It’s weird because everyone in SF has been saying that these have been decriminalized when the news says that nothing has happened yet AND it’s not about decriminalization:
> It calls for San Francisco police to give investigation and arrests related to use of such substances “the lowest priority.”
That recent law regarding mushrooms was political theater, sponsored by two of the most left-leaning supervisors on the Board of Supervisors[1] worried about potential challengers, especially since the Boudin recall, whom they aggressively supported. Everybody else went along because how could you vote against it?
Just like marijuana, SF police haven't cared about psychedelics for decades. And while there may have been occasional pretext arrests for drugs in the past, encounters were always initiated for something else, and in any event these days police are hesitant to stop in-progress, felony property and violent crimes occurring in front of their faces. I mean, we have open-air heroin markets, and even after Boudin's recall you have to be a distributor, not simply a street dealer, to even get the attention of authorities, police or the DA.
To be fair to progressives and liberals generally, those two supervisors are particularly contemptible, pandering politicians, Dean Preston especially. Hillary Ronin seems more sincere, if misguided, but Preston has no redeeming qualities as a politician.
[1] Which itself is obviously all Democratic, with most if not all members self-identifying as progressive.
It's generally good to encode these decisions in law rather than hand police even more discretion... but I 100% agree with you on Dean Preston and Hillary Ronin. They weaponize progressive language to preserve the status quo.
> It's generally good to encode these decisions in law rather than hand police even more discretion.
Agreed. But this falls short--it's a hack based on budget stipulations that seems to have become all too common; it doesn't really change the status quo given current and long-standing official city policy regarding drugs, especially wrt recreational and medicinal drugs. I'm not even sure it's even enforceable. The DA's office is independent, and I don't think this would prevent a cop from pretextual application of drug laws, which have usually been in violation of city policies, anyhow, such as a marijuana charge that local papers made hay out of recently, but which actually occurred several years ago, was clearly pretextual and against rules (the cop was a rookie), and was never even prosecuted--not even sure it was an actual charge, may have just been listed as probable cause for a search or detainment.
Is there something more that a local municipality can do when it's illegal at the state and national level? I'll admit I don't know anything here. It just struck me as more official than the existing wink and nod.
I suppose it varies. But DAs have wide discretion--strictly speaking, absolute discretion--to abstain from prosecution, and in San Francisco the DA is an elected position, which is common nationwide. (SF also has an elected public defender office, which is extremely rare.) Moreover, AFAIU DAs have some supervisory authority over the police, by law (e.g. investigating misconduct) but mostly by the fact that it behooves the police to have good relations with the DA (and vice-versa). So police aren't in the habit of enforcing specific laws or making arrests that the DA is unlikely to prosecute. And unlike many other cities, the SF DA's office is not very deferential to police department demands--e.g. how to expend their resources to best improve public safety in their opinion--which is often cited as a major reason for supposedly exceptionally low morale among SF police officers.
SF in particular also has a Police Commission, which has direct supervisory authority over the police department, including setting and enforcing policy. Four SF Police Commissioners are nominated by the Mayor, and three by the Board of Supervisors; all must be ratified by the Board of Supervisors. Usually a Police Chief, especially outside major cities, is the top such authority, though the SF Police Chief still has plenty of discretion, and is still appointed by and answers directly to the Mayor.
So in SF both the citizenry via the elected DA, and city politicians via their appointments, control policy regarding if, when, and how criminal laws are enforced. And those are the avenues by which SF has already circumscribed and muted drug laws otherwise beyond the city's control. So the mechanisms are in place, not to mention the actual policies; thus why I called the bill theater. Strictly speaking, though, it has some substance in the sense that it prevents the DA, Police Commission, Mayor, or Police Chief from rolling back existing enforcement restrictions, to the extent they could do so independently.
