good afternoon everyone. thank you for joining us here today. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i'm joined today by supervisor matt haney as well as the director of the department of emergency management mary ellen carol. the department of public health behavioral health director

dr. hillary kunis and we are also joined by our police chief bill scott. i am here with our various leaders in san francisco to officially declare a state of emergency in the tenderloin community of the city and county of san francisco. we know that there have been a number of challenges that have happened in this community and have persisted over the years. but if we take a step back, when this pandemic first hit san francisco, of course, we immediately in light of what we knew was inevitable declared a state of emergency to deal with the global pandemic of covid-19 and, in fact, what we saw over the last almost two years was san francisco step up, remove the bureaucratic layers and the opticals that get in the way of

actually being effective and collaborating with our various city agencies and what we were able to do to deal with the pandemic was extraordinary. we are one of the densest cities in the country and with less than 700 people who lost their lives throughout the entire pandemic, we saw one of the lowest death rates of any other major city in the u.s. and san francisco not just because we acted quickly and shut down early, it's because we had the ability to move quickly and set up our various locations including a covid command center embedded equity into our response to help deal with challenges all over the city. but the sad reality is when we

look at the loss of life in the pandemic which every lost life is tragic, we had over 700 people alone die due to a drug overdose last year in san francisco. we have over 600 and counting this year. when we look at the conditions on our streets, it is really unfortunate, it's sad, it's heart breaking, and i must say, what doesn't get publicized enough is the fact that not only do we say and we are a compassionate city, the amount of money that we spend on services to help people struggling with mental illness, substance use disorders, programs. our street overdose team, our

wellness team. additional resources for narcan. the additional organizations that assist us with those struggling with addiction and mental illness. the significant increase in number of behavioral health beds in our system. a mental health sf, we've done a lot of work to try and turn things around because we know that suffering from those things are not easy. it is not just about homelessness. it's about addiction. it's about the fact that there is clearly in the tenderloin community with the conditions of not just the streets, but the people living there and the people suffering that we are in a crisis and we need to respond

accordingly. it's not just about our police response to make sure that when people cross that line and commit crimes, we hold them accountable. it's about getting people the help that they need and being able to do so quickly. i've said this time and time again, if you don't know what it's like to experience an addiction and i hope to god you never find out, we have to meet people where they are. we can't wait for something to be set up. we have to move quickly. we can't wait until something goes through a layered process. we have to move quickly. too many people are dying in this city. too many people are sprawled out all over our streets.

and now we have a plan to address it. a robust, aggressive plan to address it. earlier this week, i made it clear that there are going to be a number of things that this city is going to do to address public safety and part of that is a police response. part of that is accountability. part of that is making sure that we are consistent, but the other part is being aggressive about getting people into services and support and not allowing what has happened on our streets to continue. not only the fact that people who are suffering from these things are randomly committing acts of violence towards people who are just walking down the street not to mention the

number of shootings and stabbings and other things that are happening randomly in this community, but also the high number of people who are dying from fentanyl overdoses. so leading this effort to address this emergency will be mary ellen carol and the work that we have in place after our assessment will allow us the ability through this emergency declaration to move quickly, to move fast, to change the conditions specifically of the tenderloin community. this is necessary in order to see a difference, in order to reverse some of the deaths from overdoses and the assaults and

attacks and other things happening in this community. so, at this time, i want to introduce someone who's been advocating for resources and let's be clear, this city spends more money on when

people walk down the streets of san francisco, they should feel safe. they shouldn't have to see someone sticking a needle in various part officer their body laying out on the streets and wondering what can i do to help them. they shouldn't be spit on. we have to have an honest conversation about people who suffer from mental illness and substance use disorder and that crosses a line and impacts other peoples' ability to feel safe in our city, addressing those challenges, understanding what people are suffering through and meeting them where

they are. and i'd like to introduce supervisor matt haney of district 6 to say a few words. >> supervisor haney: i want to thank the mayor for her focus for her urgency and courage in today's announcement. the tenderloin is a community of residents who want and deserve safety, who want and deserve health and who want to survive. they need help. and this is a statement of the urgency that help is on the way. our city came together over the last few years and through everything we had to confront a deadly epidemic. and because of those actions of the people who are standing up here, we save lives.

