In the midst of the Trump presidency, Adam Server summed that regime up: "The cruelty is the point."
San Francisco may have hated Trump, but the yawning gap between our rich high flyers and our increasingly hard-pressed poor and working class residents has made us ripe for our own adoption of urban cruelty. In this post-pandemic time (is the pandemic really over?), we're suckers for apparent "solutions" to squalor on the streets -- "solutions" that aim to sweep away people and pain we don't want to see. This is what we are getting in our angry frustration.
A lightly edited thread from Peter Calloway (@petercalloway), a San Francisco public defender, reports what he is seeing.
The Drug War is officially back on in San Francisco. For the first time in years, people are being prosecuted for simply using drugs or possessing paraphernalia. It’s hard to fully comprehend the harm this will cause. I’ll try to lay it out below.
First, a bit of background. For a long time, San Francisco has generally declined to use armed government agents to enforce restrictions on what ppl can put in their bodies or hold in their hands.
That’s because prosecuting drug users (and dealers, for that matter) goes against all available science and evidence on how to reduce drug use. You cannot arrest and imprison your way out of it. That’s been tried before—repeatedly, across the country, for decades. Does not work.
As a nation, we’ve spend hundreds of billions of $$ over decades trying this approach. What do we have to show for it? More people in prison and jail than any other country in the history of the world. Entire communities devastated. Generational trauma. Incalculable suffering.
The new DA, Brooke Jenkins, posed as a progressive while she was jockeying to be appointed to the office once the former DA, Chesa Boudin, was recalled with her help. It didn’t take long for her to show her true colors.
In the first week, she essentially disbanded units in the office responsible for things like undoing wrongful convictions, prosecuting cops for murder and excessive force, and sharing with the public all the data on who the office prosecutes, for what, and what outcome.
Now, she’s started charging people for possessing substances the government says it’s a crime to have, and for having paraphernalia. This will dramatically increase the number of arrests in San Francisco and likely cause the jail population to explode.
Many people will remain in jail while they await trial because they can’t afford to pay money bail to be released (Jenkins announced she would again use money bail in this way).
People will be beaten by the police. Some may be killed. These outcomes are inevitable when increasing # of police contacts.
When the Drug War is on, even the best-intentioned wellness check can lead to violence.
Families will be separated. Undocumented immigrants will be deported, where they may face violence in their home country after prolonged detention in horrific immigration facilities. Many, many more people will experience the trauma of being shackled and caged.
And consistent with SFPD’s well-documented track record, this will happen disproportionately to people of color, and exclusively to poor people.
But never fear, Jenkins has hired an all-female management team. Supporters will point to this, and to the fact that she is a Black and Latina woman, to justify, excuse, or ignore the harm she will directly cause to Black and Latinx and poor people. That’s like saying we should support Clarence Thomas because he is Black, or Amy Coney Barrett because she’s a woman. ...
... And watch, Jenkins and her office will couch their cruel and failed Drug War offensive in the language of compassion. They’ll say they want drug users to get help. That is false. What they are doing is utterly inconsistent with helping anyone.
Are they going to house people? Address trauma and poverty? Of course not. Remember, this is about wanting to hide from public view the consequences of enforcing their extractive utopia. Mayor Breed made that clear in what should have been a scandal here. ...
... San Francisco was far from perfect. Like anywhere, people suffer every day here because they are poor. The racial disparities in our criminal legal system are among the worst. But we have regressed immensely in just a matter of days. Things will almost certainly get worse.
Is this the city we San Franciscans want? I know we're tired and angry. But the city of St. Francis can do better.
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