View the San Francisco for Sunday, February 9, 2025
Mayor Daniel Lurie: “I’m looking for commissioners across commission appointments who will work with us, that will collaborate and will communicate, and I look forward to the support going forward of all the commission appointments that I make.
”And, thus far, it seems there are few willing to stand in the way of a mayor who was elected to bring change to a city badly in need of it. The City quietly announced plans last week to establish a new drop-off center in SoMa, where people arrested for drug use or dealing would be taken by police and linked to treatment, whisked to jail, or bused out of San Francisco. Details about the operation remained sparse as of Friday, but the plan was presented by Lurie’s administration as a way to disrupt open-air drug markets while allowing police officers to quickly return to their beats.He moved to oust Max Carter-Oberstone from the Police Commission, a choice that requires approval from the Board of Supervisors. In doing so, Lurie signaled he’ll expect his appointees to the civilian oversight commission to be in alignment with his administration. Both the attempt to shed Carter-Oberstone and launch the new drop-off center were bold moves that immediately raised a torrent of questions, but Lurie did little publicly to justify either. The administration did not issue a formal press release detailing the drop-off center, instead leaving it to be outlined by SFPD Assistant Chief David Lazar at a town-hall meeting.after he refused to vote for the commission president she wanted. His stances on police policy — such as his opposition to a ballot measure to expand police power backed by both Lurie and Breed last year — have rankled moderates. For his part, Carter-Oberstone told Mission Local that he intends to stay in the role and will advocate for himself before the Board of Supervisors. Asked during an unrelated press conference about his justification for seeking Carter-Oberstone’s removal, the mayor said, “We are going to have a new day and a new era of cooperation and collaboration.” “I’m looking for commissioners across commission appointments who will work with us, that will collaborate and will communicate, and I look forward to the support going forward of all the commission appointments that I make,” he said., and the only invitation Lurie’s administration has extended thus far is for him to voluntarily resign from the Police Commission. Lurie clearly wants to know that he’ll have a Police Commission that will support him should he — for example — need to hire a new police chief. Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman said he believes Lurie deserves a commission that he can trust. In an interview with The Examiner, he said that Lurie need not publicly make the case against Carter-Oberstone — the mayor only needs to convince six supervisors to agree to remove him. “It’s not a standard of malfeasance or even cause, it’s a standard of ‘I want to remove you,’” Mandelman said. Lurie’s powerful moves came just a week after he chose the proverbial carrot over the stick so often wielded by his predecessors. Rather than counting to six votes and securing a bare majority, he opted to negotiate a compromise for a fentanyl state-of-emergency ordinance that could — and did — win broad support from the Board of Supervisors.Supervisor Shamann Walton noted that the administration had requested broad powers to take on the fentanyl and homelessness crises without articulating anything approximating a precise plan. “This is probably the most vivid example of putting the cart before the horse I have seen in my entire six-plus years in office,” Walton said before casting the lone dissenting vote against the ordinance. The mayor and his supporters can certainly argue that he was elected with a mandate to turn things around, both within City Hall and on the disorderly city streets outside it. And he’s not wasting any time.A San Francisco police officer speaks to a man before a homeless encampment sweep on Waterloo Street by Loomis Street on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023. People arrested for using or dealing drugs on San Francisco streets will now be whisked away to a temporary “mobile triage center” where they will enter treatment or be taken to jail. Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration has amassed an array of city departments and service providers to launch the new site, where police will be able to drop off drug users for quick processing and — according to the plan — access to treatment and services. The plan marks Lurie’s most aggressive move yet to address The City’s street conditions, which have improved during the day butThe center, unveiled by police department officials on Tuesday, will operate on a 30-day pilot basis. It launched Friday morning, according to an on-site provider., a local nonprofit that runs the Night Navigation program in collaboration with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, told The Examiner that it was unclear what roles each