‘Fed Up’ San Franciscans Poised to Crack Down on Drug Use, Street Crime with Pair of Popular Ballot Measures

San Francisco voters appear poised on Tuesday to pass a pair of ballot propositions that would buck progressive orthodoxy in the notoriously left-wing city by expanding police powers and requiring that welfare recipients undergo drug screenings.

The city’s embattled mayor, London Breed, put Propositions E and F on the March 5 ballot as part of an effort to curb the street crime and drug abuse that has plagued the city in recent years and been cited as a reason that many prominent businesses have fled the downtown core.

Proposition E would authorize the police to use surveillance equipment — cameras, drones, and even facial-recognition technology — without prior approval of the police commission, an oversight body, which Breed has accused of “prioritizing ideology before public safety.”

If passed, the proposition would also loosen restrictions on police chases and mandate that officers spend more time on patrol and less time on administrative tasks.

Proposition F would mandate the anyone receiving public-assistance benefits be screened for a substance-use disorder. If a recipient is found to be drug-dependent, they could be offered treatment. And if it is “available at no cost, the recipient will be required to participate to continue receiving” public assistance, according to the proposition.

Both propositions need only a simple majority of votes to pass.

Recent polling shows that San Francisco voters overwhelmingly believe the city is on the wrong track and that the measures included in the two propositions could help. Some backers of the propositions say the support is more evidence that San Francisco voters are moving back to the political center, at least on public safety, and that the city isn’t as radical as its reputation.

“We’ve seen polling data as far back as 2021 showing that the electorate in San Francisco is fed up with the state of our city’s streets, the amount of crime, the amount of disorder, the homelessness that we’ve seen,” said Jay Donde, co-founder of the Briones Society, a conservative club that is seeking to grow San Francisco’s Republican Party by finding common ground with moderates, independents, and disaffected Democrats.

A recent poll commissioned by GrowSF, a moderate political group, found that 74 percent of San Francisco voters support the use of surveillance cameras to combat crime and 63 percent support the use of drones to follow criminal suspects. Voters were more suspect of facial-recognition technology, with only 48 percent saying police should be allowed to use it.

“San Franciscans are tired of the city’s crime problem and are looking for solutions,” according to GrowSF’s take on the poll.

Another recent poll by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce found that both Propositions E and F are supported by 61 percent of likely March voters. The poll found that only about a third of San Francisco voters said they feel safe downtown at night, according to the chamber.

More than two-thirds of respondents to both polls said San Francisco is on the wrong track.

San Francisco supervisor Matt Dorsey, a self-described liberal Democrat who has also been a supporter of law-and-order measures in the city, is backing both propositions. As a recovering addict, Dorsey said Proposition F and drug-abuse issues generally are “personal to me in a way that politics has never been personal before.”

“I feel strongly that San Francisco should be assessing people who are at wildly disproportionate risk for substance-use disorder, and, because of the era we are in with fentanyl, at wildly disproportionate risk for deadly overdoses,” he said.

Requiring drug tests for welfare benefits is a policy typically associated with Republican-led states. Opponents of Proposition F say that San Francisco lacks the treatment resources and supportive housing it needs for the measure to be effective, and that stripping addicts of public benefits will make people more destitute, increase homelessness, worsen the city’s crime problems, and have “deadly results.”

But Dorsey said he believes there are enough “guardrails” in the proposition to ensure that doesn’t happen. Under the proposition, no one would lose cash assistance if the city doesn’t have treatment options available, and there is no mandate for sobriety — only that recipients of public money make a good-faith effort to seek treatment, Dorsey has argued.

The increasing ravages of fentanyl on San Francisco is “absolutely” a game-changer, he said. Dorsey said he’s talked with parents of fentanyl addicts who are “begging and pleading with their kids to please be heroin addicts” instead.

“That’s where we are, and it’s heartbreaking,” he said.

A new report from the city found that of the 718 people cited for drug use in the city from late March of 2023 through early February, only about half live in the city, and 20 percent received public-assistance payments. The County Adult Assistance Program in San Francisco pays beneficiaries $712 per month, the highest in the state due to the city’s cost of living.

The city has found nonresidents taking advantage of the program.

In a statement, Breed said the “numbers serve as proof that we must continue doubling down our efforts to shut down our drug markets that are attracting people to come here.”

Campaigns supporting Propositions E and F have raised about $2.5 million, while opponents have raised a little more than $200,000, according to news reports.

Donde said he is typically skeptical of the various initiatives, measures, and propositions on California ballots, which are often long and confusing.

“As a conservative, I like to see government move carefully and deliberately, but there’s a difference between being careful and deliberate and just being totally sclerotic, and there being such an extreme mismatch between the preferences of the voters and what the people in office are doing,” he said. “I think [Propositions E and F are] actually a good exemplar of the initiative system having a positive impact. On these types of issues, it really is necessary.”

Many backers of ropositions E and F are opposing another proposition, B, which was initially introduced by Dorsey to mandate increased minimum police-staffing levels in the city. But Dorsey has since pulled his support after a far-left supervisor challenging Breed for mayor, Ahsha Safaí, was able to amend the measure to include a tax component.

Prop B, if passed, would now amend the city’s charter to increase police staffing “only if voters in a future election amend an existing tax or approve a new tax that would fully fund police staff and recruitment.” It’s now backed by public-sector unions, whose members in other city departments compete with police officers for existing tax dollars.

Dorsey has accused Safaí of adding a “poison pill that renders the whole plan ineffective.” He has argued that as it is now, Prop B is nothing more than “craven political trickery” and a far-left “ploy for new taxes: a ‘Cop Tax Scheme.’”

Prop B is being “foisted upon S.F. by supervisors who care more about a new tax hike than public safety,” Dorsey wrote in a recent social-media post.