Street Level Drug Dealing Task Force - April 27, 2021 - Minutes

Meeting Date: 
April 27, 2021 - 5:00pm
Location: 
1 Dr Carlton B Goodleett Pl
San Francisco, CA 94102
Related Meeting Content:
Agenda

SF Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force

Meeting Notice #13 Agenda Tuesday, April 27th, 2021 5-6:30pm PT

Task Force Member

Present

RAND/LISC

Present

Curtis Bradford X Judith Martin X

Porsha Dixson
Rachel Marshall X

Teresa Friend X Louie Hammonds

Kenneth Kim X Lindsay LaSalle

Hadi Razzaq X Captain Canning X Thomas Wolf X Max Young X

Courtney Armstrong X Sarah Hunter X Beau Kilmer X

Sasha Werblin X

AGENDA

• Administrative announcements
o Next TF meeting is scheduled for May 4th at usual time (5-6:30 pm)
o Recommendation by TF member (Friend) to schedule another TF meeting for

May 18th
o A meeting with Supervisor Haney to go over TF recommendations and discuss

next steps has been scheduled for July 1. More information forthcoming. o Should the TF continue to meet after facilitation ends (June 2021)?

  • Bradford says yes

  • Martin comments that some of the recommendations that WG #2

    (Reducing demand) are being implemented and it would be helpful to

    monitor those efforts

  • Young: How much authority does the TF have to get our

    recommendations implemented? Is there a plan in place for that?

• Public comment

o Emphasize items that make it into recommendations. To fully implement these ideas, we need a community core meeting body that has community, police, and city workers, and public health workers to coordinate ambassadors on the street safety patrol/committees. It will take more than just the TF and is a coordinating entity. Currently the police department is allocating 8 officers to patrol the Westfield mall, which historically didn’t happen. The TL police should include just the TL and not the Westfield mall. We could use those officers in the TL. Hope you will use Guardian Angels, they do not do arrests, they just file a report, which would help. Look into the issue of trafficking and try to help the young boys who may be getting trafficked.

o Speaker #2: Need to looks at the issue of demand. Much of this is due to medical history and overprescribing pain meds to patients. I bring this up because we need to talk about lowering the demand and some of the work coming out of dept of PH there are appropriate medications to help treat people with opioid disorder (buprenorphine and methadone). Some people do need these drugs and there are appropriate treatments to help people go through withdrawals. Should look at local issue to access medications and opioid issues. The number of deaths in SF is near triple the amount of deaths from COVID in the last year.

• Community updates
o We took back the information from this Task Force to the St. Francis community

body to see about a coordinating body around street level services. This would be different from the current MHSF effort. We were evaluating whether we can utilize members from this existing community body and other community folks to at least design what the coordinating body will look like.

o Provided updates from the mid-market business association. There is private/public funding to expand Urban Alchemy through the neighborhood. This is coming through a workforce development initiative. We are looking to add 10- 12 more UA practitioners to the area plus a joint cleaning program. This will be a multi-level, multi-department effort and looking to make this efficient as possible.

  • Criminal justice data analyses: Please see slides at the end of this document for all the figures and caveats. TF comments:

    o Should note that nearly 40% of the sample report either being transient or homeless. However, someone else suggested that dealer will lie about where they live so the police don’t investigate their homes. Someone else said it was

    o Should note that 6.8% of the other charges involved weapons (although it was noted that this excluded knives)

    o Year to date the SFPD has seized 12 kilos of drugs, including 5 kilos of fentanyl o Need to be careful about dismissing the data an relying on anecdotes, and we

    shouldn’t dismiss the homeless/transient figures
    o Bulk of the drug sales arrests involve “buy and busts”
    o Should note that about 75% of those booked for drug sales/PWID are Black or

    Brown. Also, 71% were only arrested for sales/PWID once during the 2/5 year

    window examined.
    o Must also realize all of the dealers who are not arrested. 100s of dealers working

    in D6 every day

  • Start discussing ideas in categories E

o Idea E. Increasing the efficacy of criminal justice responses:
• What to do with individuals arrested for the first time?

  • If we do something that is a modified LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) intervention for someone who is selling and likely being exploited, they may benefit. LEAD focused on those who were arrested multiple times

  • The issue is what programs exits and what can we do for a drug dealing who may be getting exploited. Police officers wouldn’t object to a program like this.

