SF Police Made 40 Arrests in Market Street Pre-Dawn Raid. Why Was No One Charged?

San Francisco prosecutors said they don’t have enough evidence to file criminal charges against any of the roughly 40 people who police arrested last week as part of a pre-dawn “drug market crackdown” at the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue.

The raid marks the third overnight action the city has carried out in recent weeks at hot spots for the sale and use of illegal drugs. Though police and Mayor Daniel Lurie have touted the aggressive law enforcement operations, some supervisors and others have raised concerns about their efficacy.

“We charged none of those people,” Assistant DA Ana Gonzalez told Mission Local before speaking at a community meeting on Tuesday at the Tenderloin police station, explaining that there was a lack of sufficient cause to do so. “We had five people who maybe it was close, but we had to go back and go to the police and be like, ‘Can you say more about these?’”

The DA’s office plans to meet with police officials to discuss “how to do it smarter” so future arrests are more likely to result in charges, Gonzalez told community members at the meeting. She attributed the lack of follow-through to growing pains as the city adopts a new approach to enforcement.

“[City leaders] are trying, but they’re trying too fast,” she said of San Francisco’s aggressive new push, under Mayor Daniel Lurie, to break up the city’s most notorious open-air drug markets. “We do not have the tools that would make this easier … [and police] are doing something that they have never done.”

A Facebook video posted by the San Francisco Police Department after Thursday’s early morning raid shows a legion of officers swarming the area, zip-tying people and making arrests — even setting up a folding table on the street to do the processing, as suspects sat waiting in clusters on the sidewalk.

“This activity will not be tolerated [and] and we will continue these operations for as long as it takes,” the post reads.

In a separate post on X featuring the video, Lurie echoed that sentiment.

“Every day I see families waiting for Muni here, amidst open drug use and dealing,” he said. “This will not be tolerated, and we will be relentless in dismantling drug markets.”

Led by the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center, a multi-agency task force, the raid follows another one in February at Jefferson Square Park, during which nearly 90 arrests or citations were issued — the vast majority for non-drug-related offenses like loitering. Police have also recently increased surveillance operations on 6th Street and near the 16th Street–Mission BART station.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Gonzalez emphasized that her office can only file charges when a law has obviously been violated. Unlike the Jefferson Square Park raid, where people were charged for being in the park after it closed at 10 p.m., there was no such obvious violation during Thursday’s action on a public street.

“For every single one of those people, I need to be able to articulate to the judge what crime that person committed,” Gonzalez said. “Who are you marking to be able to articulate that they committed a crime?”

Gonzalez emphasized it was crucial for the DA’s office to be deliberate in how it handles the uptick in arrests.

“If you arrest enough people or cite enough people without being able to establish probable cause, the next thing you know, there’ll be complaints,” she said. “And then cops will get in trouble, and then there’ll be a chilling effect.”

The raids come amid efforts by the nascent Lurie administration to ramp up enforcement, fulfilling a key campaign promise.

Kevin Knoble, acting captain of the Tenderloin Station, told community members at Tuesday’s meeting that actions of this scale require a huge amount of planning and resources. He said that even though no charges were ultimately filed, raids like these still have real impact.

“[Lurie] is taking action. He’s looking for things to happen,” Knoble said. “And when you start to do anything new, what do you do? ‘OK, that’s not quite working, so let’s adjust.’”

This story is based on original reporting from Mission Local’s Eleni Balakrishnan.