San Francisco mayoral candidate calls for ankle monitors for drug dealers

Mayoral candidate wants to combat San Francisco's drug crisis

Daneil Lurie, one of the candidates for San Francisco mayor announced a plan to tackle the issues of drug use and homelessness that have plagued the city for years.

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie is pitching his plan to handle the city's drug and overdose crisis.

Lurie laid out his plans to leverage technology to try to keep drug dealers out of high drug trafficking areas.

The candidate held a summit inside the now closed Mr. Smith's bar on 7th Street, an area notorious for drug dealing and use.

The owner of Mr. Smith's, Max Young, said he closed the bar for good in 2019 when the drug crisis outside his door forced him out.

A crisis he said is still unfolding with a drug overdose just outside his building on Tuesday. "It just doesn't feel safe, whether it is safe or not, it doesn't feel safe and that's the perception that we have in San Francisco that we need to change," said Young.

The summit addressed the city's 806 fatal drug overdoses last year and the ongoing fentanyl crisis. A former prosecutor and former public defender participated.

"I would ask for the D.A. to push for electronic monitoring, so an ankle monitor," said Lurie. "A stay away order, and a search condition. This way, the sheriff can monitor where these individuals are, and if they violate their stay away order they can be picked up."

"The advantage of this plan is that it puts you out of business as a drug dealer," said attorney and former prosecutor Tony Brass.

Lurie said using ankle monitoring to keep track of drug dealers, using stay away orders, and alert law enforcement when those stay away orders are violated and dealers show up in high drug trafficking areas would not only reduce crime, but pay for itself.

"It would be a cost savings to the taxpayers because if you have a huge reduction in drug dealing you're going to have a huge reduction in medical care, emergency personnel that are called to the corner right outside of this bar," said Lurie.

San Francisco's District Attorney Brooke Jenkins' office released a response to the proposal saying her office has filed more than 400 motions to detain suspected drug dealers, and "when a suspected drug dealer is going to be released over our objection, the district attorney’s office consistently argues for the court to order electronic monitoring, stay away orders and search conditions..."

San Francisco's current mayor, London Breed, also weighed in, and stressed that ankle monitoring programs are not run by the mayor's office.

The mayor's reelection campaign said the mayor has been working with state and federal law enforcement to combat open-air drug dealing and use, and that has led to double the amount of arrests, and she will continue to work with the district attorney to see that those arrests are prosecuted.

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