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6/29 10AM
STOP The Madness-Newsom’s CPUC To Give Approval Of 24 hour Robo Taxis In SF
fightbacksaveccsf13
SF unlikely to arrest its way out of the doom loop, experts say
by Griffin Jones and Eleni Balakrishnan : missionlocal – excerpt
San Francisco’s efforts to eradicate downtown open-air drug markets and reduce historic overdose rates ramped up in the last month with announcements that police and 130 sheriff’s deputies will be deployed to increase arrests.
The new push is part of an ongoing strategy that will, as of today, include the opening of an in-person Drug Market Agency Coordination Center near Civic Center to coordinate “engagement, enforcement, and treatment” of drug use and sales, according to the mayor’s office.
Will it work? It depends on the goal.
Interviews conducted by Mission Local with 14 public defenders, district attorneys, criminal justice experts and public health workers locally and around the country yielded a common refrain: Waves of arrests for misdemeanor drug crimes have been tried — and have failed.
That is, they failed if the aim of arrests was to curb addiction, reduce suffering and save lives.
However, some said, if the goal is to sweep drug use from public view, then there is an outside chance a wave of arrests could work…
Noting the effects of broken windows policing in New York City in the early ‘90s, a practice widely considered to be harmful by civil rights activists, Moskos said that, in testing the protocol first on the subway, the city found that the presence of cops alone was an effective damper on subway crime …(more)
RELATED:
Broken Windows Policy: https://guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/nypd/brokenwindows
Neighbors describe chaos of mass shooting in S.F.’s Mission District
By Jordan Parker, St. John Berned Smith : sfchronicle – excerpt
UPDATE: Police ID person of interest also sought in Oakland killing
As neighbors described a chaotic scene, San Francisco police searched for clues Saturday after a mass shooting injured nine people during a block party in the Mission District the night before…
The shooting, which police described as “targeted and isolated,” occurred shortly after 9 p.m. Friday during a block party to mark the sixth anniversary of Dying Breed, a store specializing in local clothing designs, graffiti supplies, and parties and events.
The SFPD later identified Javier Campos as a person of interest in the case. Surveillance video recorded a Mercedes associated with Campos fleeing the area of the shooting, and the gunfire came from the car, police said.
Campos, who police said has ties with Sureño gang members, has “numerous” firearms warrants from San Mateo and Alameda counties. He also has an outstanding arrest warrant for homicide in Oakland, police said…
A Cruise self-driving car wandered into the crime scene Friday night and appeared to block emergency responders as they aided the victims…(more)
S.F. fears these buildings could fall in earthquake. Here’s when we’ll know which are at risk
By Claire Hao : sfchronicle – excerpt
When will San Franciscans be able to know whether their office or apartment buildings are at risk in a major earthquake?
The city does keep a list, published last month by NBC News, of 3,400 buildings believed to be concrete that could be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake.
- Earthquake tracker: Mapping the latest quakes in California and across the world
Concrete buildings could account for 50% of deaths in a 1906-size earthquake in San Francisco, according to a 2010 city-commissioned study. They are one of the most significant kinds of buildings yet to be retrofitted for earthquake safety in San Francisco and are located on nearly every block in downtown, the Tenderloin and Chinatown.
But city officials and structural engineers caution that this list is preliminary and inaccurate — which is why The Chronicle is not publishing it.
A better list will come, according to Brian Strong, director of the city’s Office of Resilience and Capital Planning, only after the Board of Supervisors passes a seismic retrofit ordinance for concrete buildings, which city staff are currently developing and plan to have before the board by the beginning of next year.
“We can’t compel property owners to give us information on their buildings without going to the Board of Supervisors,” Strong said…(more)
There’s a way to build thousands more housing units on San Francisco’s west side — and neighbors actually like it
By Heather Knight : sfchronicle – excerpt
As San Francisco stares down a state mandate to build 82,000 new housing units within eight years, an 80-something retired architect has a great solution. It’s called Domicity.
Just a few blocks from Ocean Beach, in San Francisco’s sleepy, foggy Outer Sunset neighborhood, sits a little slice of Paris — or as close to it as one can get among the endless rows of single-family homes in varying shades of beige.
At 44th Avenue and Noriega Street sits Gus’s Community Market. Trees, picnic tables and green umbrellas primed for unlikely sunshine line the sidewalks alongside wooden stands brimming with colorful flowers, artichokes and melons.
Above the shop sit three stories of housing, giving the bustling market more customers and the city more desperately needed homes. All in all, the pleasant corner offers a touch of the European flair two supervisors want to see replicated in their districts, swaths of San Francisco that have not shouldered their weight in helping the city address its housing crisis.
Now, Supervisors Myrna Melgar and Joel Engardio — who represent District Seven’s West of Twin Peaks area and District Four’s Sunset neighborhood, respectively — are pushing their sometimes resistant constituents to support far more Gus-style buildings. And they’re teaming up to pass legislation that could help make it a reality…
One sign that west side seniors are coming around to Lew’s idea: George Wooding, a 67-year-old homeowner in District Seven and the president of the Midtown Terrace Home Owners Association, has long opposed plans to build more housing near him, but he’s grudgingly supportive of Lew.
“Times are changing,” Wooding conceded. “He’s way ahead of everybody else. He’s a visionary as opposed to somebody just trying to make money.”…(more)
Since Domicity as introduced to CSFN it appears that a few changes were added to the program. The designs are still a formula that involves mixed use 6 story buildings that may be customized for different purposes, and if memory serves, Lew plans to use lightweight wood products and avoid the need for heavier concrete and steel structures by limiting the buildings to six stories. There is now a nonprofit funding program based on the idea that a lot of senior homeowners want to downsize. Lew may be a visionary but his partners may rub some the wrong way.
New Downtown San Francisco Drug-Dealing Command Center To Open
by Joe Burn, George Kelly :sfstandard – excerpt
San Francisco is set to open a new unified command center to combat open-air drug dealing in the Downtown area, city officials said Friday.
The new center to combat the drug crisis will be named the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center (DMACC), according to the Department of Emergency Management, which will work with San Francisco police and the Department of Public Health to operate the center.
An emergency management department spokesperson confirmed the center would open within the next two weeks at a location on Market Street near Civic Center. The exact location will not be disclosed due to security risks.
The emergency management department says the coordinated effort has been in place since April 17 but will move from a virtual to a physical in-person center, allowing the different agencies, including federal and state partners, to work more closely together to direct resources to disrupt open-air drug markets more effectively.
New data collection strategies will also be implemented to produce monthly reports on outputs and outcomes related to disrupting San Francisco drug markets…(more)
This sounds suspciouly like the request made by Supervisor Peskin. Hope it works regardless of who thought of it.
My Pharmacy and Hospital Didn’t Have Fentanyl Test Strips. I Found Them at the Neighborhood Bar
By Sarah Holtz : sfstandard – excerpt (published 1/4/2023)
I’ve always been a firm believer in harm reduction. The way I see it, legalizing safe consumption sites and giving people access to fentanyl test strips and Narcan (a brand name for the overdose-reversal drug naloxone) will only serve to make our community safer.
On New Year’s Eve, as I prepared to head to a house party where I figured some might use recreational drugs—and thus put themselves at risk of accidentally overdosing on fentanyl—I went out in search of test strips and naloxone. With test strips, I could help people identify if drugs were laced with fentanyl. With Narcan, I might be able to help reverse an inadvertent overdose.
I figured it’d be an easy errand. I was wrong…
I knew that local nonprofit FentCheck has an online map of sites that distribute free test strips…
The irony of striking out at the pharmacy and the hospital, only to find the potentially life-saving resource I was looking for at a neighborhood bar, left me with more questions than answers…
So I called up Alison Heller, co-founder of FentCheck. Driven by a desire to confront the FentCheck crisis, Heller attended EMT school before starting FentCheck. She told me that when she started her organization, fentanyl test strips were considered drug paraphernalia. She and her co-founder Dean Shold worked hard with lawmakers to help declassify them. …(more)
Good to know that there is a simple test and where it is available. More information on the tests may be avoid the need for so much Narcan. Detailed information on what to look for should be distributed more widely.
SF Parking Changes: A Reprieve From Sunday Charges, Later Meter Hours?
By Garrett Leahy : sfstandard – excerpt
The hours you get charged to park on San Francisco city streets were set to be changed this summer for the first time since 1947. But San Francisco supervisors passed a resolution last week urging the agency to delay the idea pending an “independent economic impact report.”
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency wants to extend meter hours from 6 to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and add Sunday metering hours in select parts of the city where parking charges previously did not exist.
The transit agency claims the plan will “expand parking availability and benefit all those who live, shop, worship and work in San Francisco.”
However, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said it seemed likely the agency would agree to postpone the changes until the city’s controller can do a study at some point in September. …(more)
Peskin plans to question Breed on public safety at UN Plaza
By Adam Shanks : sfexaminer – excerpt
People take cover on a rainy morning in the U.N. Plaza a day after the Tenderloin Center closed last December. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will question Mayor London Breed at the plaza during its next meeting…
Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors will discuss The City’s response to the opioid crisis at its epicenter.
Maybe.
In an unorthodox meeting organized by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Breed is set to field questions Tuesday at United Nations Plaza on how The City is coordinating public safety resources in response to an alarming rise in drug overdose deaths.
The agenda for Tuesday’s regular Board of Supervisors meeting calls for a “special off-site meeting,” beginning at 2 p.m., at United Nations (U.N.) Plaza on McAllister Street. After Breed addresses Supervisors, the meeting will be recessed and supervisors will reconvene in City Hall for their usual session…(more)
Angry SF Giants Fans Rail Against Beer Costs, Parking Fees, BART as Attendance Drops
By Ethan Kassel : sfstandard – excerpt
Expensive parking, smaller beer that’s hardly “cheaper” than the full-size options and seemingly unsafe public transit have all been cited as factors that have kept San Francisco Giants fans away from Oracle Park.
Fans on Reddit responded to an analysis The Standard recently did of this year’s slumping attendance, explaining their reasoning for staying home instead of going out to the ballpark—and they didn’t hold back.
“Cheaper beer? You mean smaller beer,” Reddit user LJSearles commented.
The 14-ounce domestic options, available at select Doggie Diner stands for $9 each, are cheaper than the full-size options on a per-ounce basis, but it’s far from a bargain, fans said. Other fans blamed a particularly wet spring for low attendance, while some said missing out signing big-name stars such as Aaron Judge hurt attendance numbers…
Parking Woes…
Sparse parking availability was also noted by numerous fans, with many lamenting having to pay $40 or more for a spot. However, much of the parking around the stadium is operated by third parties, as SF Giants Transportation Director Joshua Karlin-Resnick noted…(more)