TENDERLOIN POLICE CONFRONT GANGS BY SETTING UP DRUG 'BUY-BUSTS'

It's early evening, and dark. A San Francisco police officer, dressed
like a street person, walks into Hallidie Plaza looking to score some
weed. Another undercover cop shadows the first one, and delivers a
play-by-play description into a microphone hidden in his lapel.

"OK, they're talking, they're talking," the voice crackles over the
radio in an unmarked police car idling nearby. "They're moving to the
side. OK, he's showing product. Got it. Deal is done."

The undercover cops keep walking, as four teams of cops swoop in to
make the arrest.

"He's running," an officer says calmly over the radio. "West on
Market."

Inspector Kevin Labanowski drives down Cyril Magnin and tries to make
a quick right on Market. He threads the unmarked car through three
people in the crosswalk in what would be an illegal maneuver if done
by a civilian.

"What the f- are you doing, -hole?" a man yells at the officer, who
waves and says, "Sorry about that."

Half a block away, members of the SFPD Gang Task Force have a man on
his knees in front of an office building. The cuffs are on. One cop
takes cash from the man's pocket and finds a mark that had been placed
on it before the operation.

It's still early in the evening. The bust goes down on the edge of a
prime tourist area. Dozens of people pass by.

"Welcome to San Francisco," one officer says to no one in
particular.

Buying drugs in San Francisco is as easy as buying a pack of gum at
Walgreens.

On this night, the cops have singled out the Tenderloin, which is
probably the most drug-riddled piece of real estate in the Bay Area.
Walk down Turk or O'Farrell, and you will probably see someone smoking
rock. And the dealers are on every block.

Simple drug busts don't seem to make much of a dent in the action. But
that's not why these officers make what they call "buy-busts." The
Gang Task Force uses the busts as a tool for dealing with gang members
in the city.

Much of the drug dealing is done by gang members, says Inspector Kevin
Labanowski. In fact, a lot of the violence and mayhem in places like
the Tenderloin and the Mission District stem from turf wars over drug
dealing.

So busting gang members dealing drugs gives the Gang Task Force
another enforcement tool. Maybe the guy will try to escape prosecution
by giving evidence in another, bigger case. At a minimum, the drug
case might mean the individual goes to jail for a while, or gets put
on probation, which gives the cops authority to stop him at will and
search him.

So the team organizes regular buy-bust raids like this one. Since May
4, the Gang Task Force has made 297 such arrests, 146 of them in the
Tenderloin. They do it often enough that the process works like a
well-oiled machine. There is the undercover team that makes the buys
and several two-person teams that make the arrests. Each team is then
responsible for an individual arrest and the resulting paperwork.

This is how easy it is: One day this week, four teams go out shortly
after 8 p.m. By 9:15, they've made four busts. Nothing big here,
small-time drug deals of $20 or $40 for a bag of marijuana or rock or
two of crack cocaine. It takes about 15 minutes to stop, detain, cuff
and search each suspected drug dealer, and then fill out the field
paperwork.

Later, they gather at the Tenderloin Station to fill out reports. One
at a time, each team debriefs with the undercover officer, who
describes the busts. The teams give him the marked bills they took off
the suspects, and he gives them the drugs he says he bought from them.

It's all very efficient.

Labanowski and Sgt. Mike Browne take the first bust, the one at
Hallidie Plaza. This is a marijuana sale, Labanowski says. You can get
whatever drugs you want throughout the Tenderloin, but marijuana is
the big seller right off the cable car turnaround.

"Hey, man, that's my money!" the man says as the officers take the
cash he allegedly took for drugs. "I didn't do nothing. I didn't steal
nothing."

"What do you think, we just picked you out of the crowd?" Browne
responds.

A few minutes later, the officers move on to U.N. Plaza. This bust
takes just a few minutes, too. There, in sight of City Hall, the cops
nab a young Latino man and his girlfriend for selling crack to the
undercover officer. They don't speak much English. After some
questioning, they call the undercover team to find out if the girl was
involved. They say she didn't do anything, so the cops release her,
like fishermen letting go a too-small trout.

The man says he's from Honduras. Browne asks if he's "Salvatrucha," a
gang relatively new to the United States and made up mostly of
immigrants from El Salvador. He says no. Moments later, he's in the
back of a car on his way to the Tenderloin Station, and the team moves
a few blocks away to look for another bust.

At Larkin and Ellis, they grab two more men for selling crack. They
both say they're 17, making them underage.

"What year were you born?" Browne asks in Spanish. The men look
skyward and think, then respond in Spanish.

"Yeah, it's hard to do that math, isn't it?" one officer says with a
laugh. But the two suspects don't show any criminal record, so it's
impossible to know if they're really underage or if they're just
trying to pull one over.

Nevertheless, they're on their way to a holding cell, too, and the
cops work their way over to O'Farrell for yet another quick crack
bust. It's just one young man this time. The officers surround the man
and put on the cuffs.

A young man watches the bust as he rides by on a bicycle.

"It's about time," he says to the cops.