Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed state police and the California National Guard to start a partnership with local law enforcement agencies to disrupt fentanyl trafficking in San Francisco.
Juliana Yamada/The ChronicleCHRONICLE INVESTIGATION: One area in Honduras is the hometown of a stunningly high number of people who, fleeing poverty and violence, migrate to San Francisco, where they ultimately sell drugs. Read our investigation into S.F.’s open-air drug trade.
California state police and the California National Guard will start a partnership with local law enforcement agencies to disrupt fentanyl trafficking in San Francisco in the wake of city officials asking for state and federal help cracking down on open-air drug dealing.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the plan Friday. Earlier in the week, Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Mayor London Breed’s chief of staff walked around the Tenderloin viewing the conditions and discussing the city’s fentanyl crisis.
Newsom announced the agreement among the California Highway Patrol, the California National Guard, the San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to help the city.
The governor directed the CHP to identify ways to assist local police, including through the assignment of personnel and resources, technical assistance, training and drug trafficking enforcement within key areas, including the Tenderloin. The governor also directed CalGuard to identify specialist personnel and resources to analyze drug trafficking operations, with a focus on dismantling fentanyl trafficking rings.
There were no details Friday on whether state police would be on the ground in the city and, if so, how many officers might be deployed and for how long.
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A statement from Newsom’s office said the agreement would lead to the formation of a new collaborative operation among the four agencies to disrupt the drug supply and hold the operators of large-scale fentanyl trafficking operations accountable.
“Through this new collaborative partnership, we are providing more law enforcement resources and personnel to crack down on crime linked to the fentanyl crisis, holding the poison peddlers accountable, and increasing law enforcement presence to improve public safety and public confidence in San Francisco,” Newsom said.
Newsom also hinted at the recent debate around San Francisco crime, noting the city has a violent crime rate lower than comparable cities, but also said more must be done to address “public safety concerns, especially the fentanyl crisis.”
Breed said in a statement that she is grateful for the support.
“Our Police Department and District Attorney have been partnering to tackle this issue and increase enforcement, but our local agencies can use more support,” the mayor said.
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The announcement will probably spark polarized reactions in San Francisco, where debate rages over how to solve the city’s drug crisis and whether cracking down on drug dealing is an effective way to confront it. Progressives protest that the city is repeating a failed war on drugs that won’t fix its problems, while moderates, including many residents and business owners, have voted in officials who want more prosecutions of drug dealers amid calls for increased action.
The Tenderloin and South of Market are the epicenters of the city’s drug and homelessness crises, with people dealing and using drugs on sidewalks. New numbers show a 41% jump in overdoses in San Francisco in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year, with 200 people dying in those months, from January through March.
Newsom’s news release said the partnership “will not seek to criminalize those struggling with substance use and instead focus on holding drug suppliers and traffickers accountable.”
The mayor’s spokesperson, Jeff Cretan, would not comment on any conversations the governor had with city staff Wednesday when he toured the Tenderloin, but said Breed and Newsom have spoken on the issue. He said city officials had requested support but didn’t specify which agencies.
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Breed has promised local crackdowns on drug dealing since December 2021, when she declared a three-month emergency in the Tenderloin. She put more cops on the streets to address the issue in March 2022, and then again in February 2023, in response to complaints from business owners.
Last year, Breed appointed District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who pledged to make fentanyl trafficking one of her top issues, after the recall of Chesa Boudin. In the first three months after Jenkins took office in July, officials saw an increase in arrests citywide, drug seizures in the Tenderloin and felony narcotics charges compared with the same time period the year before. Voters elected Jenkins in November.
Recently, San Francisco politicians have been asking for outside help to handle the situation. In March, Breed wrote to Northern California’s new U.S. attorney to ask for help curbing the city’s open-air drug markets as the Police Department struggles with staffing.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin recently said he’s sending a letter to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Newsom and the boards of BART and the University of California, which has a law school near U.N. Plaza, requesting the creation of a joint task force with the police department to address the crisis.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district includes drug hot spots, said he’s “incredibly grateful” for help from the state.
“It feels like the cavalry is coming,” he added. “San Francisco needs resources to disrupt, dismantle and deter the brazen open air drug markets that are costing lives and diminishing our neighborhoods and hampering our economic recovery.”
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Critics including Public Defender Mano Raju, pointed to research showing criminalization hasn’t fixed the drug crisis and said resources should instead be put toward treatment for people who use drugs and alternatives for drug dealers.
“We do need our state and city leaders to act with this type of urgency to prevent overdose deaths, like opening overdose prevention centers,” Raju said in a statement. “No amount of law enforcement will solve what is really a public health crisis.”
Bill Hing, a former San Francisco police commissioner and professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco, feared the enforcement push would “end up criminalizing a lot of people that need help.”
“It sounds like the military coming in to help address the war on drugs. And nothing about the war on drugs that included more law enforcement led to anything good. It led to racist outcomes, and it did not diminish the desire for drugs,” he said.
Newsom’s office said Friday’s announcement builds on his Master Plan for Tackling the Fentanyl and Opioid Crisis, which includes an expansion of CalGuard-supported operations that last year led to a 594% increase in seized fentanyl and spending $1 billion statewide on the problem. In his budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year, Newsom proposed an additional $97 million to combat the opioid crisis.
Breed and other local leaders criticized Newsom last year when he vetoed a bill that would have allowed San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles to launch pilot supervised drug consumption sites. In his veto letter, Newsom said he worried the bill could have had “unintended consequences” and directed state health officials to develop a more limited pilot program.
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Trisha Thadani contributed to this report.
Reach Sophia Bollag: sophia.bollag@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @SophiaBollag
