City Hall Digest: The City’s Public Safety Scorecard, a Lower Threshold for Drug Charges, and Why Sideshows Persist

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

As Drug Crisis Rages, District Attorney Re-Examines Threshold for Users to Enter Criminal Justice System

San Francisco is in the throes of a drug crisis—from more than 1,700 people dying of overdoses to a child reportedly ingesting fentanyl while playing in a park, this problem touches every corner of the city. Last week, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins showed she is taking this problem seriously by holding public discussions on her policy of permitting public drug users to be issued citations five times before being sent to the DA’s office.  Jenkins says that she has been surprised by the number of SF residents she hears from who believe that five times is too many, and so her office is re-examining that threshold to potentially lower it.

Once offenders hit the threshold of five citations, the DA’s office can intervene and send the offender to one of the city’s collaborative courts for supervised treatment. However, according to Jenkins, just 25 people have been cited two times and around 10 have been cited three times, but did not say how many people have been cited four or more times. This is deeply concerning given the stark visibility of public drug use—common sense would dictate those numbers ought to be much higher. 

In our eyes, five citations is simply too many chances for the person to potentially overdose and to use drugs in public. This move by Jenkins is a step in the right direction to show that the city will not tolerate public drug use any more, and also shows she is serious about tackling the drug crisis. 

Read more here. 

City Scorecards Less-Than-Stellar Across Issues, but Particularly On Public Safety

A new report from the City Controller’s Office evaluating 800 city department performance measures shows that there is room for improvement across the board, but the city was rated especially low in the public safety category.

Because the report covers the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the data in this report doesn’t take into account our change in leadership at the District Attorney’s office or the upward trend in arrests being sent for prosecution. But understanding how our city performed in the last year gives us both contextual information and data with which to hold our leaders accountable for changes in the next year. 

Between June 2021 and June 2022, the report showed 28 percent more property crimes, 11 percent more violent crime, and a 4 percent increase in response time to 9-1-1 emergency calls  than the baseline. Ambulance response time to life-threatening emergencies also rose 4 percent. According to the Controller’s Office, staffing shortages in both the SFPD and SFFD contributed to this drop in performance. 

The report wasn’t all bad, though—the SF Fire Department recently finished hiring 60 full-time employees, and SFPD is getting closer to filling its ranks, too, as they have 1,942 of 2,182 recommended officers. And, while crime is ultimately unpredictable, we are hopeful that a more cohesive police department and district attorney can make meaningful improvements by the time we see these numbers again. 

Why Are Sideshows Such a Persistent Problem?

Recently, around 100 cars shut down the Bay Bridge when a massive sideshow blocked its eastbound lane in the wee hours of the morning. While sideshows have traditionally been a part are of Bay Area culture, they are also extremely dangerous. We’ve noted Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s legislative response to sideshows before.
Even in the middle of the night, sideshows are a problem and a nuisance that often result in fights, gun violence, and property damage. Due to how spontaneous they are, sideshows are extremely difficult to prevent and to legislate against. The only real solution is to increase the penalties for participating in one—something Oakland is considering. 

While participating cars can be impounded and licenses revoked, the issue of bystanders (passersby or otherwise) clogging streets is a side effect of sideshows. The Oakland City Council is proposing fining people within 200 feet of a sideshow with the intent to dissuade people from being in the crowd and egging participants on. Whether it will work is unclear, but San Francisco could definitely learn from our sister city across the Bay.