and we have to do that again. the overdose epidemic is taking the lives of nearly two people a day in our city. most of those people in the tenderloin are south of market and mostly fentanyl. and if we are going to stop the epidemic, if we are going to save lives. we are going to once again throw everything we have at it. we need resources. we need coordination. we need tracking and we need it now. we cannot wait to take action. every day that we wait, anything that is getting our way to move slower, may cost lives. and this is something that we know we can do. decades ago, there was another epidemic that we faced which was hiv and aids. and this city came together we

led the way and we saved lives. and so even though this is an epidemic that's not only affecting our city and the tentder loin, it's a national epidemic. we have to demonstrate through commitment and compassion not only looking the other way, but confronting the problem. i think if there's anything we've demonstrated over the last year and a half under mayor breed's leadership that we can absolutely do this. but it takes us treating it like the emergency and the crisis it is and that's what we're doing today. thank you, mayor breed also as a resident of the coo at the

scale of the problem we're facing and you have my full support and partnership. and i want to thank chief carol and director scott and chief kunis for your partnership on it. i want to introduce the person who is going to lead this effort through the covid-19 pandemic bringing together resources, bringing together staff. unprecedented focus and speed to confront a pandemic. we have to do it again with this deadly epidemic of drug overdose. so i want to welcome up now director caroll. >> director: thank you, mayor breed, and thank you, supervisor haney. in emergencies, people need resources immediately and not months from now. an emergency declaration allows san francisco to cut through the red tape, to obtain the

contracts, the resources and the personnel that we need to address the crisis conditions in the tenderloin. we only have to look at our covid response to see how an emergency declaration allowed us to quickly lease hotels, hire critical staff and establish testing and vaccines. if you remember, when we did that declaration, there is a lot of questions about why we were doing a declaration so early before we even had a case in san francisco. it is because we knew the lead time that we needed and we knew how important it was to have the ability to conduct those resources. that's what it's about. this includes speeding up the establishment of a linkage center that once activated. the site will connect individuals in crisis to resources like substance use

treatment, counseling, and medical care. to date, we have conducted neighborhood assessments, community stakeholder engagement. we've coordinated interventions, and helped people in crisis connect to social services. i just want to reiterate that the emergency declaration is really about removing obstacles so that we can go in and conduct the work we need to do to help the residents of the tenderloin. our goal is to get those services coordinated as quickly as we can in order to alleviate the overall suffering that people are experiencing in the neighborhood. thank you very much. i'll turn it back to you. >> so, with that, are there any

questions? >> question: the chronicle was told two months ago, if you declare it an emergency, it could practically allow -- not practically allow, but you can do anything [inaudible] today. what does this mean in two months? >> can you go back to the first question? >> question: [inaudible] >> so the challenge we have with our conservetorship process is we wait until someone is 51/50 which is a 72-hour hold before we can implement a course of action which goes through a lengthy court process. from my perspective, it's not strong enough to be as effective as we would like it to be and i think that's why we have to use our alternative of

not giving people any option when they are struggling with addiction and have challenges with mental health. we have to take them somewhere. so either that somewhere is going to be san francisco general depending on their condition or that somewhere is going to be a location that we will set up as a result of this emergency declaration and the goal is to not let anyone stay out in the streets and not give them an option and to enforce many of our various laws that are on the books including sit lie and camping and sleeping and other things. so we're going to be a lot more aggressive with implementing existing laws on the books in order to get people off the streets and unfortunately the conservatorship does not work as effectively as is it should. >> question: and why the change in two months?

if we did declare an opioid crisis that we would not be able to do anything that we're not doing now. so i'm wondering what's is changed in two months? >> what's changed is at that time we were working with the department of public health and the city attorney's office to understand how we can get more creative on declaring a state of emergency because the problem we were having is technically under some of of 0 our various laws, it wasn't in terms of what was put forward and what was suggested, it wasn't something that technically we could use legally as a basis. so we had hunkered down, got creative and workeded with our attorneys to figure out a way. even at that time, it was a crisis. this is not something that just all of sudden happened. we were able to find a way

which we needed in order to address it and so that's what we did. >> question: mayor, do you think this declaration will save lives? >> my hope is that it will save lives. people laid out on the streets, we don't know if they're dead or alive. the ability for our street wellness teams to do checks, but most important, that person probably needs to be monitored and so part of our process is removing them from that location and moving them inside to a location where we have the kinds of folks that can monitor, that can provide resources, but more importantly, we're not here to judge. we're here to say, we're here, we're paying attention, we don't want you to die and so we're going to do everything we can to support you but we've got to they you off the streets. >> question: a public defender

