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Drug Policy: SFPD's buy-bust operations a costly flop

A A A Comments (1) By Chris Roberts Wednesday, Apr 28 2010

Elaine Mason is no saint — the 52-year-old with no fixed address has been arrested 49 times in San Francisco — but the case that could land her in prison isn't exactly Scarface-worthy. In January, she was walking in the Mission District near 16th Street when a man approached her and asked for a solid (street slang for a $20 rock of crack cocaine).

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Mason brought the man to two possible sellers before the pair found a 17-year-old girl who had drugs on hand — except she was a burn artist who sold them "bunk," fake crack. That didn't matter: The buyer was an undercover police officer conducting a "buy-bust" operation, and Mason, who had brokered the deal, was arrested and charged with a felony.

Buy-busts — in which teams of five to 11 undercover officers solicit drugs on the street — are a prized success story for the SFPD and the district attorney's office, according to DA spokesman Brian Buckelew. That's one way of looking at it. The other is that buy-busts are expensive wastes of time that accomplish little other than clogging up the courts with low-level addicts while providing gobs of overtime to narcotics cops, according to senior public defender Rebecca Young. She figures that at least 150 cases like Mason's go through the courts every month.

The buy-bust program rounds up some professional criminals who deal drugs for a living, but these comprise "maybe 1 percent" of the total, according to Young. Meanwhile, she says, this "dirty secret of the criminal justice system" accounts for 40 percent of the cases in San Francisco courts, and contributed to the fiasco at the SFPD crime lab, with overworked technicians forced to test dime bag after dime bag within 48 hours of seizure. These include cases like that of a 30-year-old homeless man who sold a $60 eighth of marijuana to a cop on Haight Street last May, who faces prison time for the pot and the small quantity of psilocybin mushrooms he had stashed in a pocket.

Buckelew admits that addicts are "swept up" in the buy-bust operations. But if there weren't undercover cops doing the stings, gangs from all over the Bay Area might flock to places like the Tenderloin, he says: "It's the strongest tool we have in stemming the drug trade in these communities."

But at what cost? SFPD overtime spending cleared $40 million in 2008 and $30 million in 2009, and much of that, Young figures, goes to cops running buy-bust stings, clocking overtime while on the streets and then earning four hours in court pay waiting to testify in a case over a $20 rock. The SFPD "has to prove this is worth $20 million a year," she says.

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Brian Buckelew 07/22/2011 11:55:00 PM

This is the comment SFWeekly deleted. In all fairness to the DA's office and the SFPD, this article distorts the reality of this program and minimizes (and mocks) what I said. The title for this "news" story might be an indicator: "Drug Policy: SFPD's Buy-Bust Operations A Costly Flop." Most disappointingly, the article does not mention WHY the buy-bust program is important to San Franciscans: it is the best and most effective on-the-street tool to combat open-air drug dealing. It acknowledges that men, women and children actually LIVE in the Tenderloin and the Mission. They are PEOPLE who call those communities HOME. Many of the residents in those areas live there because of financial constraints or are first-generation Americans trying to get started in the United States. They DESERVE to have the police make the streets safer. Why is that so unpalatable? So why else should people care about combating the drug trade in these areas? The Tenderloin has 3,500 kids living in the district--kids who have to walk a gauntlet of drug dealers, gang members, parolees, sex offenders and others who loiter and victimize people on the streets. Many of the murders in the area are because of the drug trade, including one incident last year in the Tenderloin where an innocent woman was shot and killed and four others were shot and injured after someone got ripped off in a drug deal at Turk & Taylor. There were TWO separate drug dealers in two separate instances who were killed last year for selling "bunk" -- the same crime Elaine Mason committed (Elaine Mason herself has a violent criminal history, including prison stints for robbery and burglary and a 30-year history of crime in San Francisco). Drug addicts who are fed by the drug dealers in the Tenderloin and the Mission commit virtually all of the property crime in San Francisco. Drug/alcohol use and abuse in the Tenderloin is a factor in the majority of violent crimes. Gangs and other organized groups have dealers in the Tenderloin and Mission who sell drugs: it is not a threat, as the article suggests, it is already a reality. Addicts who have a brushes with the law in San Francisco are not sent to prison by an overreaching DA's office -- they are given rehab opportunities over and over and over. The article suggests by anecdote that the DA's office seeks prison in marijuana buy-bust cases. Really? It suggests by anecdote that marijuana buy-busts are what this program is all about. They are not (there are few of them and they are treated incredibly differently than cases involving the sale of heavier drugs). The article mentions that a number of officers work on these operations, but gives a justification provided only by a deputy public defender: that it is about overtime. What about the point I made about how this is among the most dangerous police work there is? What about the near murder of an undercover "buy" officer last year in the Tenderloin by a drug dealer with a sawed-off shotgun? Elaine Mason is not the victim here. The underserved and underprotected residents of the Tenderloin and the Mission are. _____________________________________________ Brian J. Buckelew Assistant District Attorney Director of Legal Affairs and Public Information Office of the District Attorney City and County of San Francisco 850 Bryant Street, Room 322 San Francisco, CA 94103 Phone: 415.553.1383 Fax: 415.575.8815 brian.buckelew@sfgov.org