San Francisco Approves Expanded Police Powers, Drug Screening for Welfare Recipients

Episode Transcript

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Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. San Francisco took a step to the right by passing new measures that will expand police powers and screen welfare recipients for drugs. It’s all part of Mayor London Breed’s plan to show she’s doing something about the city’s problems as she prepares for a tough fight for reelection this November.

Mayor London Breed: Now, I do recognize that some people don’t feel the lower crime rate yet. And if you or someone you know is the victim of a crime, all the stats mean nothing. I understand that, and I hear your concerns. And that’s exactly why we’re not letting up.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Today we talk with KQED reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez about San Francisco’s election results.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: So mayor London Breed authored propositions C, E, and F. See is a it’s an exemption from transfer tax so that officers can be converted into housing. Proposition E would expand police powers and prop F would drug screen and offer drug treatment for welfare users. And these more moderate conservative policies are on their way to passing. We haven’t seen every ballot counted, but by all intents and purposes, there’s really no way they’re going to lose.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: But these are all authored by London Breed, and I wouldn’t say people went to the ballot box and said, you know what? I really love that London Breed. I’m going to vote on all these things because the mayor authored them. That’s that’s probably not what happened. The reason we know that is because London Breed is really sagging in the polls.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: But what it does mean is that London Breed will be able to tout her successes every day from now leading into the November election. Also on election night, we saw, the moderate Democrat slate on the Democratic Party board, also called the Democratic County Central Committee do well. Proposition A, a $300 million housing bond, also passed.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: That’s a joint effort by the progressives and the moderates. The one exception to the whole law and order result in Tuesday’s election is the judges, in San Francisco Superior Court race. The incumbent judges actually won against challengers who are touting a tough on crime message.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Are you surprised by these results, Joe?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: I’m not surprised by these results. We had a very low turnout because we had fewer people come out. The fewer people vote, the more often they’re what we think of as consistent voters. And consistent voters are more often white. They’re more often homeowners. There are more often business owners, people who get taxed. And those people tend to vote for law and order measures. And so when we saw that the turnout was going to be low, it became a lot clearer which propositions would succeed.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, remind us, Joe, what props E and F will actually do, and how big of a change will this be for San Francisco residents? Starting with prop E, which we’ve talked about in a previous episode, contains a lot of changes to policing in San Francisco. What’s about to change?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Proposition E is basically a grab bag of policies that affect police work that Mayor London Breed: put into one measure. It’s four prongs. It’s allowing more police surveillance powers without having to go for checks with the Board of Supervisors or approvals. It’s being able to do more vehicle pursuits. Used to be vehicle pursuits, really, only if life was in danger or someone did a violent crime. Now it’s essentially petty theft can urge up vehicle pursuit.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: It’s reduce paperwork for officers, which also on the flip side means less oversight because they have to file fewer reports. And the last prong is adding a very lengthy public process in every police precinct in San Francisco before the police commission can pass a new policy. And that essentially weakens the police commission and gives a lot of authority to the police department, because the chief can veto that lengthy public process.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: So essentially, if the chief likes a policy, he can veto that public process or pass it. Go ahead. And if the chief doesn’t like the policy from the oversight commission, then he can just be like, oh, well, why don’t you do public outreach before you pass this and really draw it out?

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I mean, all those sound really about loosening restrictions on police, sort of broadening their powers. Right? Let’s move on then, to prop F, which is about drug testing and welfare. What will this do?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Every county under state law is required to administer some amount of welfare. San Francisco gives about $700 a month to about 5000 individuals. You get $700 a month unless you’re homeless, in which case you get $100 a month and a housing voucher that’s worth about 600. Now, under prop F, if someone in county government or city government suspects that you’re using drugs and you are a recipient of Cap funding welfare funding, then they can ask that you be drug screened and go to drug treatment program.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: And if you don’t, then they can take away your welfare money. That could lead you to losing your housing, because now they have said that they can try to pay for housing while they wait for you to get back on the program, and that if they are the ones who administer your housing or give you housing, then they will not evict you for some amount of time. And it’s up to the human service agencies, but you’re really leaving a lot to the good graces of that program.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Joe, how does London Breed: talk about. Props E and F now that they’ve passed, how do they fit into her vision for the city?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: She talked about this at her state of the city address on Thursday.

Mayor London Breed: And I hear your concerns. And that’s exactly why we’re not letting up.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez:  Really London Breed has tried to couch these measures as part of her aggressive tactics to ensure safety for folks to curbing drug use on city streets.

Mayor London Breed: Yes, offering people services is critical, but frankly, we must compel some people into treatment.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: We to giving police more powers to tackle crime.

Mayor London Breed: We will be installing new public safety cameras in high crime areas, deploying drones for auto theft, car break ins and other crimes, and changing police.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: She said she is tired of negativity, said San Francisco is a dragon spreading its wings, coming back up.

