San Francisco will now be getting federal help when it comes to fighting the fentanyl crisis.
Nancy Pelosi on Friday announced that the Department of Justice has added San Francisco to its Operation Overdrive program.
"I'm so proud of the Biden administration for the leadership role they're playing and the attorney general for recognizing that violence and drug use in our community needs to come to an end," Pelosi said.
New numbers show in the midst of the current crackdown the city set a new record for fentanyl deaths. In May, 63 people died, the most deaths in any month since the city's medical examiner started tracking overdose deaths in January 2020.
Police Chief Bill Scott welcomes the additional federal law enforcement response.
"They have resources and availability," he said. "Their cases go a different route than our state cases."
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the additional help he dispatched from the California Highway Patrol. CHP officers say they have confiscated 4.2 kilos of fentanyl off the streets and made 92 felony arrests in the past six weeks.
Case worker Joshua Jacobo said he's seen the increase in people in San Francisco's jail since the CHP and others arrived. He's skeptical of stepping up arrests to deal with the city's overdose problem.
"We're kind of just putting a band aid on it," he said. "These community members are going to come back out into the community and they don't have skills that they learned in there, they don't have further education, and there's still the lapse in services in community."
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