  • One member noted he spent more time in jail for holding drugs than the dealers who were arrested that he was working with

  • Folks should be referred to a program like ACM (assertive case management through pre-trial services) the first time after they get out of jail. We will need to drill down to more specifics with the folks arrested who is actually a drug dealer vs someone homeless just holding drugs.

  • Police report it’s easy to make this distinction.

  • We discussed having a drug court; do these exist?

  • The LEAD data, there were only 348 people refereed. The program

    was being underutilized. Of that percentage of people only 11 were Hispanic/Latinx. It’s not just for drug users, it is for people arrested for low-level drug activity including sales. COVID has posed a challenge. As it relates to ACM it is based on an individual’s need. It’s not necessarily one size fits all for everybody

  • Part of the intention of LEAD was to address racial disparity in who was being arrested and it wasn’t being met. There were also issues re: not being enough services for these individuals.

  • LEAD should cover sales

  • LEAD was very focused on SF, but we need to account for the

    regional nature of this problem.

o The list of ideas is available

at: https://oewd.org/sites/default/files/TF%20ideas%20%28March%2018%20202

1%29_0.pdf

• Next steps
o Next TF meeting is scheduled for May 4th at usual time (5-6:30 pm) o A survey will be circulated to TF members to assist with prioritizing

recommendations after the next meeting • Public comment

o Speaker #1: One of the suggestions missing. We should institute the death penalty for drug users. Why stop at jail time if they do a violation. The undocumented Hondurans are the problem and should be taken out of the country. I look forward to the excellent work this task force is doing

o Speaker #2: I want to thank everyone for sticking through and committing to these meetings and coming up with ideas. There is a lot of work to do and you’ve made great progress. I hope you meet for as long as you need for and look at implementing community coordinating body.

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Analyzing drug dealing arrests in SF

  • Goal: Improve understanding of drug dealing arrests in SF and what happens after someone is arrested

  • Challenge #1. Criminal justice data are messy, and this is not specific to SF

  • Challenge #2: There isn’t one database we can use to obtain and analyze all

    the info we need

  • Challenge #3: Calculating jail days attributable to a court case is difficult

  • Many, many thanks to everyone at the SF District Attorney’s Office, Tenderloin Police Station, and Sheriff’s Department for providing information and helping me understand these data systems

Monthly counts of police incidents involving drug dealing charges, Jan 2018-Feb 2021

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

Arrests involving drug dealing in District 6

• Of the 2,250 incidents involving drug dealing in D6 over this period, they were associated with 5,836 charges (not all for drugs)

• 96% involved more than one offense
• Average # offenses per incident = 2.8; median = 3

• Of these 5,832 charges, nearly 84% were for drug-specific charges • 4 were missing data for “incidentcategory”

• Of the 949 other charges:
• 22.4% involved a warrant
• 6.8% involved a weapon
• 2.4% involved assault and/or robbery
• 52.8% involved “Non-Criminal”, “Other Miscellaneous”, or “Other Offenses”

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

2. Cases presented to the DA

• Focus on cases presented to the DA from January 2018-May 2020 • Note: Covers a different period from previous arrest analysis

• Analytic sample includes 2,242 cases involving at least one charge for drug selling or possession with intent to distribute (PWID)

• Identified 2,303 cases and dropped 61 because of missing/repeated data • Excludes cannabis
• Most of these cases involve other charges

• 1,522 unique individuals account for these 2,242 cases • 1,088 (71.5%) individuals show up once over this period
• 257 (16.9%) show up twice
• 177 (11.6%) show up three or more times

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

What happened to the 2,242 cases involving drug selling/PWID that were presented to the SFDA, 1/18-5/20?

Was the case filed by the DA?

No (N=440; 42 cases missing disposition code)

 

Yes (N=1802; 896 cases pending or missing disposition code)

     
     
         
         
         
         
         
         

Notes: The “Other disposition” category includes 4 people who were sentenced to state prison. Sources: DAMION data (date, suspectcharge, casefiled, dispocode); DA’s disposition file (dispocode, dispodes2)

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

What happened to the 2,242 cases involving drug selling/PWID that were presented to the SFDA, 1/18-5/20?

