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Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom have announced a plan for San Francisco to charge some drug dealers with murder starting next year. Will it scare suppliers from selling in San Francisco, or deter people from seeking help?
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Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the bay. Local news to keep you rooted. San Francisco wants to send a message to drug dealers that if your drugs lead to an overdose death, then you can be charged with murder. Starting next year, San Francisco is going to start investigating drug overdose deaths as homicides. And Mayor London Breed hopes this will scare dealers out of town.
Mayor London Breed: Do you want to send a message loud and clear to those who come to San Francisco or who deal drugs in any capacity in San Francisco, especially a deadly substance like fentanyl, that you will be held accountable?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Today we talk with KQED, Sydney Johnson, about this new policy change and whether it can help address the city’s overdose crisis. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: How bad is San Francisco’s overdose problem? So far this year.
Sydney Johnson: San Francisco is currently on track to have more overdose deaths this year than it’s ever experienced in the city’s history.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Sydney Johnson is a reporter for KQED.
Sydney Johnson: In 2020, there were 725 overdose deaths, and the city has had at least 625. As of September four this year alone. That’s putting it on track to go past 2020s record. We know that the drug supply has become increasingly more dangerous. It’s riskier because fentanyl is far more prevalent and the illicit drug supply than it was, say, you know, five years ago. Then you can look at the reasons why perhaps it’s getting worse from, you know, what what the city is doing about it type of perspective. And that’s kind of where we get into some of the politics that we’re going to be discussing here, which is how the city is responding.
Mayor London Breed: Well. Hi, everyone. I’m San Francisco Mayor London Breed and today along with the governor.
Sydney Johnson: So last week San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that San Francisco will begin charging some drug dealers with homicide if an overdose death can be clearly traced back to them.
Mayor London Breed: And this is an important step necessary to address public safety in San Francisco. And we are grateful to our public safety partners and especially to our governor, for.
Sydney Johnson: She announced this alongside Governor Gavin Newsom, who is supporting this. District attorney Brooke Jenkins has mentioned wanting to take this step in the past. The city’s police chief is behind it. There are also leaders from the California Highway Patrol and from the National Guard that are supportive of this as well. So she did not necessarily make this decision without some pretty notable support.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What does she say about the rationale behind this at the press conference?
Sydney Johnson: Essentially, Breed said that the idea is to deter drug dealing in San Francisco by sending a message to dealers that the city will not tolerate opioid dealing and it will not tolerate overdose deaths.
Mayor London Breed: We’ve seen on average at least 500 people lose their lives to just fentanyl alone. And how deadly this drug is is impacting the quality of life of San Francisco differently than almost any other drug we’ve encountered.
Sydney Johnson: And she also said it could potentially provide some sort of justice for families and friends of the deceased.
Mayor London Breed: Well, we hope that dealers will decide that San Francisco is not the place for them to be dealing, period. And these people who are dealing these drugs need to be held accountable in a way that they haven’t been before. And this will be a tool necessary to do so.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: How is this different from the way that overdoses are investigated now in San Francisco?
Sydney Johnson: So selling illicit substances is a crime and the city arrests and jails people who are caught for drug dealing sometimes. But overdose deaths are not typically investigated as a murder, you know, unless there’s some sort of foul play suspected. Often cases are handled by the medical examiner who can determine what substances led to an accidental overdose death. And that’s partly because it’s difficult to assign blame sometimes for overdose deaths, even to a supplier. You know, people sometimes use drugs in their community with friends, a partner, you know, even family. In some cases, people won’t want to press those kinds of charges.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: How will this actually work and how will the police go about investigating these cases?
Sydney Johnson: So Breed announced that local and state agencies would be working together. This actually started in April when Mayor Breed announced a new partnership with the Cal Guard and with the California Highway Patrol. And the plan then was to better coordinate these agencies so they can better tackle drug dealing and trafficking. And this announcement last week about charging some drug dealers with homicide charges takes that a step further. So there’s still some lingering questions about what this will actually look like.
Sydney Johnson: And not every overdose death will be investigated as a homicide. Certainly, some will still be declared accidental. But Breed said that in cases where at the scene of an overdose death, there’s ample evidence to trace an overdose death back to a specific person or supplier, that those cases could be investigated using the same process that law enforcement would use in the case of a homicide. So calling on witnesses, gathering evidence and ultimately presenting murder charges that would go through the courts.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I know that the mayor is really touting this as a way to really discourage drug crime and overdose deaths in San Francisco. Do we know if it would actually do that? What do experts say?
