ready to recover.
Over the past three years, Tsai said, entries into treatment have risen about 30 percent. The department’s approach combines behavioral health services, neighborhood street teams and prevention work coordinated with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Street teams aim to identify needs, triage people in crisis, and connect them to the broader system rather than leave them in place. September, he said, was a high-volume month for street-team responses at known hot spots.
Dual-diagnosis cases, in which people need both substance-use treatment and psychiatric care, remain a persistent barrier.
The environment around children matters, he added, and the department has tried to be more proactive. “We are not content just walking away. When people are in need of treatment, we need to provide it.”
Anne Taupier, executive director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said suppressing the fencing of stolen goods is a priority alongside the drug markets. The office holds a $3 million state grant for public safety work focused on the Mission Street BART plazas. Planned uses include brighter lighting, increased cleaning, community ambassadors, street teams, plaza activations, and public art.
After city officials made their presentations, the supervisors began questioning them.
Mandelman pressed SFPD on the effectiveness of DMACC. Biggs said results depend on the neighborhood, citing differences between the Mission and the Tenderloin, and that enforcement has to shift as markets move. Clearing a block is possible, he said, but activity often reappears nearby.
More foot patrols and nighttime enforcement would help, but the SFPD staffing problem was stressed once again.
“We have a problem that is embarrassing,” Mandelman said, clearly agitated. He said he is tired of the narrative and the recurring debate over arrests of users, and of the experience of finding people dead.
Biggs said California’s Proposition 47 limited the tools for arresting users, and that he agrees people who use drugs in public need to be held accountable.
Dorsey said the RESET Center should have roughly four times its current capacity and asked what stands in the way. Biggs cited staffing and training.
Asked about data on the center’s success, Biggs said the Sheriff’s Department holds some of the relevant numbers.
Fielder asked what services people actually receive at the center. Tsai said offerings include buprenorphine and connections to treatment, while noting that dual-diagnosis needs complicate placement. On getting people into treatment, Tsai said transportation from the center has been a challenge.
Asked what share of people citywide had started treatment while in jail, Tsai estimated about 40 percent and described jail health care as strong. “Treatment, sustained treatment, and recovery. That’s our goal,” Tsai said.
The hearing closed without a single metric that satisfied supervisors or the community.
At the end of the hearing, students from Marshall Elementary School in the Mission District read statements about their daily experiences.
One boy said he cleans up drug paraphernalia in the schoolyard because he doesn’t want his fellow students to see it.
A fourth-grade girl said she is scared to walk to the school she loves and has seen terrible things. “I don’t like it because sometimes their private parts are exposed. Sometimes I have to walk fast and hold my mom’s hand very tight. I would love it if police officers helped keep us safe. Instead of seeing people suffering, I would love to see people happy.”
A third grader said she sees people using drugs, fighting, sleeping, using the streets as a restroom and leaving dangerous trash around. “Children are not a priority for you,” she said. “I hope my voice is heard.”
If the city’s youngest residents can see that San Francisco’s convoluted strategies aren’t working, why do we continue to make fixes so complicated? That question remains unanswered.
