New SF DA Cracks Down On Drug Dealers

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins on Wednesday announced a new policy to aggressively pursue felony charges against drug dealers.

Jenkins is bringing back a weight limit threshold — dropped under the administration of Chesa Boudin, who was recalled from office in June's election — to ensure alleged dealers arrested with more than 5 grams of illegal drugs would face felony charges, rather than be sent to rehabilitative court.

The policy also may bring harsher charges for drug dealing within a 1,000-foot radius of a school, and Jenkins' office is considering pre-trial detention in cases deemed especially "extreme."
Jenkins said the Boudin administration allowed repeat dealers arrested with as much as 500 grams of fentanyl to be sent to the community justice court. She said allowing dealers to "operate with impunity" is partially the reason nearly 1,500 people in the city died of an accidental overdose since 2020.

SF Public Defender Mano Raju, whose elected office represents defendants who cannot afford a private attorney, criticized the "arbitrary" nature of the 5-gram weight limit, calling it a regressive and carceral practice that has exacerbated the public health crisis of substance abuse and fueled mass incarceration.

"If District Attorney Jenkins truly wants to address the issues facing our city, she should not be relying on outdated and politically expedient soundbites about harsher enforcement," said Raju.

"Fifty years of evidence from the war on drugs have shown that these punitive practices have not prevented recidivism nor improved community health and safety. San Francisco can and must do better than this."

According to the District Attorney's Office, out of the current open narcotics sales cases in rehabilitative court, there are 37 cases that involve over 50 grams of fentanyl, the highest being 308 grams.

"The lethality of fentanyl presents a different challenge, and we must immediately change course, so we can save lives and hold people accountable for the havoc they are wreaking in our communities like the Tenderloin and South of Market," said Jenkins. "Going forward, defendants holding lethal doses of fentanyl will face felony charges."

Jenkins also said she dismissed over 30 misdemeanor plea offers initiated by her predecessor for crimes she considers worthy of felony charges and jail time.

The most extreme case involved one suspect who was offered a single misdemeanor to settle six open cases for dealing fentanyl in the Tenderloin, Jenkins said. He was allegedly sent to rehabilitative court over five times, despite violating an order to stay away from the neighborhood and not completing requirements of the program.

Jenkins said San Francisco's Adult Drug Court was meant for drug users battling addiction, rather than their drug dealers, as a way to cut down the caseloads involving drugs and alcohol on the criminal justice system.

Jenkins plans to continue reviewing cases on an individual scale and pursue charges based on the defendant's status as a repeat offender, the amount of drugs involved, where the alleged dealings took place and other factors.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose District 6 includes the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods where much of the city's open-air drug activity takes place, issued a statement later Wednesday in support of the district attorney's policy change.

Dorsey, the former SFPD communications director appointed by Mayor London Breed in May to the supervisor seat to replace now-state Assemblyman Matt Haney, called the situation on the city's streets "a public health calamity San Franciscans haven't witnessed since the height of the AIDS crisis." Dorsey said Jenkins was "rising to the moment" to address the problem.

"I applaud the District Attorney's approach, and I intend to be a full partner with her efforts to better protect our neighborhoods and all who struggle with substance abuse disorder from the harms street-level drug dealers are causing," Dorsey said.

Copyright © 2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.