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The Criminal Order Beneath the 'Chaos' of San Francisco's Tenderloin

12 points by tomohawk 4y ago

josephcsible 4y ago
A few choice quotes: > Chesa Boudin resisted calls to prosecute these dealers, instead referring to them as victims of human trafficking > Like drug use and drug dealing, shoplifting has been effectively decriminalized in San Francisco > Together, Prop 47 and the DA’s non-enforcement policy have removed any incentive for police officers to make arrests for shoplifting, which, in turn, has made it far less likely that retailers will even call the police in the first place > Today, in San Francisco, you can walk into a Walgreens, a Safeway, a Target or a CVS, take hundreds of dollars of products off the shelf in front of customers and employees, walk out the door, and then come back a few hours later and do it all over again > Those drugs kill two people a day directly. The organized robberies and thefts they spawn create thousands more victims, from targets of muggings, burglaries, and home invasions to working class, elderly San Franciscans whose local pharmacies keep shutting down or reducing hours, to retail employees who are laid off as those stores are closed
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Drug use in the Tenderloin is not some new phenomenon that came in with Boudin, or one that will go away now that Boudin is out. Even the article acknowledges it at the end: > "Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many of the low-income, single-room occupancy hotels in the area, isn’t a fan of Boudin, but he says the city’s mayor and police department are largely responsible for the area’s problems. “Police have been blaming DAs since the 1980s; this is nothing new,” he said. “Chesa has done a great job taking the flack off the SFPD because all of the recall movement people want to make sure he’s blamed for everything,” he said before the June 7 recall vote. If you want to take the cash away from the drug cartels, use Portugal's policy: addicts get whatever drugs they want via decriminalization, but they go into public health treatment programs immediately rather than getting the incarceration/fine runaround. Police in Portugal don't ignore addicts, they work with public health care professionals to get them into treatment programs. That's what's entirely lacking in the USA, of course - a rational public health care policy. https://www.portugal.com/op-ed/portugal-drug-laws-under-decriminalization-are-drugs-legal-in-portugal/ https://www.portugal.com/op-ed/portugal-drug-laws-under-decr...
Proven 4y ago
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dqpb 4y ago
Why do any stores maintain a presence there?
- WalterGR 4y ago
  Because it's profitable. If you don't see how businesses in San Francisco can be profitable, then perhaps this article makes the situation sound worse than it is.

12 points by tomohawk 4y ago

A few choice quotes: > Chesa Boudin resisted calls to prosecute these dealers, instead referring to them as victims of human trafficking > Like drug use and drug dealing, shoplifting has been effectively decriminalized in San Francisco > Together, Prop 47 and the DA’s non-enforcement policy have removed any incentive for police officers to make arrests for shoplifting, which, in turn, has made it far less likely that retailers will even call the police in the first place > Today, in San Francisco, you can walk into a Walgreens, a Safeway, a Target or a CVS, take hundreds of dollars of products off the shelf in front of customers and employees, walk out the door, and then come back a few hours later and do it all over again > Those drugs kill two people a day directly. The organized robberies and thefts they spawn create thousands more victims, from targets of muggings, burglaries, and home invasions to working class, elderly San Franciscans whose local pharmacies keep shutting down or reducing hours, to retail employees who are laid off as those stores are closed

photochemsyn 4y ago
Drug use in the Tenderloin is not some new phenomenon that came in with Boudin, or one that will go away now that Boudin is out. Even the article acknowledges it at the end: > "Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many of the low-income, single-room occupancy hotels in the area, isn’t a fan of Boudin, but he says the city’s mayor and police department are largely responsible for the area’s problems. “Police have been blaming DAs since the 1980s; this is nothing new,” he said. “Chesa has done a great job taking the flack off the SFPD because all of the recall movement people want to make sure he’s blamed for everything,” he said before the June 7 recall vote. If you want to take the cash away from the drug cartels, use Portugal's policy: addicts get whatever drugs they want via decriminalization, but they go into public health treatment programs immediately rather than getting the incarceration/fine runaround. Police in Portugal don't ignore addicts, they work with public health care professionals to get them into treatment programs. That's what's entirely lacking in the USA, of course - a rational public health care policy. https://www.portugal.com/op-ed/portugal-drug-laws-under-decriminalization-are-drugs-legal-in-portugal/ https://www.portugal.com/op-ed/portugal-drug-laws-under-decr...

Proven 4y ago

[dead]

dqpb 4y ago

Why do any stores maintain a presence there?

WalterGR 4y ago
Because it's profitable. If you don't see how businesses in San Francisco can be profitable, then perhaps this article makes the situation sound worse than it is.