Liberal California Judge Just Gave Drug Dealers Permission To Deal Drugs!

Despite the city’s attempts to bar four suspected drug dealers from entering again from heavily drug-infested and crime-ridden Tenderloin district, the California court of appeals judge rules in favor of the drug dealers and allows them to continue their evil works in the area.

The ruling issued Friday is part of a case that started in 2020 when San Francisco sued 28 alleged drug dealers who frequent the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods to try and clean up the area that has seen the city’s largest number of overdose deaths.

Then San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said the lawsuits if approved in California Superior Court, would prevent the alleged dealers from entering that area of downtown.

According to the Daily Wire, the city had named Christian Noel Padilla-Martel, Victor Zelaya, 27, Jarold Sanchez, 23, and Guadaloupe Aguilar-Benegas, 28, as individuals who should be banned from the district, saying they had been “engaged in the illegal sale of controlled substances.” But Justice Marla Miller said the city was infringing on the constitutional right to travel.

Here’s what Miller wrote:

“The court determined that excluding defendants from such a large area in the center of San Francisco implicates the constitutional right to intrastate travel … and the City failed to meet its evidentiary burden of convincing the court that its proposed remedy was sufficiently tailored to minimally infringe upon the protected interests at stake.” 

The outlet added, Padilla Martel, who had been arrested three times on drug charges, claimed he needed access to the district to see his young son living with his grandparents; Zelaya, also arrested three times, said he wanted to visit his two daughters from a prior relationship; Aguilar-Benegas. who has been arrested five times and is pregnant, said her ultrasound needed to be taken in the district.

The San Francisco City attorney’s spokesman, Jen Kwart, reacted to Miller’s decision, saying:

“We are currently evaluating potential next steps, and we will continue to look for ways to use civil law to promote and increase public safety in the Tenderloin.”

The Daily Mail noted:

“San Francisco Police reported about 600 drug-dealing arrests in 2020, with 40 percent of the 699 fatal overdoses reported that year taking place in Tenderloin and the city’s South Market neighborhood. In Tenderloin specifically, police seized over $280,000 in cash from a drug bust and collected more than 18 kilograms of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl in 2020.”

According to an NPR report back in November 2021:

“Faced with a stunning rise in drug overdose deaths the last few years, the vast majority tied to fentanyl, San Francisco has launched mobile teams made up of paramedics and nurses.”

Sources: DailyWire, The Daily Mail, NPR