Police ramp up policing for drug users in SF’s Tenderloin

San Francisco will step up its police presence in the Tenderloin, two months after Mayor London Breed said cops would target public drug deals and usage amid an upsurge of homelessness and retail crime.

Officers will join outreach workers to get drug users to treatment and housing centers, and those who don’t comply may be arrested, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. It’s a pivot from an earlier pledge to avoid using police in the effort, a decision that itself came after pushback to the mayor’s original proposal.

“It’s not our intention to arrest people for using,” Mary Ellen Carroll, the head of the Department of Emergency Management and the leader of the mayor’s initiative, told the Chronicle. “But if their behavior is causing harm in the community and they are completely resistant to engaging with all other services, we don’t have a choice but to ask PD to come in.”

Breed’s plan aimed to combat an overdose epidemic that killed 1,300 people throughout the city in the past two years. Carroll said the change will start immediately.

“The choice to stay on the street and continue with those behaviors, that’s not one of the choices anymore,” she said.

Walgreens has closed stores in Tenderloin as well as across the city, citing organized retail crime. A “street ambassador” who aimed to keep the streets safe was recently shot and wounded at a safe sleeping site near the Civic Center.

[San Francisco Chronicle] — Gabriel Poblete

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