San Francisco SoMa storekeeper welcomes deployment of Guard, CHP officers to Tenderloin
SAN FRANCISCO -- Gilles Desaulniers has owned Harvest Urban for nearly 20 years and has witnessed the downward spiral of the surrounding neighborhood as it has been overwhelmed with crime and drug use.
He welcomes Gov. Gavin Newsom's new plan -- announced Friday -- to bring in the CHP and California National Guard into the city to combat the deadly fentanyl epidemic, in partnership with district attorney Brooke Jenkin's office and SFPD.
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Newsom's office said the city has seen a 40% jump in overdose deaths in the first three months of this year alone. Most are concentrated in the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods.
Desaulniers told KPIX that things have gotten so bad that he won't walk anywhere in the neighborhood. He'll actually drive a block and a half to his work everyday.
"I feel like I live in a weird dystopian world. It just doesn't make sense to me. Like, it's hard as a business owner and I come to work and I see it again," Desaulniers said. "For people like us who live in SoMa and the Tenderloin, it's in your face everyday, and I can't escape it and it gets really tiring. I noticed that when I travel somewhere else my brain changes because I'm not on alert all the time."
The 71-year-old longtime San Francisco resident said his market has been broken into at least five times this year. Last year, he replaced seven huge panels of glass. He said he witnesses stealing multiple times a day and believes the store bathroom is used daily for drug transactions.
"And it's getting pretty violent, I've been knocked out, I've been accosted, I've been bitten ... there's just no enforcement of any kind," he said. "They come in here with machetes and knives."
Desaulniers shared photos of some of those bite marks after he tried to stop shoplifters. One attack left a tendon in his hand permanently damaged.
Desaulniers said he was not expecting dramatic changes anytime soon.
"We need a major intervention somehow. It looks so spread out and so vast that the local police can't really get a handle on it, there's just not enough officers out there," Desaulniers said.
Newsom paid an unannounced visit to the Tenderloin this week, and the mayor said he's been working to take aggressive action. The state agencies will identify resources and personnel to dismantle fentanyl trafficking rings.
"CHP will be patrolling on the streets and the National Guard, we still have to figure out exactly how we're going to use those resources," Chief Bill Scott said at a press conference Friday. "They bring a lot to the table. They bring a lot of resources to the table but let me be clear on something. We're not talking about a military state."
Desaulniers said he often witnesses overdoses on Minna Street, and the intersection of mental illness, homelessness, and drug abuse at this store.
"The way we're doing it now, it's sporadic and it doesn't hold, so you might try to clean up something and the police will go away and three days later everything will come back," he said.
Desaulniers says whatever efforts are put forth need to be longstanding and consistent.
San Francisco public defender Mano Raju issued a statement to KPIX:
"We do need our state and city leaders to act with this type of urgency to prevent overdose deaths, like opening overdose prevention centers. No amount of law enforcement will solve what is really a public health crisis. We know from 50 years of the war on drugs that the people who are likely to be targeted by any forthcoming operations will be in low-income and Black and Brown communities, including those who have been trafficked or coerced into the drug trade under threat to themselves and their families.