Mayoral candidate has plan for drug dealers
Daniel Lurie, one of the most prominent challengers to Mayor London Breed’s re-election bid, told a small crowd in a shuttered Mid-Market bar on Wednesday about one way he would try to reduce public drug dealing in San Francisco.
Lurie, a nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir who launched his mayoral campaign about four months ago, distilled his policy prescription into an analogy: What if San Francisco monitored some accused drug dealers in the same way that iPhone users can track each others’ locations using the Find My app?
If he were elected, Lurie said, he would try to accomplish a similar tracking system by increasing funding for the Sheriff ’s Office’s efforts to electronically supervise suspected drug dealers who are arrested and released while their cases proceed through the courts. He said his goal would be to make better use of ankle monitors that judges can impose on accused dealers after just one arrest.
Lurie said he would seek to coordinate among various public safety agencies so that if a suspected dealer tries to return to a neighborhood that a court has ordered them to stay away from, police officers can respond in real time to search that person and potentially arrest them again. Courts in San Francisco already make use of ankle monitors and stay-away orders; Lurie said he’s trying to improve law enforcement’s ability to respond to violations of those orders immediately.
The campaign event marked Lurie’s most detailed attempt yet to explain how he would approach San Francisco’s most pressing problem — the drug crisis — if he is elected mayor. Lurie broadly shares Breed’s policy views on public safety, but he argues she has failed to deliver enough results during her time as mayor and he could succeed where she has failed.
Overall, Lurie said San Francisco needs to do a better job of making sure that people arrested on suspicion of drug dealing actually stay away from hardhit neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin and SoMa while their cases are considered by the judiciary.
“It’s really important that … we send a signal to this country that San Francisco is no longer a place (where) you come to deal drugs,” said Lurie, who founded the anti-poverty organization Tipping Point Community.
He added that he also wants to build more shelter beds for homeless people and improve the “care infrastructure” for people struggling with addiction and mental health issues. He warned that it would “take time” to enact his plans to reduce drug dealing because he said Breed’s administration “has not done anything about it for the last 5 years.”
Breed has adopted a law enforcement-led strategy in response to the drug crisis, pushing for more funds for the Police Department and trying to boost its staffing levels. She and Gov. Gavin Newsom brought local and state law enforcement together to pursue a coordinated crackdown on public drug dealing while federal prosecutors also attempt to get more dealers off the streets. Breed even directed police to start arresting drug users if their public behavior makes them a danger to themselves or others.
“Mayor Breed is coordinating a multi-agency response to open-air drug dealing that includes local, state and federal law enforcement,” Maggie Muir, a political consultant for Breed’s re-election campaign, said in a statement Wednesday. “In the last year, this effort has led to a doubling of arrests for drug dealing in the Tenderloin and South of Market areas alone, and increased enforcement against public drug use.”
Lurie’s ankle-monitor strategy would rely heavily on agencies the mayor does not control: the Sheriff ’s Office and the District Attorney, which are both run by independently elected officials, as well as the judiciary. While San Francisco mayors can’t directly order sheriffs and district attorneys, they do wield budget authority over those offices in conjunction with the Board of Supervisors.
“As mayor, you have the bully pulpit,” Lurie told the Chronicle. “You have the ability to push this policy idea. And hopefully we’ll work with the D.A.’s office. But no, it’s not something the mayor can do by fiat. You push the D.A. to push the judges to do it.”
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ office said in a statement that it routinely seeks to detain “suspected egregious drug dealers” due to “the significant public safety risk they pose.”
“When a suspected drug dealer is going to be released over our objection, the District Attorney’s Office consistently argues for the court to order electronic monitoring, stay away orders and search conditions to protect the safety of the public and make sure that suspects return to court,” the statement from Jenkins’ office read. “In cases where we do not move to detain suspected drug dealers, we consistently argue that the court work to protect the safety of the public and argue for the court to impose stay away orders, search conditions and depending on the unique circumstances of the case, electronic monitoring, or home detention.”
Lurie discussed his drug policy idea at an intimate panel discussion with a former prosecutor, a former defense attorney and the owner of the closed Seventh Street bar, Mr. Smith’s, which went dark in 2019 because of drug dealing on its doorstep. Max Young, the bar owner, said he still doesn’t feel comfortable reopening because “our sidewalks aren’t safe in this neighborhood.”
Lurie’s proposal for real-time tracking and responding to ankle monitor violations was enthusiastically endorsed by Tony Brass, a former local and federal prosecutor who spoke on the panel at Lurie’s campaign event.
“It’s very much worth pursuing,” Brass said. “And certainly, I would back it … The advantage of this plan is it puts you out of business as a drug dealer.”
Drug dealing and related concerns about public safety will be paramount issues during this year’s mayor’s race, as Breed and her competitors try to explain to voters why they should lead the city at a time when many residents are becoming increasingly fed up with open-air dealing, particularly in the city core. At the same time, fatal overdoses have skyrocketed: In 2023, San Francisco saw a record 806 drug deaths, 24% more than the previous year and 11% more than the prior record set in 2020. Fentanyl was involved in most of the deaths.
Lurie recently aligned himself with Breed on one big issue related to crime.
Amid persistent public dissatisfaction with widespread property crimes, Breed is asking voters in March to approve Proposition E, a measure that would give more power to the Police Department and place new controls on its oversight body, the Police Commission. Lurie last week took the extremely unusual step of announcing that he would support Prop. E and set up his own fundraising committee for the measure. But he maintains a critical posture toward the mayor even while doing so — contending that, while Prop. E should pass, Breed could have implemented its ideas years ago.
As of Monday, Lurie’s committee had reported raising more money to support Prop. E than had Breed’s committee.