Sydney Johnson: We don’t know what the actual outcome of this will look like, but there is certainly already some pushback and research that would suggest that it’s possibly going to have some unintended outcomes. That’s concerning people like Angela Chan, who’s the assistant chief attorney at the San Francisco Public Defender’s office.
Angela Chan: This approach that the city right now is taking is really damaging and harmful.
Sydney Johnson: She said that this could cause some people to avoid calling 911 for help when overdoses do happen, and it could entrench people into even more shame and fear, making it less likely to seek treatment or call for help.
Angela Chan: What we know for 50 years of the war on drugs is the best way and the most effective way to address this is to treat this as what it really is, which is a public health crisis, and to offer people treatment, low barrier treatment, also to offer harm reduction supplies such as Narcan, such as fentanyl, testing, stress.
Sydney Johnson: Health. Right. 360 is one of the city’s largest drug treatment providers. And they came out very opposed to this, basically saying that this is a repeat of many failed war on drugs tactics and really had some similar concerns as the public defender’s office saying that this would further increase shame and make it more difficult for people who don’t want to get in trouble with the law to get help and really is deterring, I think, some people from potentially, you know, entering treatment, but also just getting help for their friends in those emergency situations.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I want to come back to these prosecutions, Sydney, because that’s really what we’re talking about here. Is San Francisco an outlier in doing this?
Sydney Johnson: San Francisco is not necessarily an outlier here. This is a strategy that other cities and even some states have been talking about for years as fentanyl has caused more and more chaos in the drug supply. More leaders have touted this as an option to come out swinging tough on crime. But we don’t necessarily have a great data set at this point for how often these charges are leading to convictions or whether it’s having a noticeable impact on the drug crisis in those communities. We can look at San Diego County as an example. And there, you know, the worst year on record for drug overdose deaths was in 2021.
Sydney Johnson: We saw then that there was 1300 overdose deaths and last year was almost exactly the same. There was just a handful fewer. And this year, the most recent data we have available for San Diego County is from August. And by then, for the year to date, there were 732 overdose deaths. Was slightly less, but still on track to be pretty close to the year prior. So even though San Diego was being pointed to by Mayor London Breed as a place that is doing this and having some success with it, you know, in short, it’s it’s really difficult to know if that is even having the impact that they want it to have.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I guess, Sydney, it seems like it remains to be seen if this will work the way London Breed wants it to work. But it seems like everyone is worried about the city’s overdose crisis. And this is one way that the city is trying to address this. Why do you think this is happening now, though?
Sydney Johnson: So if we zoom out, there’s several different things at play here. Breed says that this new approach will start next year, which is an election year here in San Francisco. And drugs and homelessness are major platform issues for breed and other candidates. So Breed is right now positioning herself as a tougher on crime. Mayor. Just two weeks ago, she announced there’s going to be a ballot measure that will go before voters next year that would do a handful of different things to strengthen local police.
Sydney Johnson: That ballot measure would strengthen police by giving them more freedom to do things like car chases. It would reduce some of their reporting and documentation requirements, which was a big product of some of the anti-bias push that we saw in 2020. And it would even weaken the Police Citizen Oversight Commission. So this more recent announcement seems to go hand in hand with some of those types of announcements she’s been making.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, what questions do you have moving forward, Sydney, about this policy and how it’s going to work, I guess, moving forward?
Sydney Johnson: I’m really curious what cases the city does choose to make a model out of this. You know, if it really is something that they’re going to lean into or something that they’re kind of using as, you know, maybe more of a threat right now. And I’ll certainly be following the overdose death numbers closely. I think for me, that should be the the thing that we’re paying attention to the most here.
Sydney Johnson: You know, fentanyl is an issue across the state and across the country. San Francisco is no different in its struggle to get a grip on this crisis. But locally, overdose deaths have only increased following some of the changes the city made this year to its approach. And even though it’s hard to attribute that to any one thing, you know, it’ll be really interesting to see if that trajectory does continue or change over time. And, you know, I certainly hope it doesn’t.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And I’m sure a lot of cities are going to be watching to see what happens in San Francisco. Thank you so much, Sydney, for sharing your reporting. I appreciate it.
Sydney Johnson: Thanks, Ericka.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Sydney Johnson, a reporter for KQED. This 28 minute conversation with Sidney was cut down and edited by producer Maria Esquinca. Allan Montecillo is our senior editor. He scored this episode and added all the tape. Music courtesy of the audio network. The Bay is a production of member supported KQED in San Francisco. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next time.
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