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Bill O'Reilly Investigates the Decline and Fall of San Francisco's Social Order and Public Safety
Bill O'Reilly examines the collapse of social order in San Francisco, where progressive policies have enabled rampant homelessness, drug addiction, and crime. With a homeless rate of 101 per 10,000 people and approximately 37,000 drug addicts at risk of overdose, the city spends $106,000 per homeless person annually while prosecuting virtually no quality-of-life crimes. Through interviews with former Mayor Willie Brown, journalist Michael Shellenberger, and recovered addicts, O'Reilly traces how harm reduction policies, Housing First programs, and the refusal to enforce laws transformed one of America's most iconic cities into what he calls a "free fire zone." The investigation reveals the human cost of ideology over common sense, where drug dealers work in shifts, mentally ill individuals roam freely, and major retailers flee due to unchecked shoplifting.
The Collapse of an American Icon
Bill O'Reilly stands at the Presidio, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, surveying what he describes as an unprecedented collapse of social order in San Francisco. The city that once welcomed flamboyant personalities and those who didn't fit in elsewhere has devolved into what O'Reilly characterizes as a dangerous, filthy environment where approximately 10,000 mentally ill and drug-addicted individuals roam freely, defecating in streets and committing crimes with virtually no consequences.
President Trump recently released a video on Truth Social featuring before-and-after images of San Francisco that O'Reilly calls "disturbing." While the Presidio remains beautiful and safe, just three miles away exists what O'Reilly terms a "free fire zone" populated by drug addicts, mentally ill individuals, and thieves operating with impunity.
The crisis stems from progressive policies that began after the Vietnam War era, according to O'Reilly. California voters approved Proposition 47, which decriminalized theft under $1,000, essentially allowing people to walk into stores, take merchandise, and leave without payment or prosecution. O'Reilly declares this "anarchy" and promises to back up every claim with facts while identifying the villains responsible.
The Shocking Numbers Behind the Crisis
As of 2024, San Francisco has a homeless rate of 101 per 10,000 people, dramatically higher than other major cities like Houston or Miami. The city has approximately 37,000 drug addicts at risk of overdose daily—nearly as many people as are enrolled in San Francisco's public schools. In 2024, the city spent $106,000 per homeless person, far exceeding what other major cities spend on similar issues.
While similar problems exist in progressive strongholds like Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, San Francisco's homeless problem has become as distinctive to the city as its cable cars and sourdough bread. O'Reilly argues the city is in "steep decline," having transformed from a clean environment to something "dingy" where people cause "enormous amounts of pain to other people" while city and state leaders offer no solutions.
Willie Brown, San Francisco's legendary mayor from 1996 to 2004, acknowledges that cities go through revolutionary processes and newcomers sometimes bring existing conduct and culture with them. However, he avoids assigning specific blame for what happened after he left office, when the city spiraled into what O'Reilly calls anarchy with open use and sale of narcotics, particularly fentanyl, and public defecation—all without enforcement.
Progressive Leadership and the Incentive Structure
O'Reilly identifies former Mayor London Breed, Governor Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris (Willie Brown's ex-girlfriend) as responsible for the catastrophe, all committed to progressive ideology. Journalist and former progressive activist Michael Shellenberger, who was so horrified by San Francisco's decline that he stopped being a leftist and wrote a book titled "San Francisco," explains that progressives decided incentives for good behavior and consequences for bad behavior were themselves bad.
According to Shellenberger, progressives concluded it was immoral and unempathetic to require mentally ill people, drug addicts, and poor people to change their behavior. This philosophy manifests in programs like San Francisco's General Assistance Program, which gives every qualifying homeless person hundreds of dollars monthly on a debit card—approximately $1,000 in total assistance according to discussion in the investigation.
While Willie Brown defends the city's "great level of generosity" and insists nobody in their right mind would give money for people to buy drugs, he acknowledges some people take advantage of resources. He suggests many problematic individuals were "chased out" of other cities like Denver and came to San Francisco because of its generosity and lack of prosecution.
Housing First and the Death Sentence
For years, San Francisco poured billions into "Housing First" policy, which instead of building temporary shelters where people must seek treatment or employment, simply gives people apartments. Hotels throughout the city have been converted into free housing for the homeless, creating what Shellenberger describes as "modern day opium dens."
These single resident occupancy hotels have become extremely dangerous places where people party together, smoke fentanyl or meth, and where drug dealing occurs internally. People are assaulted, murdered, and overdose in these facilities. Shellenberger argues that building more such facilities creates "a death sentence for people addicted to hard drugs and suffering from mental illness."