Mayor London Breed: I believe the past is a precursor to our rise. This is the year of the dragon and we will soar again.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: She is facing a tough reelection right now from the right word flank of the Democratic Party. And soon, also, it’s rumored, the leftward flank of her Democratic Party from Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who is rumored to be running for mayor. And we’ve seen that expressed in polls in a San Francisco Chronicle poll. London Breed: had 75% unfavorable. A lot of people don’t believe that she is bringing the city in the right direction right now, and she’s been honestly getting attacked on all sides.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Coming up, how progressives reacted to the election results and why tech has gotten more involved in local elections. Stay with us.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What reactions did you see from more progressives in San Francisco in this, the aftermath of the primary?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: So I was out on election night, right? My whole thing, election night is going to these different parties where people are celebrating or drinking away their sorrows on the way the election went. And I tried to go to the progressives election night party, which was at this little food truck court across from the Costco there. And that thing had disbanded before I even got there.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: They had lost so badly, both on the Democratic Party board slate, where they had the moderates picked up at least 20 seats. I mean, the votes are still being counted, so we won’t know exactly how many seats until it’s done, but also on prop CNF. So I went to another bar on 16th Street and found some progressives still there celebrating Prop Day. And they were they were down in the doldrums, clinking glasses and kind of like staring into their beers.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: The progressives, what they did not do is articulate a different vision. Think of it this way. Props E and F are an expression of Mayor London Breed’s vision on what a safe city should be. There is no counter proposition that says this is what progressives think public safety should be. This is our ethos. And that is their challenge going into November, when they do eventually run a candidate against Mayor London Breed:.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, I want to talk about Joe. The amount of money that went into this race and what it says about what’s coming this November. Who are the biggest spenders in this primary and where did that money go?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: There’s a number of groups. And we saw this data, from Michigan local and also, gathered by the Guardian who did a story on this. But there’s a network of groups like grow SF and together SF that, since I would say about 2020, have pulled more than $26 million to influence local elections. And to give you context in that these are small local races that sometimes didn’t see more than a few hundred thousand dollars spent on them, and now you’re seeing millions being poured into these races.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Imagine how much money is going to come into the mayor’s races and other races for supervisor in San Francisco in November. It is incredible. A lot of that money from those groups ultimately comes from tech CEOs and angel investors like Ron Conway, who, made early bets on big tech companies like Facebook, like ripple, CEO Chris Larsen, like Gary Tan from Y Combinator, who is on the board of grow SF.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Why do you think all of these people in tech are getting so involved in local politics right now? What do these groups want?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Yeah. You know when when you go to these groups and you say, well, what’s the deal with all this money you’re spending? Why are you spending so much money to upend local politics? Well, a lot of them will tell you they want is they just want a city that works. They want a city that is safe. They want a city where their kids can go to school. But that’s not all we’ve seen.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: We’ve seen Republican money make its way into San Francisco during the recall of Chesa Boudin. We’ve seen it make its way into San Francisco in the recall of Board of Education members. There are some allies, ships happening very high level, where Republicans have gotten involved because they want to tarnish Democratic cities as a means to weakening Democrats on a national level.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What do you think these results tell us about how the next eight months are going to go?

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: I think these results are not indicative of everything we’re going to see in November, but they’re indicative of what could happen. And I’ll give you an example of why, in the case of the propositions, as I said earlier, the progressives didn’t articulate a counter message. What is their vision of public safety? But in one race, we actually saw a battle of ideas, and that is in the judicial race.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Incumbent judges Michael Bigot, a ten year judge on Gavin Newsom’s care courts now, and Patrick Thompson, these two incumbent judges, were defending their seats against tough on crime touting candidates Jean Roland and Albert Chip Zucker. And these candidates were making many of the same arguments that we heard for props. E.f. The streets aren’t safe. We need a change. Judges are letting criminals out into the streets. Michael beggar right now is leading over his over the challenger, Chip Zucker, by 20 percentage points.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: We see ourselves moving slightly rightward in some of our policies, but that strain of rightward ness has always been in San Francisco. There have been, Republicans and centrists to right leaning Democrats in San Francisco since the city’s inception. We had a police chief was mayor Frank Jordan in the 1990s. This is this is not a new element in San Francisco. But what happens is that in the ebb and flow of power, sometimes that element researches.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: All right, Joe, thank you so much for joining us. I know it’s been a long week, so I hope you get some rest.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Thank you. Yeah, I got a nap with my name on it.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, a reporter for KQED. This 35 minute conversation with Joe was cut down and edited by producer Maria Esquinca. Alan Monticello is our senior editor. He scored this episode and added all the tape music courtesy of Bluedot Sessions and First Con Music. The Bay is a production of listener supported KQED in San Francisco. You can support our work by becoming a KQED member. Just go to KQED.org/Donate. And I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thank you so much for listening to the Bay. Peace.