SAN FRANCISCO IS RULED BY DRUGS AND CORRUPTION SAY PARENTS
A mother’s worst nightmare’: San Francisco’s multi-million dollar homeless industrial complex is a sham that profits off the misery of drug addicts like our children, write activist moms JACQUI BERLINN and GINA MCDONALD
Jacqui Berlinn and Gina McDonald are co-founders of Mothers Against Drug Deaths
Business is booming in San Francisco, except it’s not anything that anyone should be proud of.
We call this multi-million dollar industry the homeless industrial complex – and San Francisco is leading the way.
Feces, dirty needles, and tent encampments on the streets of the Tenderloin are part of it.
Children walked to school by hired guards, smash and grab crimes and loose fentanyl residue on sidewalks that can be licked by a dog or carried by the wind into a playground are part of it.
Drug dealers, armed with guns and machetes, standing in packs of dozens, openly selling fentanyl while police helplessly look on are part of it.
But the addicts — barely surviving, with clothes hanging off their shoulders showing open sores, pipes in their hands – are the most important part of the homeless industrial complex.
If the addicts were gone tomorrow this business would disappear, but apparently the powers that be don’t want that to happen.
We are the co-founders of Mothers Against Drug Deaths (MADD) and we say: Enough!
We’ve seen with our own eyes what’s happening in San Francisco, because we’re on the streets, talking with the street-people, protesting against the drug dealers and searching for our loved ones.
We are the co-founders of Mothers Against Drug Deaths and we say: Enough! (Above) Gina McDonald (on left) and Jacqui Berlinn (on right) protesting outside San Francisco’s Linkage Center on February 5, 2022
This city is a mother’s worst nightmare.
Our children (Sam, daughter of Gina and Corey, son of Jacqui) had seemingly normal young lives.
Sam attended private school, played volleyball and was a solid student.
She smoked pot in her teenage years and got hooked on heroin when she was 21-years-old after a bad breakup.
Corey played saxophone in the marching band. He’s an avid reader and writer, who taught himself to play guitar.
He also used pot and alcohol in high school. He was convicted of a felony at 18-years-old for selling marijuana, then a girlfriend introduced him to heroin.
Both of them eventually got hooked on fentanyl, which is mixed with all sorts of drugs these days.
Today, Sam is in treatment outside of San Francisco.
Corey is still on the street.
He calls home every couple of weeks from a pay phone or when friends let him use their cellphones.
He’s lost some of his teeth. He can’t stand upright.
He was nearly killed when a drug dealer stabbed him in the chest and punctured his lung.
Another dealer hacked his hand with a machete, leaving him unable to use all his fingers.
We’ve seen with our own eyes what’s happening in San Francisco, because we’re on the streets, talking with the street-people, protesting against the drug dealers and searching for our loved ones. (Above, left) Jacqui Berlinn with her son Corey before he became homeless addict (Above, right) Corey seen living on the streets of San Francisco
This city is a mother’s worst nightmare. (Above) Gina McDonald with her daughter Sam
We know our children made terrible choices, but we will not give up on them. A mother’s love knows no bounds.
That’s why we were hopeful when San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared an emergency in the Tenderloin.
She promised to address the overdose and addiction crisis that is killing more than two people a day in the city.
But 90 days later, she declared an end to the emergency, and unfortunately, they had made it worse.
Breed opened a so-called linkage center near United Nations plaza, where addicts can go to seek help and referral to treatment.
It was meant to be a refuge. It’s not.
Attached to the center is an open-air drug consumption area, where addicts lie on the ground or slumped in plastic chairs all day.
They’re provided all the tools necessary to continue using — needles, foil, pipes and more.
There are also drugs available.
Corey (above as a child on left and teenager on right ) played saxophone in the marching band. He’s an avid reader and writer, who taught himself to play guitar.
Corey (above) was nearly killed when a drug dealer stabbed him in the chest and punctured his lung.
Directly across the plaza is the largest open-air drug market in the city.
If you haven’t seen it for yourself, it’s hard to believe. At least 100 drug dealers standing in the bright sunshine – without any fear of police.
Anyone that knows anything about addiction would find this unfathomable.
Fentanyl withdrawal causes extreme dope sickness. That’s what makes it so difficult for some addicts to quit.
Many addicts on the street, like Corey, don’t even get high anymore. They just use to stave off the dope sickness.
But San Francisco has chosen to put its linkage center a stone’s throw away from the dealers.
How is that supposed to help these desperate addicts quit?
It’s a sick joke, and it’s no surprise that it has been a complete and utter failure.
According to the city’s own records, which we have compiled, out of 23,000-plus visits to the linkage center since it opened in December, only 18 people have received medical treatment for substance abuse or have been successfully referred to rehab. And we don’t even know if those 18 people are clean today, because there’s no way to track them.
For their part, the city wants to open more drug consumptions sites, even though it is plain to us that they’re not working.
The linkage center at the United Nations plaza cost at least $10 million (we’ve heard the project cost as much as $19 million).
The staff at the linkage center are provided by a network of non-profits, including organizations called HealthRIGHT 360 and Urban Alchemy.
At this point we must ask: Who is this multi-million dollar homeless industrial complex really serving? Because it’s not serving the addicts.
We do what little we can to raise awareness over this insanity.
We protest against drug dealers in the city – holding signs on the same corners where they stand.
Mothers Against Drug Deaths recently paid to put up a billboard in Union Square that reads: ‘Famous for the world over for our brains, beauty and now dirt-cheap fentanyl.’ (Above) The MADD billboard
We protest against drug dealers in the city – holding signs on the same corners where they stand. (Above) Jacqui Berlinn leading a protest in San Francisco
We never feel completely safe.
The dealers give us the evil eye, or yell at us when they think we’re using our phones to film them. But we’re not going away.
We’re actually more afraid of the politicians. They’re the ones who will do anything. They say that we just want to throw everyone in jail, but it’s not true.
Corey would be the first to tell you that San Francisco does not know how to help the addicts.
The city is enabling them. We want mandated treatment.
The city should be arresting people for stealing and using and dealing drugs. Then, they should give the addicts a choice: jail or treatment.
If Mayor Breed doesn’t have enough police – then ask the state for help.
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If there aren’t enough beds in the hospitals – then open more.
If she isn’t up to the job – she should step aside.
Corey once called San Francisco Pleasure Island. And it is — in every nightmarish way.
Except it’s not just San Francisco’s problem anymore. Corey and the other addicts are seeing new faces.
Authors Gina McDonald (left) and Jacqui Berlinn (right)
High schoolers are coming into the city on the train, buying fentanyl and taking it back home to the suburbs.
We are not just mothers, we’re also grandmothers. We cannot allow this to continue and threaten another generation.
Last month, in another slap in the face of parents trying to save their kids, Breed flew off to Europe to promote San Francisco as a destination for foreign tourists.
She talked about the dropping of mask mandates and the Golden Gate bridge and our famous cable cars.
She didn’t mention that Tenderloin.
We have a different message for European tourists. This is no place to bring your family.
Mothers Against Drug Deaths recently paid to put up a billboard in Union Square that reads: ‘Famous for the world over for our brains, beauty and now dirt-cheap fentanyl.’
And sadly, that’s the truth.
‘I think Gary is just making up random numbers’: Taxpayer-funded boss of San Fran’s open-air drugs market is accused by health chiefs of exaggerating number of addicts site has helped – and city officials helped cover-up for him
- Gary McCoy was accused of ‘just making up random numbers’ by a San Francisco Department of Health official
- McCoy helps run the now-notorious Tenderloin Linkage Center, an open-air site intended to help homeless addicts that’s instead become a squalid drug den
- McCoy works for HealthRIGHT 360, a non-profit given tens of millions by the City of San Francisco to run some of the city’s health facilities
- Earlier this week, DailyMail.com revealed that just 18 of the 23,369 people who’d visited the center since January were given meaningful help
The taxpayer-funded boss of San Francisco’s squalid open-air drugs market has been accused of exaggerating the number of people it helped – with city officials then covering up for him.
Gary McCoy, the vice president of public affairs and policy at non-profit HealthRIGHT 360, which runs the controversial Tenderloin Linkage Center, was accused of fiddling the figures by San Francisco public health bosses in newly-released emails.
Dr Rob Hoffman, special project manager with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, wrote an email to colleagues on February 8 saying: ‘I think Gary is just making up random numbers.’
He was referring to the 659 ‘meaningful engagements’ recorded by HealthRIGHT 360 staff at the drugs-market for the week ending February 7, versus mere ‘interactions.’
‘Meaningful engagements’ involve actively helping visitors – most of whom are homeless – by directing them to clean syringes or other services, rather than just observing them.
Hoffman said he and a colleague had visited the linkage center over the same period, and wrote: ‘I observed the HR360 staff and did not see anything that can account for the high numbers of meaningful engagements.’
But instead of tackling the problem itself, press officers at the San Francisco Department of Public Health instead got to work on minimizing the issue.
Gary McCoy, of San Francisco nonprofit HealthRIGHT 360, has been accused of making up the number of people seeking help at the city’s open air drug market by city officials
This email sent by special project coordinator Rob Hoffman, of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said he’d observed HealthRIGHT 360 staff and found no evidence to back up the numbers of people the nonprofit claimed it was helping
A woman is pictured injecting herself with drugs close to San Francisco’s Tenderloin Linkage Center in January, as one local activist mom branded the facility a flop
A sign for the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which McDonald says is not being used for its intended purpose, and is instead worsening San Francisco’s drug problem
This email shows how communications workers at the San Francisco Department of Public Health worked to cover-up the miscounting issue in response to a journalist’s query
They did so on February 23, in response to a query from a reporter working for the San Francisco Standard News about Health360’s tweaked figures.
Director of communications for the department, Alison Hawkes, sent over a heavily-modified email in response to the query, which replaced words such as ‘mistake’ and ‘inaccurately’ with more PR-friendly terms.
The original statement, written by Dr Matthew Goldman, read: ‘ Part-way through the most recent reporting period, the TLC metrics team discovered that one of the CBOs was inaccurately recording data on engagements… This mistake has since been resolved.’
Hawkes smoothed out his words and changed them to say that ‘one of providers at the site was defining engagements in a way inconsistent with other teams on the site.’
She also changed ‘mistakenly’ counted to ‘categorized all visits.’
HealthRIGHT 360 is given tens of millions of dollars by the City of San Francisco to run drug outreach programs, with any suggestion of mismanagement likely to spark further outrage over spiraling crime and drug abuse in the California city.
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Group of mothers erect billboards calling for San Francisco… The Tenderloin Linkage Center was set up in January in a bid to direct the city’s homeless drug addicts towards services that could help them, including medical care and rehab.
Mayor London Breed opened it after declaring an ’emergency’ in the area, in a bid to cut crime and anti-social behavior there.
It is situated close to San Francisco’s famous Union Square and Civic Center, with many locals claiming the facility has made the once pristine tourist destination a grimy hotspot for crime and drug-taking.
McCoy was accused of making up numbers in an email sent by Hoffman, pictured, who is a drugs outreach specialist
The linkage center – which is rumored to have cost up to $19 million – has quickly become a hot-bed of open-air drug taking, despite Mayor Breed previously claiming that no such behavior would be allowed.
An email trail obtained by Gina McDonald, of advocacy group Mother’s Against Drug Deaths (MADD) revealed that city officials are busy wrangling with ways to try and quantify the site as a success. But privately, they have repeatedly expressed confusion and concern over the metrics.
McDonald, who helped set up MADD after her daughter became an addict, told DailyMail.com Thursday: ‘If they can’t figure out what is going on (at the Tenderloin Linkage Center) I don’t know why they’re being allowed to have other contracts.’
HealthRIGHT 360 runs multiple other facilities on behalf of city officials across San Francisco.
Earlier this week, DailyMail.com revealed that just 18 of the 23,367 visitors to the site between January and the end of March had been given medical treatment, or referred to rehab – equivalent to 0.7 per cent of everyone who’s passed through its doors.
Dr Hillary Kunis, pictured, was caught suggesting edits to a reply to a journalist who asked awkward questions about the Tenderloin Linkage Center
Outrage over HealthRIGHT 360’s misrepresentation even prompted Alison Hawkes, director of communications at San Francisco’s Department of Public Health, to suggest heavy edits in response to a reporter’s questions about the mounting scandal.
