S.F. CONSIDERS CRACKDOWN ON PUBLIC DRUNKS

Mandatory treatment for repeat offenders

San Francisco is moving toward a crackdown on public drunkenness and drug
intoxication that would allow the city to incarcerate repeat offenders in
mandatory treatment programs.

City officials characterized the plan to reverse a 15-year-old policy as a
humane program for helping alcoholics. Critics were skeptical that there
would be room in treatment programs for everyone picked up by police -- and
said that if there isn't, the crackdown will mean long jail stretches for
people arrested for being drunk.

People picked up in San Francisco for public drunkenness now are taken to
jail or to the McMillan Drop-In Center on Fell Street near Market Street,
where they are held for a few hours until they sober up.

Then it is back to the streets. For many, it is a revolving door that has
prompted much complaint from residents fed up with dealing with hostile
drunks.

Under the new proposal, Municipal Court judges could send people convicted
of drunkenness for a third time in any 12-month period to mandatory
treatment programs. They could be held there for 60 days.

``Some of these inebriates act out in a fashion that really intimidates and
threatens people,'' said Captain Dennis Martel of the Police Department's
Southern Station, who helped work out details of the program. ``We seem to
see the same people day in and day out, and we don't have a way to deal
with them in even a middle-range type of way.''

Police and the Sheriff's Department have been working on the policy with
the mayor's office, the Public Health Department and prosecutors, District
Attorney Terence Hallinan said.

``I've been approached by the police and neighborhood groups who are
justifiably upset by people laying around their neighborhoods,'' Hallinan
said.

But he added that he would agree to go forward with the plan only if the
Health Department can find 20 beds that it will dedicate to treatment for
those sent by judges. Hallinan's prosecutors would be the ones to recommend
to judges that people be held for treatment. Mitch Katz, the city's public
health director, said last night that money for the treatment would come
out of existing funds.

``It is too early to say whether it will be at a public or contract- based
facility, what the cost will be or what the date of implementation will
be,'' he said.

Bevan Dufty, director of Mayor Willie Brown's Office of Neighborhood
Services, said the proposal was ``a recognition that the city hasn't done a
good job of helping chronic alcoholics who are putting their health at risk.''

While Dufty and Hallinan said the program is an effort to help alcoholics,
the Coalition on Homelessness said the approach is nothing more than a new
crackdown on poor people.

``It's awful,'' said the coalition's Mara Raider. ``It's the same old
Matrix mentality,'' she added, referring to former Mayor Frank Jordan's
crackdown on the homeless.

Brown ran as a critic of Matrix, but since taking office in 1996 he has
been even tougher on the homeless than Jordan, Raider said.

More than 15,000 citations were issued to homeless people for various
offenses last year, she said, and the total will be about the same in 1998.

Some people at the McMillan Drop-in Center yesterday had mixed feelings
about the proposal.

``You should only go to detox if you choose to,'' said Stephen Butler, 53,
who said he has been cited by police for public drunkenness in the past.
``The government and the police have no right to tell you that you have to
go.''

Michael Brancoe, 31, said he was put in jail last month for being drunk and
getting into a fight. He thinks a mandatory system is the only way some
people will get help.

``It's a way to let them know that they got a problem,'' Brancoe said.
``And if they aren't going to help themselves, then someone should help. It
could save a life.''

At the same time, Brancoe admitted that the plan might not work.

``If you don't want the help, it's not going to matter,'' he said. ``It
should be something you do by choice.''

Raider said the crackdown on drunkenness will not make sense until the city
has enough room for all the people seeking treatment for drug or alcohol
problems. Even though the city spends more money every year toward meeting
its goal of ``treatment on demand'' for the indigent, she estimated that it
is still about 1,200 beds short.

``What Brown is doing to the homeless is the same as other mayors,'' she
said, ``but he is tougher because he is using the system they already had
in place. So he is just stepping up Matrix.''

Raider said the new program will inevitably result in people being sent to
jail for being alcoholics, given the shortage of treatment facilities.

In addition to the need for finding beds, Hallinan said he was concerned
that state law provides that a person can be sent to treatment only after
two misdemeanor convictions for public inebriation.

Each misdemeanor conviction could bring up to six months in jail, a $500
fine or a sentence to do community service.

Hallinan said he was not sure how effective it would be to wait to help
people until they have run up such a record. And, he said, he does not want
to send people to jail for being alcoholics.

Hallinan would also have to meet with Municipal Court judges to get them to
go along with the new plan.

``We don't want to try people for being alcoholics,'' he said. ``But at
least under the old system people could be held for treatment and they got
food. Now they're just out on the streets.''

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski