SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters on Tuesday interrupted a rare outdoor meeting of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, at which the chief executive was scheduled to question Mayor London Breed on her administration’s response to the crisis of brazen open-air drug trafficking.
Chief Executive Aaron Peskin relocated the first part of the weekly board meeting to a plaza in the troubled Tenderloin neighborhood near City Hall, where rampant drug trafficking and drug use takes place. He asked the mayor if she would commit to establishing an emergency response center and coordinating departments to shut down “public drug trafficking” in open places like the Plaza within 90 days.
But the heckling and shouts of “No more cops” from the large crowd were so loud that Peskin moved the meeting back to City Hall before the mayor could respond. Breed did not answer Peskin’s question immediately after the indoor meeting reconvened.
The fentanyl crisis has swept across California, including San Francisco. In April, Gov. Gavin Newsom dispatched the California Highway Patrol and California National Guard to help fight drug traffickers in the city as overdose deaths soared.
Breed has clashed with board members who say more police and arrests aren’t the way to solve the city’s drug crisis. She declared a three-month state of emergency in 2021 over the Tenderloin’s drug crisis and announced another crackdown on drugs in the low-income neighborhood nearly a year later, but little has changed.
Breed said that using drugs in public is unacceptable and that repeat offenders must accept the help offered or face consequences.
“We can’t talk with both sides of our mouths all the time. “On the one hand, we want change and we want to hold people accountable,” Breed said before the meeting was rescheduled. “On the other hand, we’re willing to let people get away with murder.”
Peskin said it’s not about resources, it’s about coordination. He agreed with the mayor that the problem isn’t new, “but one that has become so visible that many San Franciscosians don’t feel safe.”
Downtown San Francisco, which includes the UN Plaza, hasn’t recovered from the pandemic, unlike other cities. Tech employees have opted to work remotely, reducing foot traffic that has benefited downtown businesses.
After guards left the UN Plaza, a woman threw a brick at a group of high school students carrying flags for the gathering, hitting a girl. A 26-year-old San Francisco woman has been charged with child endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon, San Francisco official Robert Rueca said. The minor was not seriously injured.
The mayor attends board meetings once a month to answer questions from managers.
