The Tenderloin and SoMa: San Francisco’s ["safe spaces"] for drug dealers

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | October 6, 2018 | Heather Knight

[Behind the Blue Wall]

“There’s one,” the police sergeant said as we drove through the Tenderloin. “There’s one of them there. That guy, see him?”

And another. And another. Sgt. Kevin Healy was showing me known drug dealers, and they were everywhere — swarming the neighborhood, chatting and smiling. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

That’s because they don’t. Not in San Francisco.

“It’s almost impossible to get convicted in this city,” said Healy, who works in the Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere else. Where else can you walk up to someone you don’t know and purchase crack and heroin? Is there such a place?”

[Behind the Blue Wall]

Yes, that's how it is. If you're not from San Francisco, do remember, however, that they are describing a more or less contiguous area in the middle of the city, The Tenderloin on the north, South of Market to the east, Civic Center to the west, and south into the Mission District, roughly a square mile out of the 49 that make up the city as a whole. The addicts and the drug dealers are generally commuting in from the East Bay. Outside of that area, there are hundreds of blocks of pristine neighborhoods occupied by the likes of Diane Feinstein and Nancy Polosi, where this type of behavior would never be tolerated.

[EagleUSA]

Just ANOTHER DemocRAT mecca pandering to every low-life voter group...destruction, filth, sickness and perversion, the hallmarks of the RAT party.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

There aren’t many jobs more thankless than being a cop in San Francisco. Pretty much everyone thinks of you as a fascist goon who needs to be reined in.

[Snickering Hound]

But at least they're recycling.

[Mark]

The job of Coroner may become a bit stressful.

[Buckeye McFrog]

This seems to be a thing in Canada. Concede that people are going to do drugs and bang hookers, so just designate a strip of no-go territory and let them do it.

Never seems to have the desired impact of reducing crime to my knowledge.

[Hodar]

Yet another highly successful Democratic Utopia.
Compton, New Orleans, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and scores of others.

Yet even the blind cannot see the same threads in each

[wally_bert]

Mike Stone types are no longer wanted or even tolerated.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

I repeat the essential question - are the right people overdoing on opioids?

In California, I would tend to expect that these street urchin drug users are on MediCal - which is federally funded to the extent of as much as 90%. If CA wants to facilitate this reckless recreational drug use, they are doing so with other people's money. So, no news here.

Many myths foisted on us in this opioid epidemic. Such as "It can happen to anyone!" Er, no, it will not happen to those who never use opioids. And that is a lot of us. Educated, prudent, responsible citizens.

Back to the essential question. Now that the annual OD fatalities due opioids are in the low 70K range - are these people who would ultimately commit suicide by other means at some other time, or who would spend decades institutionalized (in prison or perhaps psychiatric hospitals) or otherwise riding the backs of taxpayers?

[Behind the Blue Wall]

From what I understand, you might be mixing two fairly distinct things. For the most part, the street-level addicts and dealers in San Francisco are using cocaine, heroin, and meth, and the scene is not that much different than it has been for decades, maybe just a bit bigger, more concentrated and tolerated.

There has also been an explosion of people who are prescribed opiates because of various kinds of medical issues, but become addicted. If you are poor and addicted to prescription opiates, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up on heroin because the dose is a tenth of the cost. Add to that, fentanyl from China is being cut and sold as heroin or black market prescription drugs, because the same high can be achieved for again, one tenth the cost. It’s also like 100 times more dangerous, because the amount needed to overdose is very low.

The increase in overdoses mostly has to do with that second trend of prescription opiates -—> heroin and/or black market drugs -—> fentanyl overdoses. Take that out of the equation, and the illegal drug overdose level would probably be not much different than the average over the last several decades.

[pepsi_junkie]

Dirty Harry takes place in San Francisco and that's more or less the premise. That the cops are all on eggshells because the politicians (including top police brass) and the media are out to get them, but Dirty Harry Callahan doesn't give a damn about any of that.