San Francisco public defender opposes DA’s fentanyl task force

A proposal to create a task force of prosecutors and investigators to target the fentanyl drug trade in San Francisco is being criticized by the county public defender as counterproductive and in conflict with calls to defund the police.

Public Defender Manohar Raju asked the county board of supervisors Tuesday to reject District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s and Supervisor Matt Haney’s request for $2.3 million to fund 10 new positions in the DA’s office. He said the board should join Mayor London Breed in “diverting city funds to pay for harm reduction, safe injection sites, and direct aid that is not tied to an expansion of the carceral state.”

The $2.3 million for the fentanyl task force was requested in a proposed budget Boudin submitted to the mayor last month and in a supplemental budget package of fentanyl-related initiatives introduced Tuesday by Haney. Boudin said Wednesday he would use the money to hire six prosecutors, two investigators and two alternative sentencing planners to coordinate with law enforcement agencies in Alameda County, where he said most fentanyl that enters San Francisco is warehoused.

According to Haney, about two people die of an overdose in San Francisco each day. Without immediate intervention, he said overdose deaths will likely exceed 730 this year, up from 259 in 2018.

The task force’s focus would be on suppliers instead of street-corner dealers, Boudin said, which is why he wants to hire prosecutors and investigators “who can work cases upstream to the source.”

Boudin’s request for funding comes on the heels of another request he made in December asking the mayor for resources to fill positions in his felony and homicide units because caseloads had “reached a tipping point.” He said Wednesday the task force would bring staffing levels back to the level they were when he took office last January.

Other city officials in San Francisco and prosecutors throughout the state are exploring ways to slow the increasing rate of fentanyl-related overdose deaths.

Last September, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed civil injunctions against people arrested for selling drugs in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. And district attorneys in Riverside, Contra Costa and San Luis Obispo counties recently filed rare murder charges against people accused of supplying fentanyl-laced drugs that caused a fatal overdose.

Still, Raju said increasing law enforcement resources “at a time when the [defund the police] movement has powerfully and persuasively called for reallocating resources away from law enforcement and into communities in need” is counterproductive.

“More policing and surveillance of our community is not a solution to the opioid crisis in our country, and more drug prosecutions do not result in a reduction in drug supply and demand, an increase in drug prices, nor the prevention of drug use,” Raju said. “The proposal to fund more prosecutions is an affront to the millions of families who have been torn apart by the ongoing war on drugs responsible for producing the largest carceral state in the world.”

On the contrary, Boudin said prosecuting high-level dealers and funding social rehabilitative programs for users and low-level dealers will significantly reduce the demand for fentanyl in San Francisco.

“As I have said since Day One, I refuse to double down on the war on drugs,” Boudin said in an email Wednesday responding to Raju’s statement. “I also refuse to sit by and watch as fatal overdoses skyrocket. This task force aims to use innovative, data-driven approaches to complement a public health approach to this crisis.”