Mayor Lurie and Supervisor Fielder spar over enforcement as Mission drug activity and displacement persist

Mayor Daniel Lurie appeared before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on March 11 to discuss displacement linked to enforcement operations and the city's broader approach to open-air drug markets in the Mission and other neighborhoods.

Supervisor Fielder pressed the mayor on whether enforcement operations have succeeded, saying enforcement has displaced people across the city and arguing that without comprehensive treatment and harm-reduction measures the city risks displacing public drug activity from block to block. "With enforcement alone, without a more comprehensive approach and broader metrics for success, such as connecting people to treatment on demand, shelter, recovery programs, we're gonna continue to displace people and public drug activities from block to block and neighborhood to neighborhood," Supervisor Fielder said.

Lurie said his administration measures success by residents' and visitors' perceptions of safety and by whether small businesses and families feel they can use public spaces. "For my administration, success is measured by the experiences our residents and visitors feel," Mayor Daniel Lurie said. "If you are dealing drugs, we are going to continue coming after you." He described interagency operations that removed dealers and paraphernalia from Jefferson Square Park and the Sixteenth and Mission corridor and said community responses to those operations were "overwhelmingly positive."

Lurie also said enforcement is only one component of the strategy and stressed the need for more treatment capacity. He noted the city recently appointed Dan Tsai as director of the Department of Public Health and said his administration is "working to add beds across the continuum of care, from shelter to locked behavioral health beds." The mayor said he appreciates the Board's support for his "fentanyl state of emergency ordinance," which, he said, will allow the city to open "first responder friendly treatment sites like…