Recent Fed/SFPD Joint Narcotics Operation: Circumvent Boudin
How many overdose deaths could Boudin have prevented?
An October 14, 2020 article in the Chronicle discussed the pressure building on Mayor Breed to address an epidemic in fentanyl overdoses. In both 2020 and 2021, more than 700 lives have been lost to fentanyl—more than double the amount of Covid deaths.
While Covid was used as an excuse to shut down the San Francisco economy, SFPD’s attempts to reduce fentanyl dealing in the Tenderloin has been sabotaged by District Attorney Chesa Boudin. In a 60 Minutes interview, Boudin stated, “If all you are doing is taking a couple grams off the street, great. We’ll prosecute that case. We are. We always have.” Unfortunately, law enforcement officers at the federal, California, and SFPD level know Boudin’s statement on his prosecution of any drug cases is patently false regardless of any weight.
Tenderloin fentanyl drug dealing thrives under Boudin
Street retail drug dealing has become more lucrative than wholesaling. A wholesale narcotics distributor may pay $31,000 for a kilo of cocaine and then sell it to a street level retailer for $32,000— translating to a $1,000 profit. The Tenderloin salesman in turn retails that $32,000 investment into a 100% profit, selling the cocaine for $64,000 on the street. A salesman from Central America can come to San Francisco and easily make $1,000 per day, seven days per week.
And while Boudin claims Central American Tenderloin drug dealers are just sending money home to their poor families, the law enforcement officers that interview the drug dealers tell me this is a 100% Boudin-created fallacy. For a Tenderloin salesman, $365,000 of annual tax-free income goes a long way in Honduras. There, the US dollars earned from poisoning the Tenderloin can purchase a sizable house and allows one to “live large.”
Prior generations of drug sellers sold their drugs in “hand-to-hand” transactions so that law enforcement’s binocular surveillance could not actually see the drug transfer in “plain view.” But under Boudin, drug dealers have forgone the old hassle of packaging their drugs in small, premeasured plastic baggies (or capsules in The Wire.) Now, in the middle of the day, street dealers blatantly set their digital scales on Tenderloin sidewalks and weigh narcotics before handing off their poison to addicts. Like law enforcement officers, drug dealers also know that Boudin’s statement about prosecuting drug cases is 100% untrue.
Operation: Circumvent Boudin
The local legacy newspapers relayed this week that, “authorities and joint operations with federal agencies” recently netted 12 ½ pounds of fentanyl and three guns. At this point, the official Fed title of the operation has not been unsealed yet, but the operation was the result of a perfect storm: All of the Tenderloin drug dealers, 100% non-US citizens, reside in Oakland, which meant Boudin could not jurisdictionally sabotage SFPD’s arrests. It wasn’t so much that law enforcement was speculating that Boudin would let the dealers walk away without consequences, as you will read below, almost all the recently arrested drug dealers from this operation were previously freed by Boudin.
SFPD Narcotics officers provided the bulk of the manpower for the joint operation arresting the Tenderloin drug dealers in their Oakland homes. SFPD Narcotics officers that previously worked at Tenderloin Station identified the targets from prior contacts, provided surveillance, intelligence on the supply chain, and assisted with the purchases of “fetty” to establish probable cause for search warrants and a nexus to the dealers’ Oakland residences.
Following the flow of narcotics and guns from Oakland
· Brayan had been arrested in June 2020 for several drugs of a quantity impossible for a single human to use. Boudin dismissed that Tenderloin case in the “interest of justice.” On October 12, 2021, SFPD Narcotics officers arrested Brayan in his Oakland driveway as he tried to flee. Brayan had a Smith & Wesson under his car seat and a quarter kilo of fentanyl drugs (value: $5,000), 9 ounces of methamphetamine (value: $2,700), and half an ounce of heroin (value: $400).
· Additionally, on October 12, 2021, SFPD Narcotics officers went to Andy’s house in Oakland. Andy had received felony narcotics convictions under SF District Attorneys that preceded Boudin. Andy was caught with 5 ounces of heroin ($4,000), half a kilo of cocaine ($16,000), $300 worth of fentanyl, and $240 worth of oxycodone.
· Also, on October 12, 2021, SFPD Narcotics officers arrested Cesar at his home in Oakland with over $1,000 worth of meth, cocaine, heroin, and oxycodone.
· Edin has an extensive SF arrest record for selling drugs, including a June 2020 Tenderloin arrest under DA Boudin. On October 13, 2021, SFPD Narcotics officers were again in Oakland at Edin and Darwin’s house. SFPD retrieved two loaded guns from Edin and Darwin and 2 ¾ kilos of fentanyl ($60,000).
· Hector was arrested in Oakland on October 14, 2021 with half of a kilo of fentanyl ($11,000), a quarter kilo of cocaine ($8,000), five ounces of heroin ($3,500), and two ounces of methamphetamine ($1,600).
In July 2021, Hector was arrested by SFPD when he sold narcotics to an undercover officer, called a “buy-bust.” During my tenure in SFPD Narcotics, I have witnessed the paperwork on thousands of buy-busts arrests made by officers throughout SFPD. If the narcotics test positive, it is a slam-dunk-case for the prosecutor. But not with Boudin. In Hector’s sale to an undercover officer, Boudin straight-up dropped the case and freed Hector “in the interest of justice” so that he could continue poisoning the Tenderloin. What did Boudin say on 60 Minutes? “We’ll prosecute that case. We are. We always have.” An all too familiar Boudin falsehood.
Typical San Francisco dysfunctional solutions to the fentanyl crisis
In an SFPD press release, Chief Scott said, “The staggering loss of life we’ve seen due to drug overdoses is a public health calamity San Franciscan’s haven’t witnessed since the AIDs crisis.” And yet, because of the stealth defunding of SFPD, this week, Chief Scott sent half of the Narcotics team responsible for the above arrests back to uniformed patrol.
Tenderloin Supervisor Matt Haney recommended the immediate need for safe injection sites so narcotics can be consumed with clean syringes and medical supervision. In a way, Haney’s suggestion is no different than Boeing petitioning the FAA to keep flying its crash-prone Boeing 737 Max, while suggesting the solution should be for the government to just build more hospitals to address the surging crash victims.
And then there is Boudin who famously was quoted by 60 Minutes “I need the police department to bring me kilos, not crumbs.” How many fentanyl overdose deaths occurred in the Tenderloin because Boudin let the fentanyl kilo salesmen’s arrests (above) flow through his fingertips as if they were selling crumbs? Just more deaths that attributable to Boudin’s sabotage.