8 ms·

CA Appeals Court Rules San Francisco Cannot Ban Tenderloin Drug Dealers

26 points by nickysielicki 4y ago

jmpman 4y ago
Can’t they just arrest the drug dealers, and release them on parole, where stipulation of their parole is that they may not enter those 50 blocks?
- crooked-v 4y ago
  That would mean the police actually doing their jobs, though, and they don't feel like doing that.
  - codefreeordie 4y ago
    That would mean the DA would have to file charges, which he doesn't like to do because he doesn't believe in prosecuting crime. But then, he won his election, so I guess that's what the people of SF want
- true_religion 4y ago
  Parole already says they can’t associate with known criminals it they can’t just say people can’t go the the park. It’s an overreach to ban people from a public space on the basis that it’s high crime.
  - jmpman 4y ago
    Why would that be an overreach? If they were known gang members, banning them from wearing certain colors during their parole seems prudent as well. As far as I’m concerned, any variable that could increase their chance of being involved in criminal activity while out on parole, should be restricted by terms of their parole - or don’t let them out on parole.
proc0 4y ago
The mistake these courts are making is thinking that the punishment is meant for the individual committing the crime ONLY. In fact, it is a deterrent for OTHERS to think twice before attempting a crime. Rulings like this will have a very predictable outcome: drug dealers will read about this or hear about it, and they will proceed to take advantage of it. This has happened before. One year it was a clean city, then they announced they wouldn't prosecute quality of life crimes like defecating on the street... and the next year you couldn't walk a single block without having to avoid human feces. The amount of short-sightedness in the leadership of that city is astounding! At least don't announce it!
- akerl_ 4y ago
  Nobody defecating outside is doing it because they found out it’s not being prosecuted, they’re doing it because they don’t have any other option.
  - babyshake 4y ago
    Defecting outside of a toilet is one thing. Defecating on the middle of a sidewalk is a different thing altogether. It is possible to defecate on a piece of waste paper and throw it away in the nearest garbage. People do it all the time.
  - proc0 4y ago
    That doesn't explain why those same people were not doing that years prior to that policy change. SF had walkable streets not even 10 years ago, and poop patrol didn't exist and was not needed. I think not prosecuting is one part of the solution but it needed to be implement alongside a real solution to the root problem. Many people living on the streets have mental issues of all kinds, and not addressing that while simultaneously removing all boundaries when it comes to what they can or cannot do outside, is quite obviously going to create mayhem. The cynical side of me thinks that could be the end goal, but that's a different matter.
    - yodon 4y ago
      Recycling laws changed and plastic bags ceased to be readily available. It's not a change in prosecution that happened, it's a change in the availability of the disposal mechanism.
tims33 4y ago
They're just going to have to put these repeat dealers in jail for longer.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  As the articles notes, some of the people on the "ban list" have never been convicted of something in the first place.
  - spfzero 4y ago
    Their conviction just lacks the interest and attention of San Francisco's DA. The DA's job is to convict them, but he has opted not to. That DA was voted in by the citizens of SF, and it is up to them to change that in the next election, if they desire.
akerl_ 4y ago
This seems pretty cut and dry. They’re welcome to charge drug dealers with drug dealing and lock them up, which will keep them out of the Tenderloin. But they can’t just write down a list of names and ban those people from existing in public spaces to short circuit having to go through the due process of charging/convicting them of the underlying crime.
perihelions 4y ago
Unpopular opinion, but I actually appreciate enjoying a constitutional right to free movement, and would hate to lose it to yet another "public safety" emergency. SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. For them to claim they can't do their job without giving themselves essentially *administrative* powers over peoples' lives, I think that's a false and stupid dichotomy.
- wahern 4y ago
  > SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. Thus the gambit by the city attorney, who handles the city's civil administrative matters. The SF district attorney finally published statistics on case disposition. He's long been claiming that his case prosecution rate (as judged by the filing of charges) remains high and comparable to his predecessors. (Note that his immediate predecessor, Gascon, was perhaps the 2nd most liberal district attorney in the country.) But that says nothing about case disposition. It turns out that, as suspected, the percentage of cases resulting in jail time have dramatically dropped over his tenure. In particular, the percentage of criminal cases shunted into pretrial diversion programs has nearly doubled under his tenure. 43% of criminal cases are diverted. But things could be even worse than that because 1) for convictions we don't have metrics on punishments and sentencing, which by most accounts have been significantly softened, and 2) the data says "successful diversion", yet all numbers add up to 100%, so we can either assume that "non-successful" diversions end in convictions, or the definition of "success" is extremely loose. Also note that because diversions don't result in convictions they have less weight on subsequent charges--particularly less weight under this city attorney, by most accounts. To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform narrative. If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time. Just another manifestation of a classic American dynamic, I guess. Neither the people nor their institutions are very good at modulating their behavior--it's all or nothing with us.
tempnow987 4y ago
The root cause issue is that there is zero criminal consequence to selling drugs in the TL. I mean, it's an open air drug market, and any attempt to change that would likely be met with protests for the usual various reasons.
braingenious 4y ago
>The SFPD declarations did not show that any of the defendants has been convicted of selling drugs, possessing drugs for sale, or violating any pretrial stay-away orders. This is hilarious. It’s literally insane that the SFPD or a halfway-smart DA would think that this would work. How exactly was this supposed to work? These 28 people could just be arrested on sight? Aside from giving the cops a little dopamine boost by dispensing a ridiculous overreach of power, how would this actually stop the flow of drugs? If I were one of these big bad drug dealers that terrified the SFPD so badly that they had to beg for extra power to fuck with me more, I’d maybe just sell drugs right outside the arbitrary border. Or just sell drugs to somebody that lives in the TL and is down to resell. Or disregard the order and continue selling drugs wherever. Or set up a drop system. The police are the biggest crybabies in the world and I’m glad they didn’t get to tremble their liddle-widdle frowns and get to arbitrarily arrest people that haven’t been convicted of a crime.