She did so in cahoots with a local doctor, Hillary Kunis, who works for the city’s public health department too.
The pair went on the PR offensive in an apparent attempt to tamp down anger over the site, which took our words including ‘mistakenly’ and ‘inaccurately’ and instead used more PR-friendly language.
Meanwhile, Adrienne Bechelli, the deputy director for emergency services at San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, shared concerns about another facility linked to the drugs market which massaged its own figures.
The Felton Institute Street Team, which was also set up to work with homeless people and drug addicts, was accused of ‘problematic double counting’ by Bechalli.
She noted that of 229 encounters with addicts, 200 of those had been referred to health services, with another 200 seemingly referred to the Tenderloin Linkage Center.
DailyMail.com has contacted HealthRIGHT 360 and the San Francisco Department of Public Health for further comment.
On Tuesday, McDonald and her fellow MADD co-founder Jacqui Berlinn revealed to DailyMail.com just how poorly the linkage center was being used for its intended purpose by the 23,369 addicts who’d used it.
Figures compiled by Gina McDonald show that fewer than one in 1,000 visitors to the center have actually received treatment or a referral to rehab
Part of the linkage center is pictured behind screens in January. It was never intended as an area for drug users to get high – but thousands of them are now doing exactly that
Drone footage shot in January shows San Francisco’s homeless and drug addicted population inside the center, which is estimated to have consumed much of the $10 million set aside to tackle crime in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood
McDonald, who has co-written an op-ed for DailyMail.com on the issue, said that just five visitors to the Tenderloin Linkage Center had received a link to medically assisted treatment (MAT) between the center’s inception on January 17, and March 27.
MAT involves giving drug addicts access to methadone or suboxone to try and wean them off the illegal substances they’re hooked on.
Meanwhile, another 13 were successfully linked with substance abuse treatment, which offers either detox or residential treatment to those seeking to get off drugs.
McDonald set up Mothers Against Drug Deaths (MADD) after her daughter got hooked on heroin she’d bought off the street, although her daughter has since completed a stint in rehab, and has been clean for four months.
She set up the group with fellow mom Jacqui Berlinn, whose son Corey still lives on the streets of San Francisco, and is battling a substance issue.
Earlier this week, MADD spent $25,000 to erect a billboard close to the linkage center which says: ‘Famous the world over for our brains, beauty and now, dirt cheap fentanyl.’
And McDonald says she hopes publicizing the drugs market might finally embarrass local officials into action.
A homeless man smokes on a street close to the Tenderloin Linkage Center in January
She told DailyMail.com: ‘The issue is ridiculous.
‘The linkage center was never intended to be a place where people could come to do drugs, but that is exactly what has happened.
‘It’s dystopian and scary.’ San Francisco’s Democrat Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city’s famously sketchy Tenderloin neighborhood in December, in a bid to clean up rampant crime and drug use in the area.
She earmarked $10 million in funds for the project, and said that visitors to the linkage center were not permitted to take illegal drugs.
But McDonald says she’s heard the project has so far cost $19 million, with much of that cash blown on the chaotic linkage center.
And she said that the brazen drug taking of visitors to the linkage center makes a mockery of Breed’s warning.
The campaigner added that there are even separate areas set aside for users to take drugs using their preferred method.
McDonald explained: ‘There’s an outside space which users can access, with tents that have now been put up to stop people from seeing what’s happening.
‘There’s an area for smoking your drugs, a space for injecting drugs, and a space for eating. There are no medical professionals in the vicinity.
‘People are given clean needles to use, but it isn’t a sterile facility, like those you see in New York City.’
The center’s official website describes it as ‘a safe space for anyone to easily and quickly access San Francisco health and human service resources.’
Services listed on the website include access to breakfast, lunch and dinner, showers, laundry and overdose prevention supplies, as well as methadone and buprenorphine (suboxone) access.
The linkage center also claims to offer employment services, ‘housing and reentry programs for people involved with the justice system’, food stamps and referrals as well as enrollment in substance abuse treatment programs.
