Officials in San Francisco can’t seem to understand that we’re having a fentanyl crisis in this country. It killed almost 500 people just last year, it that city alone. Despite the staggering statistic, District Attorney Chesa Boudin “did not secure a single conviction for dealing the deadly opioid for cases filed during 2021.” Why? Because the dealers might get deported.
Fentanyl freedom in San Francisco
Local news outlet The Standard dug up the case information statistics which confirm that Boudin’s office secured just three total “possession with intent to sell” convictions in 2021. Two for methamphetamine and the other for heroin and cocaine.
When George Gascón held his job, he “oversaw over 90 drug-dealing convictions by the DA’s Office in 2018.” That’s a big difference. Fentanyl drug sales cases were prosecuted by Boudin, but the charges were practically always reduced.
“About 80% of the cases in a type of charge category that included fentanyl dealing,” The Standard notes, “involved a defendant ultimately pleading guilty to a crime.” A total of 44.
What they went down for was “accessory after the fact.” That means “the accused was convicted of helping another person commit a crime.” Their up-link.
The prosecutor admits that in a “handful of cases, people arrested on multiple charges including fentanyl dealing end up being convicted of other serious felonies.”
They make it sound so easy but it’s more complicated than that. “The explanation for the surprising absence of drug-dealing convictions is multi-faceted.”
Reducing incarceration
Liberals have been working hard to decriminalize crime for a long time. The best way to empty the prisons is stop calling things crimes. Like shoplifting or dealing fentanyl. Instead the DA’s “put an emphasis on diversion programs.” They have a couple reasons for it.
“Partly out of a commitment to reducing incarceration for lower-level crimes and partly due to efforts to keep the jail population down during Covid.” They have another reason they don’t like to talk about.
As The Standard points out, “another big factor is the DA’s attention to offenders’ immigration status, which by law they are required to consider.” It turns out that a disproportionate number of fentanyl suppliers happen to be from Honduras. That changes the whole game for liberal officials.
The end result is “a revolving door where the drug dealers fueling San Francisco’s overdose epidemic are receiving slaps on the wrist while hundreds are dying on the streets.”
Because “drug dealing convictions are grounds for deportation,” that means “a substantial number of drug dealers in the city are Honduran nationals “who could face deadly consequences if deported.”
Their entire families could be shipped back for one fentanyl dealing member but the “accessory charge still gives them and their families a path toward eventual citizenship.” After they get out of jail, in a few hours.