26 points by nickysielicki 4y ago

Can’t they just arrest the drug dealers, and release them on parole, where stipulation of their parole is that they may not enter those 50 blocks?

crooked-v 4y ago
That would mean the police actually doing their jobs, though, and they don't feel like doing that.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  That would mean the DA would have to file charges, which he doesn't like to do because he doesn't believe in prosecuting crime. But then, he won his election, so I guess that's what the people of SF want
true_religion 4y ago
Parole already says they can’t associate with known criminals it they can’t just say people can’t go the the park. It’s an overreach to ban people from a public space on the basis that it’s high crime.
- jmpman 4y ago
  Why would that be an overreach? If they were known gang members, banning them from wearing certain colors during their parole seems prudent as well. As far as I’m concerned, any variable that could increase their chance of being involved in criminal activity while out on parole, should be restricted by terms of their parole - or don’t let them out on parole.

proc0 4y ago

The mistake these courts are making is thinking that the punishment is meant for the individual committing the crime ONLY. In fact, it is a deterrent for OTHERS to think twice before attempting a crime. Rulings like this will have a very predictable outcome: drug dealers will read about this or hear about it, and they will proceed to take advantage of it. This has happened before. One year it was a clean city, then they announced they wouldn't prosecute quality of life crimes like defecating on the street... and the next year you couldn't walk a single block without having to avoid human feces. The amount of short-sightedness in the leadership of that city is astounding! At least don't announce it!

