New San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has been on the job less than two weeks since replacing the recalled Chesa Budden, but her office has already filed more individual drug possession charges than have been filed in San Francisco in 11 years. according to records reviewed by SFGATE and city data.
Jenkins, who took office on July 8, said she had nothing to do with the allegations and plans to withdraw them.
The drug possession charge – a violation of California Health and Safety Code 11364A – is almost always used in San Francisco along with other charges such as burglary, drug possession or gun possession. City data shows that since the beginning of 2011, there have been 2,950 cases in which this charge, a misdemeanor (classified as 11364A/M/0 or 11364 in the database) was filed, and in only nine of those 2,950 cases did the suspect facing charges only for 11364A.
Public Defender Peter Calloway told SFGATE that after reviewing the nine cases, he believes only one was a genuine case of solo drug possession charges and the others were mislabeled. That’s why he and other members of his office were surprised to see that in the past week, Jenkins’ office had brought independent drug charges in 17 new cases.
Copies of criminal complaints from July 13, 14 and 19 reviewed by SFGATE confirm that Jenkins’ office filed these 17 separate charges for arrests from June 29 to July 7. This sharp increase is deeply troubling to members of San Francisco’s Office of the Public Defender: Mano Raju, the city’s elected public defender, said in a statement that he “condemns[s] these charging decisions by District Attorney Jenkins,” and Adam Lipson, another public defender, told SFGATE that the volume of stand-alone drug charges is “unprecedented.”
Jenkins says she had no hand in it.
“I have not made any policy changes regarding charging for simple possession of drugs and paraphernalia,” she said in a statement to SFGATE. “My office will immediately withdraw these charges as they were made in violation of our office policy. I am focused on holding serious drug dealers accountable, especially those dealing in fentanyl, not targeting and incarcerating those suffering from addiction. We will take the appropriate internal steps to ensure our staff follow our policy.”
A complaint listing an additional stand-alone 11364A charge dated July 5 reviewed by SFGATE confirms there was at least one such charge issued three days before Jenkins took office. A source in the DA’s office said that at the end of Bouden’s tenure, the senior staff overseeing those cases were on extended leave when charges were first brought.
“Usually that charge is there to justify why the cops were involved with your client,” public defender Alexandra Pry said. “Having it as a stand-alone means the suspect doesn’t even have actual drugs. If you’re smoking meth, that means there’s meth in the pipe. If you’re only charged with 11364, that means you can’t even be hit with drug possession, you just have the means to use drugs if you come across them. It is difficult for me to understand why we are arresting and prosecuting these people.”
When he spoke in the Tenderloin last week, Jenkins stressed the importance of prosecuting drug dealers, but did not directly say whether he would prosecute people more severely for drug possession. Jenkins styles herself as a progressive who supports criminal justice reform but disagrees with Budden’s approach. Public defenders say there’s nothing progressive about individual drug charges and that it’s a distraction from tackling more serious crimes in the city.
“They take a lot of time, energy and focus from everyone to deal with,” Calloway said. “It’s a huge waste of resources for everyone except the police who will get more overtime knowing they can harass people sitting on the pavement and make money doing it. This applies not only to possession and paraphernalia charges, but also to drug sales charges. The evidence is clear in both categories, arrests, prosecutions and cages do not work. We have 50 years of failed drug war policies to prove it.
“I respect that the new administration will have new priorities, but to target one of the lowest offenses that is a mechanism for a crime instead of an actual crime, I can’t believe that’s one of the first policies they’ve implemented, Molly said. “I would understand it better if it was about dealers, but this seems very performative. After all, what are you actually doing? How does this help reduce the drug crisis? With most drugs, you can find a way to ingest them without paraphernalia, it’s just harder and more dangerous.”
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