From collaborative courts to "
wet houses" to a revamped Mobile Assistance Patrol, the City and County San Francisco is putting forth a multi-faceted approach to its problem with chronic inebriates.
S.F. has many ideas on handling drunks
By Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle
We've got to give credit to San Francisco city officials. When their
plan to handle chronically drunk homeless people was tossed out by a
judge, they didn't merely opt to drown their sorrows in a stiff drink.
They've
got several other creative ideas, including jury trials for the chronic
inebriates, a wet house where alcoholics can continue to drink on-site,
a revamped outreach program and even a pilot program to test an
injectable drug that could make alcoholics not want to drink.
Earlier
this month, a state appeals court quashed the city's four-month effort
to get chronic inebriates, most of them homeless, into treatment by
threatening them with jail for contempt if they repeatedly fail to show
up in court. The idea, led by the
San Francisco Superior Court and District Attorney George Gascón, was to arrest those who'd been cited at least 20 times for public drunkenness or other low-level offenses, put them in jail and tell them
they were in contempt of court for not showing up all the previous
times. Threatened with jail for five days per no-show, most offenders
agreed to enter treatment instead.
But the state appeals court
said somebody can't be held in contempt of court just for violating his
or her own promise to appear in court, even if they'd signed the back of
each citation saying they agreed to appear.
Score one for Public Defender Jeff Adachi who challenged the program, saying it was unconstitutional and illegal.
"We're
eager to participate in the next possible steps," Adachi said. "We were
excluded last time from the design of the court, and we would have
pointed out these problems had we been at the table."
So what
options does the city have to deal with the chronically drunk homeless
people who bother residents and tourists, cycle in and out of jail, cost
the city up to $13 million a year in emergency services and aren't
doing themselves any favors either? Plenty, it seems.
For
starters, Gascón said that within about a week, he'll switch his method
to one in which the defendants can choose between a jury trial and
accepting services - similar to the idea behind the successful
Community Justice Center in the Tenderloin.
"The
only tool we have is to file charges. I'm hoping the majority of them
will actually take the service offer," Gascón said, saying the status
quo cannot continue. "These are people who are decomposing in our
streets right in front of our eyes. Some of them eventually die in the
streets, and I don't think there's anything humane about this."
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