organization and city department collaborating on the center has. “It’s going to be multiple providers, and everybody’s going to be assigned a task in order to serve the community the best way,” he said. Rice said it’s his understanding that staff from SFPD, the San Francisco Fire Department, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and various street-medicine teams from the Department of Public Health will be present at the site.Douglas Liu, left, of Code Tenderloin’s Night Navigation team, connects Michail Hutson with a doctor via a telehealth connection in July 2024 and arranges for him to be placed in a shelter to treat his fentanyl-use disorder.last year, deploys teams nightly in the Tenderloin to connect those struggling with substance-abuse issues with treatment. While the program doesn’t include a police presence, Rice said that SFPD has already been helpful in bringing people to the organization if they’re willing to accept treatment. “We do get a lot of referrals from SFPD right now,” he said. “A lot of times they don’t even arrest them — they engage with them, and then they call us.”On Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office announced that it plans to expand its capacity by opening two additional dormitories in Jail Annex No. 3. It did not detail how it will staff the annex. The union that represents deputy sheriffs has previously complainedThe additional space is necessitated by the increasing number of people arrested and jailed since local, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies began working together to crack down on drug dealing and“Our staff has worked diligently at the Annex to accomplish improvements to plumbing, outdoor recreation areas, and our security system in order to make room for a growing jail population,” Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said in a statement. “We are proud to announce that we have decided to have a dedicated housing unit at the Annex specifically for individuals who suffer from substance abuse disorders so that they can receive the cognitive behavioral classes and communal support they need to get back up on their feet.” The administration has not announced a cost for the SoMa drop-off program or detailed a funding mechanism. San Francisco police have pitched the idea as a way to relieve officers of the need to transport individuals directly to jail and file reports after arresting them, a process that can take the officer out of commission for hours.San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, center right — seen walking in the Tenderloin with police Chief Bill Scott, center left, prior to Lurie’s inauguration in January — has prioritized a push for public safety that includes a focus on The City’s opioid crisis. In addition to shelter and behavioral-health treatment, people taken to the site could be offered bus tickets out of San Francisco through The City’s Journey Home program. Rice said that while a lot about the pilot is still unknown, he imagines it will be similar to the Tenderloin Center. The drop-in site, which closed in December 2022, offered services along with safe-consumption resources for those struggling with opioid addiction. Rice said he thinks Code Tenderloin staff will most likely assist in case management and connecting people with transportation to take them to residential treatment. It’s unclear which residential treatment programs will participate in the pilot. The Department of Public Health directed The Examiner’s questions to the Mayor’s Office and SFPD. Vitka Eisen, the CEO of HealthRIGHT 360, a medical provider that offers residential treatment beds in The City, confirmed to The Examiner that at least two of the 22 total slots at the addiction-treatment center SoMa RISE that will be set aside for those who are going to be brought to them through the pilot. Eisen said HealthRIGHT has been asked to increase the total to four. “If there’s a need, we can make more slots, which means we hold those slots open and take fewer walk-ins,” Eisen said.SoMa RISE, which offers beds as seen in June 2022, will set aside at least two addiction-treatment slots for people brought to them through The City’s pilot program implementing a “mobile triage center.” So far, that’s all HealthRIGHT has been asked to contribute, but Eisen said it’s prepared to take on an influx of new clients.Eisen’s administrative office is located at 6th and Mission, and she said she has witnessed the issues in the area firsthand. “It’s been intense,” she said. “There’s definitely a higher level of despair and a kind of heartbreak on Jessie Street.” One concern she expressed is that some people who might be brought to them through the pilot might not want to stop using drugs yet, and might opt to come just because they’re looking for a safe place off the street to avoid further displacement from law enforcement. “We have to be really vigilant for safety monitoring for people, and then manage the complexity of people who have a high level of ambivalence about being in treatment,” she said. “This is always the