Was the case filed by the DA?

No (N=440; 42 cases missing disposition code)

   
     

Most common reasons why the case wasn’t filed (N=398)

   

Further investigation needed

24.9%

     

Lack of evidence

24.6%

     

Discharged to proceed w/ probation/parole/other violation

15.3%

     

Dismissal in the interest of justice

13.8%

     

Questionable search and seizure

7.8%

     

Other reason

13.6%

     

Notes: The “Other disposition” category includes 4 people who were sentenced to state prison. Sources: DAMION data (date, suspectcharge, casefiled, dispocode); DA’s disposition file (dispocode, dispodes2)

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

What happened to the 2,242 cases involving drug selling/PWID that were presented to the SFDA, 1/18-5/20?

Was the case filed by the DA?

   

Yes (N=1802; 896 cases pending or missing disposition code)

     
   

Most common dispositions for these cases (N=906)

     

County jail w/ probation condition or court probation

43.5%

     

Dismissal in the interest of justice

13.4%

     

Guilty plea to other charge

12.6%

     

County jail

9.8%

     

Released to another agency

4.6%

     

Other disposition

16.1%

Notes: The “Other disposition” category includes 4 people who were sentenced to state prison. Sources: DAMION data (date, suspectcharge, casefiled, dispocode); DA’s disposition file (dispocode, dispodes2)

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

Total jail days linked to dealing/PWID cases

Cases considered (1/1/2018-5/31/2020 unless otherwise noted)

Likely Too Low

Likely Too High

N

Average

Median

N

Average

Median

1. All cases presented to the DA

1,614

17.1

1.8

1,939

27.9

2.8

2. Cases not filed by the DA

386

9.2

1.1

387

11.6

1.1

3. Cases filed by the DA

1,228

19.6

2.3

1,552

32.0

4.2

4. Filed cases that are pending or missing disposition data

644

13.2

1.8

757

19.0

2.5

5. Filed cases with disposition information

584

26.5

3.5

795

44.3

6.2

6. Filed cases involving a sentence to probation and/or jail

292

38.5

5.0

441

59.3

15.1

7. Filed cases dismissed in the interest of justice

96

12.3

2.0

105

15.0

2.4

8. Filed cases dismissed due to guilty plea to another charge

48

17.0

4.0

87

48.1

15.2

9. All cases presented to the DA (excluding 2020)

1,381

18.6

2.0

1,695

30.7

3.2

Notes: Do not treat these as formal confidence intervals or assume the midpoint is the best estimate; true value is likely in between the low and high values. Most of these cases include charges for offenses other than dealing. Since the average will be heavily influenced by really large or really small values, it is also useful to look at the median, which represents the middle value (i.e., half of the cases are below this value and half

are above).

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

Distribution of jail days for those convicted and sentenced to probation and/or jail (high)

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

These figures may overestimate or underestimate the number of incarceration days linked to drug dealing

• Why they could be smaller
• Most of these arrests involved charges beyond drug sales/PWID, so those

other charges could be influencing time served

• It could also be the case that some of those cases not found in the jail data resulted in no jail days

• Why they could be larger

• This approach doesn’t account for the time spent in state prison for 4 cases

• It is also the case that small number of people in our sample were still being held in custody at the time the jail data ended

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude

Characteristics of these individuals

• Publicly available arrest data do not include arrestee characteristics • The following data are from the Sheriff’s Dept, except age is from DA

• 1,476 individuals account for these 1,939 cases that involved time in jail

• Characteristics of these 1,476 individuals • 88% Male

• Average age: 33 years (median = 30 years)

• Race/ethnicity (Hispanic based on Ethnicity variable, Others based on Race variable)

  • 4% Asian/Pacific Islander

  • 27% Black, Non-Hispanic

  • 48% Hispanic

  • 20% White, Non-Hispanic • City of residence

  • 38% SF

  • 11% Oakland

  • 39%Transient/Homeless

  • 12% Other

Note: These figures aren’t final as we’re still checking a few things. I do not expect them to change much, if at all. Focus on the order of magnitude PDF icon April 27 minutes and slides.pdf

 

PDF icon April 27 minutes and slides.pdf