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By Joe Bowers and Edward Henderson | California Black Media
Mayor London Breed has been adamant in defense of her policy to arrest and detain drug users to get them into treatment programs.
Breed has directed the San Francisco Police Department to use public intoxication laws to make these arrests. So far, officers have cited or arrested 38 people under the “Intoxication Detention Program.”
Tensions flared over Breed’s policies during a Board of Supervisors’ meeting on June 13.
“Here we go, another White man talking about Black and Brown people as if you’re the savior of these people,” Breed told Supervisor Dean Preston, a frequent critic of both the mayor and police.
Preston interrogated the mayor on her plans to open wellness hubs for overdose prevention, as well as the recent drug-related arrests. Preston quoted from a Department of Public Health report that discouraged “punitive policies” and noted that Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities have long been targeted by drug crackdowns.
“The fact is, it’s not just services; it’s also force,” Breed responded, using the example of a friend who had entered treatment after an arrest. “You can quote all these statistics all you want, but at the end of the day, you’ve never lived in it.