little-known piece of what happens when you have an aggressive effort to force people into treatment.” Dr. Amutha Rajagopal, an addiction-medicine specialist with UCSF, told The Examiner that she’s even more concerned about the lack of currently available beds already within The City’s public-health system. She said she fears the pilot could take away openings for people who actually want treatment, such as her current patients. “We actually have to send people to San Francisco County-funded centers in San Mateo and San Leandro in order to get them what they’re supposed to be getting,” Rajagopal said. “Often these people end up in the emergency room because there isn’t a place for them to actually get withdrawal support to get sober and then to stabilize them.” She said that happens because people need to be sober in order to enter a residential-treatment program, and there’s already a “bottleneck” in the number of beds available in these programs that help people transition into treatment. “If these drug-treatment programs are suddenly going to be way more eaquipped to do this kind of treatment, to do withdrawal management appropriately, and transition them to good residential treatment programs — fantastic,” she said. “I haven’t seen it happen yet.” Beyond that, Rajagopal said she’s concerned about the punitive aspect of the program, and said that many of the patients she sees now have previously been incarcerated. The success of incentivizing entry into drug treatment “really varies,” she said, with some arrested for drug offenses not diagnosed accurately. “People often end up going to rehab that don’t have an addiction,” she said. “That has happened with some of my patients that had drug offenses.” The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office also expressed concerns about The City’s approach. In a statement, Assistant Chief Attorney Angela Chan decried “policies that punish substance use disorder as a crime rather than as the public health issue it is, and governments that fail to prioritize funding for services that address the root causes of crime.” “The result has been a jail that’s at 100% capacity with deteriorating conditions for detained people and deputies, people still not able to access treatment, and people with substance use disorder being worse off after a stint in jail,” Chan said. Rice said it’s too soon to make any judgments on the potential success of the program, and that he and his colleagues are taking a “wait-and-see” and “observe” approach. “I know it’s going to change,” he said. “This is something that’s going to have to be fluid depending on what’s going on.”Jade Wu shows off some of her red-envelope arts and crafts on display at Edge on the Square’s art gallery on Grant Avenue in Chinatown. It’s no secret how Jade Wu earned the nickname the “red-envelope art master.” When you see the former longtime San Francisco political aide’s elaborate creations, handcrafted almost entirely out of lai see — Cantonese for the red envelopes traditionally doled out among the Chinese diaspora during Lunar New Year celebrations — it’s hard not to stop and gaze in awe. Wu can fold and cut a single red envelope into a lucky fish, or use dozens of them to build colorful Chinese hand fans and lanterns. But Wu said her award-winning designs are more than just a lifelong hobby and passion — the ornaments are a symbol of where she came from and what she has dedicated her life to since immigrating to San Francisco more than 25 years ago. “It’s so meaningful that I can use my art to help everybody understand my culture,” said Wu, who insisted on speaking to The Examiner in English even though it’s her second language. Over the years, Wu has hosted red-envelope folding workshops at senior centers and community spaces all around The City. Her creations have been on display at large-scale Chinese American celebrations, like the Autumn Moon Festival She has become a fixture in Chinatown and North Beach, helping foster relationships between the community and the people around them. For the last dozen years, she served as an aide in former California Assemblymember Phil Ting’s office. As Ting put it, she was his office’s “Chinatown liaison.” This year, for the first time ever, Wu will teach a red-envelope folding class as part of The City’s Chinese New Year celebration. The event is Feb. 15 —— at the headquarters of Edge on the Square at 800 Grant Ave. The fledgling Chinatown nonprofit is dedicated to uplifting different parts of Chinese culture which have historically been underrepresented, such as the arts.