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SAN
FRANCISCO—A block away and a world apart from some of the trendiest
boutiques and restaurants in the Mission District, cars slowly cruise
by the pink cement buildings on 15th and Valencia Streets. Many
carry customers looking to buy heroin, marijuana, or crack cocaine
from the dealers clustered in front of Valencia Gardens—a low-income
housing complex police say is known far and wide as a hub of San
Francisco’s thriving drug market.
But Valencia Gardens is more than just a one-stop shopping center
for narcotics. It is home to more than 300 families, and many residents
who say they don’t like what they see going on outside their
windows.
"I’m terrified," said Nancy, who declined to give
her last name as she dropped her son off at preschool inside the
complex. "Three weeks ago there was a drive-by shooting at
four in the afternoon, right when my kids were walking home from
school."
This is just the kind of neighborhood that would most benefit from
a new strategy in the war on drugs, say supporters of Proposition
36, a state ballot initiative that aims to place nonviolent drug
users into treatment programs instead of jail. In an ideal world,
fewer drugs offenders would be locked up and more would head to
treatment centers and turn their lives around. But as most Valencia
Gardens residents understand, the ideal is often a mirage.
Life here has a way of moving along untouched by ballot initiatives
and political promises. In fact, most residents at the complex,
which spreads over two city blocks, have not even heard of Proposition
36. Daily reality presses too hard. Last year, police filed 4, 081
reports from Valencia Gardens, making it the city’s sixth most
frequent spot for crime, according to San Francisco Police Department
arrest records. Officer Ken Nieman, who has worked the beat for
more than 20 years, said that most of the crimes involve people
from outside the community who are either using or selling drugs
on the street.
"First thing in the morning, you see the crackheads and junkies
out there, ready for their fix," Nieman said. "Then they
see me pull up in my black and white car and go run and hide in
someone’s apartment."
When the day begins with the busy transactions of dealers on their
front steps, families inside have had to learn how to cope with
drugs in their community.
Behind the high metal fences that surround the complex, a group
of small children scramble across monkey bars under the watchful
eye of Eva White, the site supervisor at the preschool. She said
she is not too worried by the illegal activity a few hundred feet
away.
"The people outside selling drugs may be doing bad things to
each other, but they are very protective of the children,"
White said. "And if anything going on looks suspicious, we
get the kids inside immediately."
Mirna Escobar, a 60-year old resident, takes a more aggressive approach.
She spends time peering through the fence, recording license plate
numbers into a notebook.
After she was assaulted two years ago by a drug dealer, Escobar
said, she has taken it upon herself to report the people who "are
running a drug house" to the police. But she says they don’t
take her seriously. "If the police really wanted to, they wouldn’t
allow these people to congregate and loiter on this property. It’s
a joke."
Anita Ortiz, who runs the electoral poll in Valencia Gardens, said
Proposition 36 was unlikely to get much support in her neighborhood—but
not because people oppose drug treatment.
"Maybe if we knew about it, we would vote for it," said
Ortiz, who also serves as tenants’ association president while
raising three of her grandchildren in the complex. Last year, she
said, more than 80 percent of registered residents showed up to
cast their ballots.
Despite the high voter turnout here, however, neither Proposition
36 supporters nor its opponents have made any attempt to educate
residents about the initiative.
"So far we haven’t had the budget in our campaign to do
that kind of grassroots outreach," said Daniel Abrahmson, a
law professor at UC Berkeley and one of the authors of the proposition.
Brenda Wemiz, a teacher at the preschool, is not so sure the initiative
would be anything more than a "temporary solution" to
the problem of drug addiction in the community. She said she recently
had to complain to security guards when some men were throwing used
hypodermic needles from a balcony into an area where children play.
"I see a lot of things working here that I keep to myself,"
she said as she helped a small girl piece together a jigsaw puzzle.
"But I feel good that at least while they’re in here with
us, the kids are protected."
While most residents remain in the dark about the possible effects
of Proposition 36, many of the police officers and security guards
responsible for making arrests in the area know exactly where they
stand on the issue.
"It won’t work," said officer Nieman. "I’m
not a hardcore cop that wants to put people in jail. But I’ve
seen people around here go into a bed-treatment facility and then
walk right out. Most of these users don’t want treatment. That
is some idea that folks who never talked to a serious junkie get
and then write some law. They don’t know what’s really
going on out here."
A security guard who works in the complex said that Proposition
36 wouldn’t make much of a difference in San Francisco, where
the District Attorney’s office is already infamous for its
soft approach to drug-related crime.
Dealers come from places as far as San Mateo and Richmond to sell
their goods at Valencia Gardens because they know that in San Francisco
they are not likely to end up in jail, said the security guard,
who wished to remain anonymous. Police officers and the guards agree
that both sellers and users often plea bargain for lighter sentences,
only to be placed in diversion programs or on court probation with
few incentives to stay clean.
San Francisco District Attorney Terrance Hallinan said he would
welcome Proposition 36 to deal with the enormous number of nonviolent
drug offenses in neighborhoods like Valencia Gardens.
"Sixty percent of the cases that go through my court are drug-related,
and more than half of those would be diverted into treatment programs
if Proposition 36 passes," Hallinan said in a phone interview.
"If I don’t have to use our resources to prosecute those
cases, more of our time would be freed up to effectively deal with
murders, rapes, and other more serious crimes."
But some residents and drug abuse counselors in the area are not
sure that treatment is the solution for everyone picked up on possession
charges.
Many addicts near Valencia Gardens spend some time at Walden House,
San Francisco’s largest residential treatment center for substance
abuse. Steve Maddox, the intake director of 11 years, hadn’t
heard of Proposition 36 either, but he said that drug offenders
often don’t take recovery seriously without the threat of jail
time hanging over their heads.
"Some folks come here because the court mandated it, or their
girlfriends or parents want them to go," he said. "But
if you’re not here because you want to be, you usually don’t
make it."
A former Valencia Gardens resident, who asked to be called Cinderella,
said she had been to Walden House three times to treat her 20-year
addiction to crack. She was recently evicted by the San Francisco
Housing Authority because her live-in boyfriend violated his probation
by failing to appear in drug court.
"Lots of people want to quit, but they can’t. It’s
not a physical thing, it’s a mental thing," she said,
tears spilling from her clear, hazel eyes. "The longest I stayed
clean and sober was five months, but pressure and stress, you know—personal
problems—made me go right back to it."
Supporters admit that Proposition 36 cannot possibly eliminate the
problem of drug addiction in poverty-stricken areas like Valencia
Gardens. But at the very least, Abrahamson said, it sends out a
clear signal that the time has come to try "alternative solutions."
Mirna Escobar agrees. "I know it’s not a perfect world,
but I don’t feel I have to live like this," she said.
"The police tell me, ‘Well, you live in the projects,
what do you expect? Move.’ But I was raised in this neighborhood.
I know people here. Why should I leave this beautiful place?"
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