SAN FRANCISCO (AP) 鈥 Protesters cut short a rare outdoor meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Tuesday where the board president had planned to question Mayor London Breed on her administration's response to the crisis of brazen open-air drug dealing.
Board President Aaron Peskin moved the first part of the board's weekly meeting to a plaza in the troubled Tenderloin neighborhood near City Hall, where rampant dealing and drug use take place. He asked the mayor if she would commit to setting up an emergency operations center and coordinate departments to shut down 鈥減ublic drug dealing鈥 in open sites such as in the plaza within 90 days.
But heckling and chants of 鈥渘o more cops鈥 from the large crowd were so loud that Peskin moved the meeting back to City Hall before the mayor could answer. Breed did not answer Peskin鈥檚 question directly after the meeting reconvened indoors.
The , including San Francisco. In April, sent in the California Highway Patrol and California 好色tv Guard to help crack down on drug traffickers in the city as overdose deaths have soared.
Breed has clashed with members of the board who say more police and arrests are not the way to solve the city's drug crisis. She over the drug crisis in the Tenderloin in 2021, and nearly a year later on drugs in the low-income neighborhood, but little has changed.
Breed has said that using drugs in public is not acceptable and that repeat offenders need to take the help offered or face consequences.
鈥淲e can鈥檛 keep speaking out of both sides of our mouth. On the one hand, we want change and we want to hold people accountable,鈥 Breed said before the meeting was moved. 鈥淎nd on the other hand, we鈥檙e willing to let people get away with murder.鈥
Peskin said it was not a matter of resources, but coordination. He agreed with the mayor that the problem is not a new one, 鈥渂ut it is one that has become so visible that many San Franciscans do not feel safe.鈥
San Francisco's downtown core, of which the U.N. Plaza is part of, has not bounced back from the pandemic as other cities have. Tech employees have opted to work remotely, reducing foot traffic that supported downtown shops.
After supervisors left U.N. Plaza, a woman threw a brick at a group of high school students carrying flags for the meeting and struck a girl. A 26-year-old San Francisco woman was booked on accusations of child endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon, said San Francisco officer Robert Rueca. The minor was not seriously hurt.
The mayor appears at board meetings once a month to answer questions from supervisors.
