San Francisco has discovered a new way to “solve” crime: Force businesses to close.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has unanimously decided to forcibly close retail food and tobacco businesses, not including restaurants and bars, from midnight to 5 a.m. in a designated “high-crime area” in the Tenderloin neighborhood. This is a two-year “pilot” plan in response to the “high rate of drug-related crime in the Tenderloin.”
The Tenderloin Housing Clinic supported this decision, with its director of community organizing blaming businesses for “feeding into this ecosystem.” Evidently, it is the fault of these businesses for allowing drug-addicted homeless people and criminals to wreak havoc in the neighborhood, not the fault of the district attorney, law enforcement, or the Board of Supervisors for allowing these conditions in the first place.
This is made all the more bizarre by the fact that the city had previously authorized a “safe” drug consumption center in the Tenderloin district. San Francisco had given the green light to allow drug addicts to shoot up whenever they wanted, a move that predictably backfired as the neighborhood became less safe and less sanitary, made worse by the city’s refusal to prosecute them or just about any other criminals. Now, the blame is falling on businesses that are being forced to close by a city that created this problem in the first place.
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San Francisco’s continued unwillingness to actually address its problems and instead punt the blame elsewhere continues to take a toll on people and businesses who have nothing to do with the problem. Forcibly closing businesses in the early morning hours isn’t going to make criminals less criminal or drug addicts less drug-addicted. All it is going to do is further hamstring businesses that are also paying the price for the crime that the city has allowed to fester.
If closing businesses solved crime, San Francisco would be paradise, given how many businesses have closed permanently and moved out rather than deal with the city’s soft, incompetent leadership. San Francisco is a city run by people who have no clue how to keep a city functioning, and residents are going to feel the effects up until the point that they join others in moving out.
