City and federal authorities on Thursday announced a large-scale “All Hands on Deck” operation to help curb the fentanyl epidemic that has long plagued San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.
United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey — accompanied by top city officials Mayor London Breed, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, and San Francisco police Chief Bill Scott — said at an afternoon press conference that the law enforcement initiative would be conducted in cooperation with organizations such as the SFPD, SFDA, California Highway Patrol, BART police, Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Secret Service.
”Our drug crisis has been fueled in part because selling fentanyl has become a lucrative vocation for people who have found our neighborhoods ... to be a convenient and risk-free marketplace,” Ramsey said.
U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Abraham Simmons told The Examiner that “All Hands on Deck” denotes all the facets of collaboration between law enforcement officials in the initiative.
Some of the initiative’s elements include ramped-up arrests of drug dealers and suppliers who operate near San Francisco federal buildings, expanding efforts to track down suppliers and bringing additional charges against money-service operators who “turn a blind eye to drug trafficking and money laundering.”
It would also elevate state charges against suspected drug dealers to the federal level and launch regular “jump out” operations in which federal and city authorities will make on-the-spot arrests drug dealers working openly in the Tenderloin.
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DEA Special Agent in Charge Brian Clark said the measures outlined in the initiative are necessary to combat the proliferation and brazenness of Tenderloin fentanyl traffickers.
”Their business has changed the criminal landscape, and that is evident right here in San Francisco,” Clark said. “It is no secret parts of this great city are infamously known for an open-air drug market, where substance use and crime have exploded. That is due, in large part, to tolerance for drug trafficking.”
Clark said “permissive attitudes,” vast profits, and lack of criminal penalties have made certain portions of The City prime operating locations for drug traffickers.
Breed said that several of the federal and state partners named in the initiative have been collaborating since May, and Ramsey said the partners have seized more than 100 pounds of fentanyl in the past four months.
”We don’t want this to be ‘that drug tourism place’ or ‘that place where anything goes,’” Breed said. “Today ought to make it loud and clear, based on the data and the collaboration of these agencies, that we aren’t going anywhere, and San Francisco is no longer the place where anything goes.”
