Pubdate: Thu, 25 Feb 2016
Source: SF Weekly (CA)
Column: Chem Tales
Copyright: 2016 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.sfweekly.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.sfweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/812
Author: Chris Roberts

OPERATION "SAFE FROM BLACK PEOPLE"

On Dec. 5, 2014, San Francisco police were on the corner of Hyde 
Street and Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, arresting crack 
sellers. It was a busy day: Shortly after busting one man for selling 
a few rocks to an undercover police officer, a cop returned to the 
scene of the crime to gather data to fill out his report when he 
witnessed another drug deal in action. The cop busted that seller, 
who identified himself to police as "a Sureno from the south side," 
according to court records. Police later found that both sellers had 
extensive rap sheets for narcotic sales.

The pair were two of the 1,050 people arrested on felony drug charges 
in San Francisco that year, according to data on file with the state 
Department of Justice. That figure represents an astronomical drop of 
85 percent since 2008, when there were 7,521 felony busts. That's 
good news for the increasingly numerous opponents of America's drug 
war. Less good for social justice warriors is the fact that of the 
1,050 drug busts, 405 netted a black suspect. (Thanks to a quirk in 
the SFPD's antiquated record-keeping system, the number of Latino 
arrestees is unknown.)

Most of those busts ended up with the Sureno in local court. Ballot 
initiatives like Prop. 47 and legislation like the state prison 
realignment now steer most nonviolent drug offenders to diversion 
programs and treatment rather than behind bars. But there are three 
dozen notable exceptions.

Since 2013, a joint San Francisco police and federal Drug Enforcement 
Administration task force has arrested 37 people for selling drugs in 
the Tenderloin within 1,000 feet of a school. These suspects have all 
been charged in federal court, where state leniency does not apply, 
but mandatory minimums do. Federal "tough-on-crime" drug laws, first 
passed by Congress under Ronald Reagan and later tightened in Bill 
Clinton's 1994 omnibus crime bill - the same bill heavily supported 
by current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton - guarantee at 
least a year behind bars for selling a crack rock. And all 37 people, 
SF Weekly and other outlets have reported before, are black.

Most of the defendants are seeking to have their cases thrown out on 
the basis of selective enforcement and prosecution. But it wasn't 
clear just how selective police were being when picking who to arrest 
and charge in federal court until the release of a unique study that 
quantified who, exactly, is selling drugs in the Tenderloin.

For seven weeks starting in August, participants in the S.F. AIDS 
Foundation's weekly needle exchange program on Eddy Street were asked 
to take a survey that asked them what drug they most recently bought, 
where they got it, from whom they bought it - and what color their 
drug dealer's skin was.

And according to the survey results, of the 440 drug transactions on 
which data was provided, 56 percent involved a black drug seller. 
Some 20.2 percent of drug sellers were Latino, and 16 percent were 
white. Asians and "others" made up the remaining 5.9 percent.

Researcher Katherine Beckett, a law professor at the University of 
Washington, went a step further. After crunching arrest data, she 
found - not surprisingly - that 61.4 percent of the people arrested 
and charged for drug sales in San Francisco Superior Court from 2013 
to the present are black, 24.7 percent were Latino, and 10.7 percent 
were white - meaning, at least according to this small sample size, 
that blacks and Latinos are over-represented in local drug arrests 
and whites are underrepresented.

"It's clear from this very smart research that there is racial bias 
at work here," said Laura Thomas, deputy state director for the Drug 
Policy Alliance. "The fact that everyone arrested is African American 
is not due to chance, but due to underlying structural forces - 
namely, racism and white supremacy."

(Beckett declined to comment, citing the preference of the local 
Federal Public Defender, who is handling the defense of the 37 
suspects. The Public Defender has not responded to repeated requests 
for comment from SF Weekly.)

Empirically, the situation in the Tenderloin appears about as clear 
an example of police bias as you could concoct. The Sureno was not 
sent to federal court, but the black repeat offenders were.

Lately, police bias is much on the minds and lips of city officials. 
Following the Dec. 2 fatal police shooting of Mario Woods and the 
revelation that 14 San Francisco police officers exchanged text 
messages so racist and homophobic that the San Francisco Chronicle 
couldn't print them in full, SFPD Chief Greg Suhr has repeatedly said 
that his officers will undergo extra training to address and solve 
racial bias. And District Attorney George Gascon has used bias - and 
Suhr's failure to fix it - as a ready tool to bash the SFPD. Neither 
SFPD nor Gascon's office would comment on the study's findings - 
though Suhr has in the past defended the arrests.

Nor are city officials commenting on the greater implications. It's 
not by accident that most of the drug dealers in the Tenderloin are 
black. The Tenderloin is where San Francisco herds its black people. 
According to 2010 Census figures, 15 percent of the city's estimated 
48,000 black people live in supervisorial District 6, comprised of 
SoMa, the Mission District around 16th Street, and the Tenderloin. 
That was up from 10 percent in 2000.

Black people are moving there for a variety of reasons, none of them 
especially great. The T.L. is full of halfway houses, SROs, and 
affordable housing. Residents are generally poor - and in America, a 
great way to become poor and stay poor is to be busted for a drug 
offense while young. And as the data shows, a great way to cop a 
life-disrupting drug charge is to be black.

Mayor Ed Lee's office also did not respond to a request for comment 
for this story. Acting United States Attorney Brian Stretch's office 
is due to respond to the study early next month and explain itself.

Woods's shooting shocked Lee, Suhr, and others into action. But 
meanwhile, the racist drug war continues right around them, as if it 
didn't exist.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom