The crowds of drug dealers and users along Sixth Street has SF Supervisor Matt Dorsey proposing 100 arrests every night for “drug-related lawlessness,” though we clearly do not have the police officers and jail capacity to follow through with this.

People who live in SF’s mid-Market area were probably not surprised by a December Chronicle report saying that “At least 200 people loiter and use drugs on the roughly quarter-mile stretch [of Sixth Street] each night.” Though it was surprising to hear the acting captain of SFPD’s Tenderloin Station say that those crowds had been “maybe half that” size just three months earlier.

Three months earlier would have been September 2024, which was more than a year into that ballyhooed Tenderloin and SoMa drug crackdown that involved federal agents and California Highway Patrol officers. So if we’re doing this massive crackdown with state and federal agents, shouldn’t those drug markets be getting smaller, and not bigger?

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district covers all of Sixth Street, says the answer is yet more well-resourced crackdowns, and even larger numbers of arrests. KGO reports that Dorsey is calling for mass arrests of 100 suspects every night, in his official proposal for “a one-year pilot to effect no fewer than 100 arrests per night” involving “large-scale arrests and involuntary holds for drug-related lawlessness.” He's also proposing "compulsory detox and treatment" in these efforts.

"What may have worked in the heroin era is not working in the fentanyl era,” Dorsey told KGO. “We are facing drugs that are deadlier than ever before in human history. And we're seeing levels of addiction driven lawlessness that we have never seen even in a city that has taken a permissive approach to drug use in years past.”

But as Mission Local points out, SF County Jail’s overall capacity is 1,585 beds. As of Monday morning, 1,223 of those beds are filled. So if we're really going to arrest 100 people every night, the jails would be full after three nights, and this would be happening during a severe staffing shortage at those jails.

"This is going to make jails overcrowded again," assistant director of the treatment and rehabilitation facility Bayview Hunters Point Foundation Ursula Choice told Mission Local. "This is a behavioral health issue. And so having services and access points to treat such behavioral health issues is the correct answer, not handcuffs and jail cells for nonviolent offenses such as having a substance use disorder."

Dorsey’s proposal is not yet technically legislation, but instead a letter of inquiry directed at five different SF government agencies asking for the specifics of how this “hypothetical strategy” could be carried out. The five agencies Dorsey is questioning are the SFPD, the Sheriffʼs Office, the SF Fire Department, the Department of Public Health, and the SF DA’s Office. Dorsey is requesting their responses within 30 days.

What is unknown, though, is how Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie feels about this mass-arrest, 100-arrests-per-night plan. We do know Lurie has announced he'd declare a state of emergency on fentanyl, which could streamline some government and law enforcement interventions.

But we also know that Mayor London Breed declared a similar “state of emergency” a little over three years ago, and in that very same area, people are still complaining that it’s “worse than ever” to this day.

Related: Sup. Dorsey Demands Report on ‘Drug Tourism,’ Seems to Be Itching For Crackdown [SFist]

Image: @auweia1 via Twitter