said that expanding police presence is going to be harmful to people who are already overpoliced and it cuts the promise you made in the wake of the george floyd murder death. what is your response to that? >> answer: it doesn't. you see significant investments in programs including commitment to the african american community for $60 million a year ongoing. and so you tell that to the families who i met with who are in tears from the attacks and telling me that they want the police there. telling me that they call the police and they want them to show up. the families and the people who live there, has anyone from the public defender's office or anyone else had a conversation with these families who feel uncomfortable walking their kids down the street. so have the public defender give them a call and see what

they want and they need to protect their lives and their children. everyone in theory can is talk about all the policies they want around no police and defund the police and all of these other things, but at the end of the day, if someone beat your kid like that 11-year-old girl, who are you going to call to protect you? and that's the point of this. we have worked very hard in this city to turn things around with the challenges that have existed historically in the police department of san francisco and i'm very proud and confident in bill scott and his leadership and the various trainings, anti-bias trainings, the new recruits which have made the department more and more diverse and understanding of various communities, making sure that we're sensitive to the need and we're not creating these barriers to those who in the past have historically had challenges with the police. we have people who want a

relationship. businesses in the tenderloin who want a relationship and treat their police officers with kindness and respect, the same with the police officers towards them. so folks can say what they want about all of this going back on your word this and that, but at the end of the day, the people in this community are not safe and it is not fair and it's not right. and part of the response to this is definitely police officers. >> question: [ indiscernible ] >> answer: and they're deployed in the tenderloin too. but let me just be clear and the chief can talk about that. this declaration of emergency is more so about making sure that we are dealing with our public health crisis on the

streets and part of it separately from that is definitely a significant increase on our police response. so, if you want, i can bring chief scott up if you have a question. yes. >> thank you, mayor. everything that was said today only enhances our ability to do our jobs. enforcement, we have to enforce. we have to arrest drug dealers. a lot of what people complain about are the street conditions, open air injections of whatever is being injected in peoples' arms and toes and those things have to be addressed. the other side of that is our officer has said time and time again, let's have a system where we can get the social workers involved and that's exactly what this does at the

front end so we can go and do the things that the public wants us to do. arrest people that are hurting people. stop the open air drug uses. stop some of the craziness that's going on on our streets and that's what most of us came on this job to do and this only enhances our ability to do that because our officers will work in partnership with the health department and social services so they don't have to do that. we know to treat people with dignity and respect. we came on this job to be cops and this will only enhance that and the deployment that's already been increased. and i want to echo that in my comments that the mayor said. thanks to the mayor and the support of her budget office than any other community by far year to date. all this needs to come together. we will continue to invest in the tenderloin, our officers

have worked a lot of hours and they don't mind doing that, but they want good outcomes. so when we enforce, we want consequences when the evidence is there. we need to support so they're not doing social work. we understand we have to treat people well and do the job the way we have expected. and we need the support. the emergency declaration and my professional opinion will give us that support right now. so thank you. >> question: mayor breed, you mention an intention to move people to a place they need to be monitored. can you expand on where they will be moved to? >> answer: yes. mary ellen caroll can answer that. >> yes.

so we made reference to a linkage center and we will have people who are experiencing substance abuse disorder, they can link up with the department of public health resources. they can link with community based organization resources and treatment. we can find out where they are in the housing system if they need housing and we can also meet them where they are with some basic hygiene, food. we really want people to -- this is really intended to be a warm intervention with people to engage people. i think i can tell you personally and i think a lot of people feel frustrated with the lack of intervention and the lack of ways to intervene with people who are suffering on the street. and so this is a place that we can pull people in and get them

warm, get them dry. get them fed and have them connected to all of the many services and resources that the city has. >> question: [ indiscernible ] >> answer: yes. it is voluntary. people can come in on their own. people will also be given choices. so there is a push pull. our intention is to be more pull than push, but there will be and as the chief has talked about, there may be instances where people have a choice. you know, you're doing something illegal, something that's harmful in the neighborhood in this situation. we have this option for you to go here and we're hopeful that people are going to take us up on that option as much as possible.

>> good afternoon and welcome to -- [speaking spanish]. >> operations, can you please mute that microphone for us. apologies.