Jenkins Sets Five-strike Limit For Low-level Drug Charges | National News

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San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, seen at a town hall in August, announced her office will prosecute people caught carrying a pipe or small amount of drugs on the street.

In another departure from her predecessor, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins will begin prosecuting charges against people caught carrying a pipe or small amount of drugs on the street.

Jenkins announced Tuesday that after a person accumulates five charges for misdemeanor drug or paraphernalia possession, her office will bundle the charges and direct them to the Community Justice Center.

The aim of the Community Justice Center is to link people to services, Jenkins’ office stressed.

“Helping substance users access treatment and services through the Community Justice Center will save lives,” Jenkins said in a statement. “When someone reaches five citations for public drug use, that is a clear signal that they are in a crisis and need support. Addressing substance use and addiction in our community requires an all-hands-ondeck approach that includes the criminal justice system. We will continue our office’s laser focus on holding drug dealers accountable.”

The policy was met with quick criticism from those who support the harm reduction model, which aims to mitigate drug addiction through treatment and services as opposed to punishment.

“This proposal betrays a profound misunderstanding of substance use disorder, as well as the current treatment system in San Francisco,” said Laura Thomas, director of harm reduction policy at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “Substance use disorder is a health condition, diagnosed by a clinician, and five citations is not a part of the diagnostic criteria. This return to a drug war mentality, directing more people into the criminal legal system, will only create more harms, including increasing overdose vulnerability.”

Peter Calloway, an attorney in the San Francisco public defender’s office, challenged the district attorney and her supporters to point to any evidence that such policies actually work.

“If there were evidence that any of this worked, we would have seen it by now,” Calloway said.

The announcement comes after weeks of uncertainty surrounding Jenkins’ approach to low-level drug crimes and amid a broader debate over San Francisco’s harm-reduction philosophy on combating the opioid overdose crisis.

Jenkins and other city leaders are under substantial pressure to curtail open air drug dealing and use, which draw international attention and scrutiny.

In its 2021 report, The City’s Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force noted that community members believe the scenes witnessed in the Tenderloin and surrounding neighborhoods wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere.

“In many ways, the Tenderloin is treated like a ‘second-class’ citizen when compared to other areas of The City,” the report stated.

It’s unclear how Jenkins’ plan might impact the San Francisco Police Department’s enforcement of low-level drug crimes.

San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Kathryn Winters said, “We will continue to enforce drug violations as we have in the past, and we remain committed to ending open drug sales and use, and more importantly to save lives.”

She pointed to a recent statement by Chief William Scott, who described it as a “complex enforcement issue” with no “‘one way’ to combat this problem.”

San Francisco and cities across the state are reaching for solutions to sprawling public drug use and an overdose epidemic. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently vetoed a bill that would have allowed supervised consumption sites in three cities including San Francisco that volunteered to implement such facilities, which provide medical supervision and a hygienic environment for drug users to escape sidewalks.

Supervised consumption sites have had success in New York, Rhode Island, as well as cities across Europe and Canada by reducing overdose deaths and public drug use. However, Newsom attributed his veto to a lack of evidence for the model and strong implementation plans at the local level.

Officials such as Mayor London Breed and San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey have supported supervised drug sites. Dorsey, who has also called for increased policing in areas near treatment centers, said supervised consumption sites could create a place for law enforcement to direct drug users to go.

Former District Attorney Chesa Boudin — who Jenkins helped oust as a leader of the recall campaign — declined to prosecute cases in which the only charge was a misdemeanor like drug paraphernalia possession.

Data shows that San Francisco police significantly ramped up citations for paraphernalia possession shortly after Boudin was recalled. But Jenkins initially declined to bring those charges to court as her office mulled a new policy.

In her short time in office since being appointed by Breed in July, Jenkins has vowed to place accountability on drug dealers, while sparing those in throes of addiction from harsh punishment.

The number of drug paraphernalia citations issued by police spiked from 66 in May — the final full month before Boudin’s recall — to 306 in July, the month Jenkins was appointed. It dipped to 227 in August, according to police data.

The surge in enforcement drew swift rebukes from some advocates and organizations, who argued it was at odds with the city’s policies on addiction treatment. The Examiner spoke with people who described police citing people for drug paraphernalia they received from a city-endorsed harm reduction program.

The new policy on lower-level drug crimes comes on the heels of Jenkins’ shift in the office’s approach to felony drug crimes. She announced in August that she would not allow those charged with possessing more than 5 grams of fentanyl to be referred to the Community Justice Center, and would consider requesting a defendant be held in jail until trial on a case-by-case basis.

Defendants directed to the Community Justice Center are required to agree to treatment in order to resolve the charges they face.

“CJC looks at each case individually and, based on the specific circumstances, will take steps to assist individuals in adhering to their individualized treatment plan created by clinicians when they come into CJC and agree to participate,” said Randy Quezada, a spokesperson for Jenkins.

The policy appears to be retroactive.

“We are tracking citations, and any individual who gets a fifth citation as of now, will be referred to CJC,” Quezada said.

Thomas, of the AIDS Foundation, cited past reporting in The Examiner that found San Francisco’s collaborative courts — of which the Community Justice Center is one — struggle to link people with treatment, particularly that which addresses their combined mental health and addiction struggles.

“Drug court treatment staff have basically abandoned hope of getting anyone into a dual diagnosis treatment program,” San Francisco Judge Michael Begert, who presides over San Francisco’s Adult Drug Court, said during a City hearing earlier this year.

Calloway, the public defender, argued the policy will lead to more people being jailed who are at greater risk of overdosing when they’re released. Even if a person isn’t jailed upon their fifth charge and simply referred to CJC, Calloway said they’re likely to receive an arrest warrant by failing to make a court date.

“The person, by definition, has a serious problem with substance use. It’s very hard to make your court dates when you’re in the throes of something like that,” Calloway said.

Many addiction experts stress that forced treatment and aggressive law enforcement can lead to negative outcomes associated with withdrawal, relapse and overdose. According to one study in the New England Journal of Medicine, a former inmate’s risk of death within the first two weeks of release was more than 12 times that of other individuals, and the leading cause of death was fatal overdose.

Calloway argued what’s needed in San Francisco is access to housing, health care, economic opportunity and psychiatric care to address trauma that often underlies substance use. It’s a lack of these things, he added “are the things that cause somebody to seek comfort at the bottom of a bottle or the tip of a syringe.”

Jenkins is running this November to complete Boudin’s term in office, which expires next year. She is facing criminal defense attorney John Hamasaki and civil rights attorney Joe Alioto Veronese in the election.

In a tweet, Hamasaki described Jenkins’ announcement on Thursday as “just the War on Drugs 2.0.”

Originally published on sfexaminer.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.

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