California’s Democratic governor has not announced that he will seek his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, but he sure is making a lot of moves recently that some could interpret as being ‘presidential.’
San Francisco has had a rampant open-air drug use problem for years, and it only got worse as the city’s Democratic leaders turned a blind eye to it, for the most part.
But now, “to address San Francisco’s rampant, open-air drug crisis…Newsom recently deployed the California National Guard and the California Highway Patrol,” The Blaze reported last week.
Last month, Newsom announced a partnership effort to provide extra resources to local law enforcement struggling to combat fentanyl trafficking.
“We’re taking action. Through this new collaborative partnership, we are providing more law enforcement resources and personnel to crack down on crime linked to the fentanyl crisis, holding the poison peddlers accountable, and increasing law enforcement presence to improve public safety and public confidence in San Francisco,” he said.
Mayor London Breed thanked Newson, adding the extra support will “help break up the open-air drug dealing happening in our city.”
That said, Newsom’s effort seems modest at best, and totally useless at worst.
To date, just six California Highway Patrol officers have been dispatched to the Tenderloin and South Market areas along with just 14 National Guardsmen, who will offer “analytical support” to help local law enforcement track drug deals related to cartels.
The Blaze added:
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott stated that he believes the deployment will free up resources for officers, allowing them to patrol the streets.
Scott noted that the National Guard will not be “boots on the ground” or have any “military equipment.”
“They are analytical and administrative support … and this is going to be an ongoing partnership,” he said.
Needless to say, this ‘plan’ has drawn quite a bit of mocking ridicule.
According to the New York Post, Lt. Tracy McCray, the vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said that drug abusers “don’t care” about the number of officers on patrol and blamed the city’s drug crisis on lenient policies that allow criminals to be released soon after being arrested.
“Right now, I see blocks in San Francisco where people are just using out in the open and there is no one telling them, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this,'” McCray stated. “That’s why they keep coming back day after day.”
Translated: This is nothing but political posturing for Newsom — who most definitely has national ambitions — so he can say he ‘addressed the drug problem’ in one of the state’s major cities without really doing anything to fix the problem and allowing the chaos to continue.