A 2021 Harvard University study supports this grim assessment. When housing was given unconditionally to homeless people—86% of whom had either drug addiction or mental illness—half died within ten years and only 12% remained housed. Shellenberger emphasizes these are "terrible numbers" when a policy kills four times more people than it successfully houses.
The notion that homelessness results from high rents or capitalism's inequities is debunked by examining other cities where housing costs increased but homelessness actually declined. San Francisco's homelessness exploded because the city intentionally made itself a magnet for anyone seeking freebies with no strings attached, combined with lax law enforcement and cheap drugs.
The Drug Trade and Harm Reduction
Former addict Tom Wolfe, who spent about five years as a hardcore drug user, explains how easily accessible drugs are in San Francisco. After surgery on his foot, he was prescribed oxycodone for pain, became addicted, then spiraled into heroin and eventually fentanyl, which led him to live on the street sleeping in doorways.
Wolfe describes an organized drug dealing network in San Francisco that operates in shifts "like a union job," 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Willie Brown disputes O'Reilly's characterization of this culture as dominant, insisting the city is "interesting and in transition" like most American cities, though he acknowledges there's no apparent strategy to solve the problem that's persisted for nearly a decade.
San Francisco has actively encouraged intravenous drug use through "harm reduction" policy. This model attempts to maintain addiction while reducing its harms, taken to such extremes that harm reduction advocates give away crack pipes and meth pipes. At one point, the city paid for billboards with taxpayer money encouraging people to use hard narcotics "safely," showing people at parties and homeless individuals with messages about safe fentanyl and meth use.
Shellenberger notes the irony that San Francisco operates as the "ultimate nanny state" regarding legal but unhealthy substances like food, chemicals, and especially tobacco, cracking down severely on secondhand smoke. Yet the city tolerates secondhand smoke from fentanyl and meth because within the progressive mindset, homeless people and street addicts are by definition victims to whom everything should be given and nothing required.
Stories from the Street
Gina McDonald, another former addict, describes how San Francisco provides permanent supportive housing where people are taken off the street and placed in rooms alone with zero supervision, no sobriety requirement, no requirement to check in with caseworkers, and no participation mandates for available services. People can "sit in your room and shoot dope all day," she explains.
McDonald personally knew 15 people who died from drug overdoses while she was on the street, including waking up next to three different people on three separate occasions who had died overnight from overdoses. Despite these traumatic experiences, she continued using fentanyl because "addiction wins every single time."
Both Tom Wolfe and Gina McDonald eventually turned their lives around and got clean—but only after being locked up. Wolfe thanks God for Alameda County sheriff putting him in handcuffs and taking him to a facility against his will. The moral of their stories is simple: people must be held accountable for destructive behavior if that behavior is ever to change. All carrots and no sticks simply doesn't work.
Mental Illness Crisis
Security footage shows a San Francisco woman being randomly attacked by a mentally ill homeless man outside her condo building in the South Beach neighborhood. Pulled to the ground, she fights for her life before escaping with minor injuries. The accused attacker was arrested but quickly released back onto the streets.
More than half of San Francisco's homeless population has psychiatric conditions. Combined with rampant drug use and government handouts, this creates a recipe for disaster. Research shows schizophrenics at greatest risk to themselves and others are those using hard drugs because they create psychosis, heavy intoxication, or states of mania.
McDonald describes being in psychosis so severe she believed people were following her and ate parts of her phone, including the SD card. This is what happens when mental health care gets rebranded as a human rights violation, according to the investigation.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been adamantly against anything involving court orders requiring mentally ill people to be in psychiatric asylums and continues opposing involuntary psychiatric intervention. Organizations claiming people have civil rights to do what they want, combined with progressive California politics opposing anything perceived as coercive or mandatory, prevent seriously mentally ill people from getting needed care.
Proposition 63 and Failed Mental Health Reform
By 2004, California passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, which placed a special tax on billionaires for mental health services. Everyone supported what seemed like a great idea at the time. However, hidden in the fine print was language specifying that mental health care would be provided only without mandatory or coercive methods.
People who need help most are usually too sick with mental illness, drug addiction, or both to seek it themselves—the illness or addiction makes their decisions for them. Former addicts report no sense among street drug addicts of needing to kick addiction and return to normality. There's a community on the street, but it's an "extremely unhealthy community where everybody's motivated by the same thing: their addiction and getting more drugs."
The state collected taxes and spent billions, yet the problem worsened. This demonstrates what happens when ideology overpowers common sense. Shellenberger argues that if someone's senile grandmother escaped from a nursing home and wandered San Francisco's streets, virtually everyone would support intervention to return her to the nursing home. Yet the same logic isn't applied to people with schizophrenia.
