San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has criticized the practice of releasing repeat drug offenders ahead of their court date, claiming it’s creating a roster of rotating defendants who have contributed to the city’s crime rates.
Jenkins said at a community meeting this week that letting repeat offenders out of custody, only for them to reoffend, is a cycle that has continued to frustrate law enforcement officials as well as prosecutors in her office.
“The community, especially in the Tenderloin, find it abhorrent, right?” she said. “To have to keep dealing with the same problem each and every day.”
The Tenderloin district in San Francisco has continued to see high levels of drug use and crime tied to it. There are open-air drug dens where fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, and methamphetamine are bought and sold like candy. Law enforcement crackdowns have led to multiple arrests and narcotics seizures, but the court system has seemingly blunted efforts by allowing people who were arrested back on the streets within hours in some cases, Jenkins alleged…