Supes Debate Full Police Staffing, Drug Dealing As Homicide, and Marjan Philhour Enters D1 Race

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.

Supervisor Dorsey Forced to Drop Support For His Own Police Staffing Ballot After Hostile Amendments

Last Monday, Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s effort to restore the San Francisco Police Department’s staffing to a normal level was thwarted after the legislation received hostile amendments from his colleagues on the board. Despite the fact that Supervisor Dorsey and Mayor London Breed withdrew their support for the legislation, Supervisors Ahsha Safaí and Shamann Walton still advanced it to the full Board of Supervisors for a vote next Tuesday. As President of the Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Aaron Peskin should do everything in his power to halt this measure from going to voters.

Supervisor Dorsey’s original proposal had proposed a charter amendment to appear on the March 2024 ballot. Because charter amendments rewrite portions of the city’s constitution, they undergo extra discussion by the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Dorsey’s legislation would have amended the charter to impose a minimum level of police staffing, scaling up over the course of five years to about 2,000 full-duty officers. The policy also would have increased hiring bonuses for new officers to make San Francisco more competitive with other Bay Area jurisdictions. Supervisor Dorsey’s policy had to be heard by a committee before going to the full Board of Supervisors for a vote to place it on the ballot. 

Public sector unions opposed the original charter amendment because of how it would be funded: through a budgetary set-aside. However, Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safaí amended the law to tie funding for police recruitment to new or modified taxes. For Supervisor Dorsey, this was a poison pill. Tying this funding to volatile taxes like the city’s CEO tax rather than sourcing it from the general fund defeated the entire purpose of the legislation, which was to ensure San Franciscans are always covered on the basics when it comes to public safety. 

What’s particularly frustrating is that Supervisor Safaí has given mixed messaging on funding for police staffing—Supervisor Safaí is passing legislation requiring foot patrols, which is contingent on a fully staffed police department. But, when given the opportunity to support the police staffing charter amendment, he failed to do so. 

Call to Action: Send an email to the Board of Supervisors telling them you DO NOT support the amended version of Supervisor Dorsey’s bill. 

Without a fully staffed police department, our city won’t have the staffing needed to have a sustained presence to disrupt the open air drug markets, address rampant retail theft, and increase foot patrols in our communities. Our $14B city budget should cover a fully funded police staff.

New Collaborative Task Force Will Treat Drug Overdoses Like Homicide Cases

Recently, state and local officials including Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor London Breed, and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced that a new collaborative task force will officially launch early in 2024 and that it will treat drug overdose cases like homicide cases. What this means is more investigative resources are poured into overdose cases—what this does not mean is homicide charges will be brought against every alleged dealer. Only in cases where strong enough evidence is developed against a supplier will homicide charges be levied. 

The task force, which unites the California National Guard, California Highway Patrol, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and the San Francisco Police Department, has two goals: to discourage high-level suppliers from operating in San Francisco and to dismantle the complex networks of fentanyl traffickers that sell their product here. 

Public Defender Mano Raju criticized the task force as “another step in the wrong direction toward the continued revival of the failed War on Drugs.” And, HealthRight360, the city’s largest provider of drug addiction treatment services, said that “treating opioid deaths similarly to homicides only serves to stigmatize those battling substance use disorders and can discourage individuals from seeking assistance.” 

This initiative will certainly help move the city in the right direction. But to solve the fentanyl overdose crisis, the city needs to address the supply side just as much as the demand side. While we’ve seen encouraging progress on the enforcement side of things with hundreds of arrests and kilos of fentanyl being removed from the streets, we have yet to see a commensurate effort to get people into addiction treatment.

District 1 Supervisor Hopeful Marjan Philhour to Challenge Incumbent Connie Chan

Last week, Board of Supervisors hopeful Marjan Philhour announced that she will be challenging District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan for her seat in November 2024. Philhour released an announcement video that portrayed her as being starkly contrasted with Chan’s stances on public safety. Supervisor Chan, a vocal proponent of defunding and abolishing the police, seems to have recognized the political position that puts her in given that public safety is top of mind for many San Francisco residents, and has recently pivoted some of her public statements. Public safety will likely be the defining issue of the next election for District 1 and voters should remind their elected officials that their records—not just what they say—are under the microscope.