“What really stands out to me is her ability to use her ingenuity to continue practicing her craft, and navigate and adapt her artistic expression given the kind of challenges and complexities of immigration, assimilation, displacement, cultural marginalization as a new immigrant in America,” said Candace Huey, head curator at Edge on the Square. “She’s thriving, and that speaks to her resilience.” Wu’s red-envelope artistry traces back to when she was growing up in Taishan, a Chinese city in Guangdong province along the Pearl River Delta on the southern tip of the country. It’s whereWu said she fondly remembers attending weddings in her village and seeing large, intricately hand-cut decorations rendering the Chinese character “囍” — which means “double happiness” — in golden paper. The expression is commonly displayed at Chinese weddings to represent joy and happiness for newlyweds. Wu said she would also see the red-envelope fish motifs frequently hanging during Lunar New Year celebrations. A self-taught artist, Wu said she developed what she describes as her “natural” ability to replicate and build off art from her surroundings. “I am in awe of people who are self-taught like Jade,” Huey said. “They have this inherent intuition to create from what is around them ... There’s this creative muse internally that speaks to them, and then they follow it, despite all the complexities of her experiences.”, which are generally old hotels that have been converted into affordable housing. The dwellings are commonly used as transitional housing for new Chinese immigrants as they gain their footing in The City. While the rent is among the cheapest in San Francisco, each unit is tiny and the facilities are often outdated. Like many immigrants in her shoes, Wu said those initial days were “scary” and overwhelming Unlike her life in Taishan, she didn’t know the language and didn’t have a job.She said she made a promise to herself that in five years time, she would both understand English and “change her life.” Wu began attending local meetings held by well-established nonprofits such as the Chinatown Community Development Center and the Chinatown Community Youth Center, where neighborhood organizers helped residents find community and essential resources. She not only built a network of friends and supporters, but Wu said she also learned English simply by listening to others talk. She said she also volunteered at several after-school programs because she wanted to learn English from the children she helped.Wu said much of her motivation to learn English was finding the tools to help others going through the same immigration and assimilation struggles she experienced when she first arrived in The City. She said her first job in the country was as an organizer at CCDC, where she helped Chinese Americans with their immigration paperwork and adjusting to life in their new homes. Many of those residents, like her, lived in SROs.Wu became a go-to resource for both Chinatown residents and prominent city leaders, working on projects with former Supervisors Jane Kim and Aaron Peskin and the late former Mayor Ed Lee. After canvassing for Phil Ting’s campaign to be elected to the California State Assembly in 2012, Ting offered Wu a job in his office to help him reach his Chinese constituents. “She had demonstrated a great ability to organize folks, specifically monolingual Chinese immigrants, who are some of the hardest people to reach,” said Ting, who was termed out of office in December. For all 12 years he was in office, Wu was Ting’s Chinatown representative, leading and organizing town halls and budget meetings with nonprofits and acting as a Cantonese translator . “She’s so well-respected in the community and so incredibly well networked,” Ting said. “All the elected officials all know who she is and respect her, listen to her and trust her.”Jade Wu and her red envelope arts and crafts at Edge on the Square art gallery at 800 Grant Ave. in Chinatown, San Francisco on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025. “They bring so much joy and beauty into our lives,” said Huey, a former art-history professor. “She’s expanding the aperture of what you can do with a symbolic ritual object.”in Chinese culture. Elders put cash in the small envelopes and present them to either children or unmarried adults as a wish for good luck in the New Year. Wu said her projects represent yet more ways for her to connect generations of Chinese in The City, from immigrants who have barely stepped foot on American soil to those who have been in the country for decades. “Having observed these practices since childhood, I’ve seen villagers place these symbols around their homes and on presents, enriching our community’s cultural tapestry,” Wu said. “I want to use this event as an opportunity to share these aspects of Chinese culture, allowing children here to connect with their heritage and appreciate its rich history.” Ting said that Wu was able to take something from “everyday” Chinese culture and make it into something “beautiful and additive.” Huey said Wu was an easy choice for the organization to center during its festivities this year, calling her a “shape shifter” able to bring a new and engaging twist to Chinese traditions. “She’s able to use a traditional medium that already has a wonderful symbolism embedded in it and configure it into something that is not only creative, but also quite playful and joyful,” Huey said.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. 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