akerl_ 4y ago
Nobody defecating outside is doing it because they found out it’s not being prosecuted, they’re doing it because they don’t have any other option.
- babyshake 4y ago
  Defecting outside of a toilet is one thing. Defecating on the middle of a sidewalk is a different thing altogether. It is possible to defecate on a piece of waste paper and throw it away in the nearest garbage. People do it all the time.
- proc0 4y ago
  That doesn't explain why those same people were not doing that years prior to that policy change. SF had walkable streets not even 10 years ago, and poop patrol didn't exist and was not needed. I think not prosecuting is one part of the solution but it needed to be implement alongside a real solution to the root problem. Many people living on the streets have mental issues of all kinds, and not addressing that while simultaneously removing all boundaries when it comes to what they can or cannot do outside, is quite obviously going to create mayhem. The cynical side of me thinks that could be the end goal, but that's a different matter.
  - yodon 4y ago
    Recycling laws changed and plastic bags ceased to be readily available. It's not a change in prosecution that happened, it's a change in the availability of the disposal mechanism.

tims33 4y ago

They're just going to have to put these repeat dealers in jail for longer.

crooked-v 4y ago
As the articles notes, some of the people on the "ban list" have never been convicted of something in the first place.
- spfzero 4y ago
  Their conviction just lacks the interest and attention of San Francisco's DA. The DA's job is to convict them, but he has opted not to. That DA was voted in by the citizens of SF, and it is up to them to change that in the next election, if they desire.

akerl_ 4y ago

This seems pretty cut and dry. They’re welcome to charge drug dealers with drug dealing and lock them up, which will keep them out of the Tenderloin. But they can’t just write down a list of names and ban those people from existing in public spaces to short circuit having to go through the due process of charging/convicting them of the underlying crime.

perihelions 4y ago

Unpopular opinion, but I actually appreciate enjoying a constitutional right to free movement, and would hate to lose it to yet another "public safety" emergency. SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. For them to claim they can't do their job without giving themselves essentially *administrative* powers over peoples' lives, I think that's a false and stupid dichotomy.

wahern 4y ago
> SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. Thus the gambit by the city attorney, who handles the city's civil administrative matters. The SF district attorney finally published statistics on case disposition. He's long been claiming that his case prosecution rate (as judged by the filing of charges) remains high and comparable to his predecessors. (Note that his immediate predecessor, Gascon, was perhaps the 2nd most liberal district attorney in the country.) But that says nothing about case disposition. It turns out that, as suspected, the percentage of cases resulting in jail time have dramatically dropped over his tenure. In particular, the percentage of criminal cases shunted into pretrial diversion programs has nearly doubled under his tenure. 43% of criminal cases are diverted. But things could be even worse than that because 1) for convictions we don't have metrics on punishments and sentencing, which by most accounts have been significantly softened, and 2) the data says "successful diversion", yet all numbers add up to 100%, so we can either assume that "non-successful" diversions end in convictions, or the definition of "success" is extremely loose. Also note that because diversions don't result in convictions they have less weight on subsequent charges--particularly less weight under this city attorney, by most accounts. To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform narrative. If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time. Just another manifestation of a classic American dynamic, I guess. Neither the people nor their institutions are very good at modulating their behavior--it's all or nothing with us.

tempnow987 4y ago

The root cause issue is that there is zero criminal consequence to selling drugs in the TL. I mean, it's an open air drug market, and any attempt to change that would likely be met with protests for the usual various reasons.

braingenious 4y ago

>The SFPD declarations did not show that any of the defendants has been convicted of selling drugs, possessing drugs for sale, or violating any pretrial stay-away orders. This is hilarious. It’s literally insane that the SFPD or a halfway-smart DA would think that this would work. How exactly was this supposed to work? These 28 people could just be arrested on sight? Aside from giving the cops a little dopamine boost by dispensing a ridiculous overreach of power, how would this actually stop the flow of drugs? If I were one of these big bad drug dealers that terrified the SFPD so badly that they had to beg for extra power to fuck with me more, I’d maybe just sell drugs right outside the arbitrary border. Or just sell drugs to somebody that lives in the TL and is down to resell. Or disregard the order and continue selling drugs wherever. Or set up a drop system. The police are the biggest crybabies in the world and I’m glad they didn’t get to tremble their liddle-widdle frowns and get to arbitrarily arrest people that haven’t been convicted of a crime.