A much-publicized March 19 drug bust at Market and Van Ness got plenty of headlines for resulting in 40 arrests, but in a much-less reported development, absolutely none of the people arrested will face any criminal charges.  

Boy was the SF Police Department and SF Sheriff's Department tooting their horns last week over a late-night, mass-arrest drug bust at Market Street and Van Ness Avenue that generated 41 arrests and plenty of local media coverage. And with a video crew on hand at the raids, they spliced together a slick video reminiscent of the old show COPS, with footage of drugs, paraphernalia, and a Sheriff’s bus ready to cart off the dozens of suspects. “DRUG MARKET CRACKDOWN,” SFPD declared on social media. “This activity will not be tolerated.”


Yeah, on second thought, maybe it will be tolerated. Mission Local attended a Tuesday community meeting at the Tenderloin police station, where the results of that raid were discussed. And the results are unfortunately nada, as that outlet reports that no one who was arrested will face any charges.


“We charged none of those people,” DA chief assistant Ana Gonzalez said at the meeting, per Mission Local. “We had five people who maybe it was close, but we had to go back and go to the police and be like, ‘can you say more about these?’”

She added that the SFPD and DA’s office would huddle again on the topic to discuss “how to do it smarter” in future raids.

That still seems odd, because the SFPD posted what appears to be a fair amount of drugs in their video. And they bothered to bring a video team out to catch the raid. This one was even less successful than their highly publicized 16th and Mission streets raid in early March that produced a great video, but just four arrests and one ounce of drugs.

Acting SFPD Tenderloin Station Captain Kevin Knoble stressed that SFPD was highly prepared for the raids. “You have no idea how many resources that took, how much that money that costs, how many hours went into doing those,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting. But doesn’t that just underscore how many resources and tax dollars were all squandered on naught here?  

The department argues that these resources were not squandered, that the raids will act as a deterrent for anyone who was hassled at the raids last week. That didn’t satisfy everyone at Tuesday's meeting. One audience member reportedly responded, “I got my answer: Nothing happened. It’s all right.”

This also calls to mind the ballyhooed Jefferson Square Park raid in late February, which the Chronicle reported resulted in the arrests of “more than 80 people allegedly involved in the drug market. But in follow-up reporting a week later, the SF Standard noted that “Of the 85 people arrested, three were detained on drug dealing charges; of those, two were booked into jail and one was cited and released at the scene.”

The scanner-chasing social media account FriscoLive415 has pre-raid footage from the Market and Van Ness raid that purports to show a “botched” aspect to the raid, that is, an officer rolling up beforehand and announcing, “Clean this up. It’s super messy. Let’s go.” The inference there is that people were given a warning to leave, and maybe the worst offenders did so, avoiding arrest. But that still doesn't explain why the DA’s office could not manage to charge any of the more than 40 arrestees, many of whom SFPD says they confiscated drugs from.    

So if drug users can be arrested while possessing narcotics, but still skate on any charges, then maybe it’s time to resurrect that old anti-Chesa Boudin hashtag and rallying cry “#NoConsequences.”  

Related: SFPD and Sheriff's Deputies Do Another Drug Sweep, This Time at Van Ness and Market [SFist]

Image: SFPD via Twitter