SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco’s mayor and board of supervisors went to United Nations Plaza, a hot spot for open-air drug dealing and drug use, on Tuesday and attempted to hold the board’s meeting in the plaza. It did not go well.
San Francisco has been dealing with “illegal, out-of-control behavior for far too long,” Mayor London Breed proclaimed. Breed and Supervisor Aaron Peskin were only able to speak at the microphone about the city’s “humanitarian crisis” for a few minutes before booing, jeering, and shouting from the crowd escalated.
Holding the board of supervisors’ meeting in UN Plaza was supposed to highlight problems plaguing the area and pitch solutions.
“Many San Franciscans do not feel safe,” Peskin said. “Brazen drug dealing and deteriorating street conditions have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis on our streets,” he said.
San Francisco Police Department officers were positioned in UN Plaza for Tuesday’s public meeting. Officers intervened after a woman threw a brick in the crowd and nearly struck a child, police said. The woman was quickly arrested and hauled away in handcuffs.
The meeting in UN Plaza was cut abruptly short less than 10 minutes before it began. People in the crowd shouted as the supervisors and mayor walked away from the podium. The city’s livestream video feed of the event cut to black and cheerful classical music played in the background as a filler.
Breed had a stern look on her face when the video livestream turned back on showing the board’s meeting reconvening indoors, away from the crowd. Breed resumed delivering her remarks.
San Francisco has poured resources into drug addiction treatment, universal income, housing, Breed said. “I can go on and on about resources that have expanded considerably,” she said. But the magnitude of the city’s problems is so extreme, increasing resources has not solved them, the mayor said.
While open air drug markets provide users with cheap drugs 24/7, fentanyl overdose deaths are surging.
The mayor said Tenderloin residents often tell her, “We would have never been allowed to get away with this stuff back in day.”
Breed said, “Compassion is killing people. We have to change what is happening on the streets. It’s too easy getting drugs, they are dying under our watch, we have to do better.”
Breed continued, “I was born and raised in this city. I am putting everything on the line. I am doing this job without fear of losing it. San Francisco claims to be so compassionate and liberal. When you grow up in chaos, you want nothing more than change. People are growing up in the midst of this chaos. What about them? We have tried over and over again, and what we are doing is not working. Are we going to collaborate and work toward solutions? Or are we going to let the same old thing happen over, and over, and over again?”
Before the meeting was cut short in the plaza, Peskin had attempted to outline for the crowd his demands for bringing public safety back to UN Plaza. The crisis needs to be treated like a crisis, Peskin said.
Peskin wrote a letter to Breed demanding that the city shut down all open air drug dealing within the next 90 days. His letter calls on the mayor to open an Emergency Operations Center to coordinate city agencies and departments addressing the crisis.
