Court: San Francisco Cannot Restrict Drug Dealers

In a story that fits the category of “only in California” a state court of appeals has ruled that the City of San Francisco cannot restrict a group of known drug dealers from a 50-block neighborhood known as the Tenderloin.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that four drug dealers filed a lawsuit against the city after the City Attorney issued a public nuisance order barring 28 known dealers from visiting the neighborhood.  For years the Tenderloin has been the epicenter of drug dealing and fatal overdoses, and the city Attorney issued the order because under, California law, street dealing is a misdemeanor which carries no real consequences.  Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin does not even prosecute misdemeanors.

The First District Court of Appeals unanimous ruling in People v. Padilla-Martel held that the Tenderloin was too large an area for the city to restrict street dealers from visiting, which violated their constitutional right to travel.  The court also noted that there are many community service providers in the Tenderloin including help with employment, housing and health, which the drug dealers might wish to utilize.

California’s out-of-control crime, drug and homeless problems are the logical result of several factors including: state laws decriminalizing quality-of-life crimes such as vagrancy, disturbing the peace, petty theft and public intoxication; laws reducing the consequences for more serious crimes including drug dealing, assault, domestic violence, car theft and commercial burglary; laws allowing the early release of thousands of serious and violent criminals including residential burglars, sex offenders and even murderers; the state’s failure to provide anything close to adequate mental health treatment facilities, and the ACLU-won prohibition against involuntary commitment into such facilities of the obviously mentally ill;  progressive district attorneys who refuse to prosecute most crimes and refuse to seek the full sentences provided under state law for serious and violent offenders; and finally, the hundreds of activist judges Governors Brown and Newsom have appointed, willing to deny cities like San Francisco the ability to even attempt to address the safety of the most crime-plagued neighborhoods.

There is quite a bit of evidence that the public has had enough of this insanity.