Criminal Justice Reform and Revolving Door
The Tenderloin district represents one of the worst places in the United States, with no law enforcement, pervasive violence, and drugs everywhere. The stretch known as "Cartel Alley" operates openly because, as O'Reilly argues, people don't care about the vulnerable populations there. Every imaginable indignity occurs in full view.
The currency in this area is heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, all now tinged with fentanyl that can kill instantly. Addicted street people whose entire lives center on intoxication largely don't care whether they live or die. Meanwhile, the city provides needles and crack pipes, creating a circular problem that never gets solved.
People come to San Francisco rather than other cities because the city and state provide cash payments for nothing, which recipients use to buy drugs and get intoxicated. The weather is temperate year-round, making it an attractive destination for those seeking this lifestyle. Law-abiding citizens have become terrorized by attacks on police officers, restaurant owners stabbed inside their businesses, and the weapons carried by people on the streets.
California's Proposition 47 reduced many felonies to misdemeanors in the name of reducing prison overcrowding. Investigation reveals the problem isn't police failing to do their jobs but rather judges, state laws, and state policymakers who reduced penalties for quality-of-life crimes, turning the court system into a revolving door where arrested individuals are released with no consequences.
The Chesa Boudin Era
In 2019, radical leftist Chesa Boudin became San Francisco's district attorney. Raised by radicals, Boudin had an anti-police, anti-incarceration agenda and did exactly what he promised: stopped enforcing a huge number of laws he claimed caused racial disparities in criminal justice.
All sorts of activities—drug dealing, drug use, prostitution, illegal camping—went unenforced. Police stopped bothering to arrest people for a huge number of crimes, and the streets of San Francisco became a "free for all." The decriminalization of shoplifting proved particularly insane, leading to organized syndicates engaging in smash-and-grabs for higher-value items with the understanding there would be no consequences.
Many retailers made the rational decision to close San Francisco stores, with major brands citing crime and safety as driving factors. Target stores closed, and retail establishments shuttered throughout downtown. Willie Brown acknowledges he was "literally mindful of conduct" during his mayoral tenure and remains focused on mutual respect and obeying laws and rules, but without the authority he had as mayor.
By 2022, voters had finally had enough and overwhelmingly recalled Chesa Boudin, with more than half voting yes on Proposition H. While his removal ended one source of the problem, the damage was done, and local district attorney reform doesn't address the real power players who created this mess.
Sanctuary City Consequences
San Francisco was one of the first and remains one of the most ardent sanctuary cities in the country. The result is an organized drug dealing problem controlled mostly by undocumented immigrants from Honduras brought up by cartels to sell drugs on city streets. These dealers control approximately 95% of the drug trade throughout the city.
Former addicts describe these as "mean guys" armed with guns, knives, machetes, and whatever weapons they can obtain. They used to stash baseball bats and steel poles around corners next to trees, but because everything has become more volatile, most now carry guns. The Honduran dealers had no presence in Oakland previously but now dominate the trade.
Everything is consolidated under the Sinaloa cartel. Essentially, salesmen work for the largest and most violent multinational corporation in the world while being protected by laws meant to protect their victims—laws now used to protect perpetrators instead.
Political Leadership Failures
Nancy Pelosi's house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, purchased for $2.3 million and now worth about $8 million, sits in a pristine, beautiful neighborhood. O'Reilly questions why Pelosi, who was Speaker of the House and among the most powerful politicians in the country for many years, never objected to her hometown's collapse into social disorder.
Very powerful people attached to San Francisco—Gavin Newsom (now governor), Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi—none intervened or even objected to the rapid downfall of social order. Despite living in one of San Francisco's most affluent neighborhoods, even the Pelosis weren't immune to progressive policy consequences.
On October 28, 2022, a hammer-wielding intruder broke into their home and attacked Paul Pelosi, fracturing his skull. The assailant, Canadian citizen David Wayne DePape, was in the country illegally and had a history of mental illness and drug abuse according to friends.
The progressive movement and voter-approved laws allowing theft under $1,000 without consequences demonstrate where San Francisco politics lives—in the progressive zone. Car rental agents warn O'Reilly not to leave anything on car seats when parking because drug addicts will break windows and steal whatever is inside, and they won't be prosecuted. This is the insane reality of present-day San Francisco.
Willie Brown's Persecution
Willie Brown is a lifelong Democrat who, when he was mayor and tried maintaining order, was vilified by the progressive left "full time"—persecution that continues even without the power and authority he once held. He was both figuratively and literally attacked, including having cherry, pumpkin, and tofu pies thrown in his face by activists opposing his housing policy.
Brown expresses surprise that promoting fairly common sense policies—running a big city where everybody is respected and not allowing huge groups to intrude on others and cause trouble—resulted in progressives attacking him as mean. He believes many critics meant well but didn't understand the mentality of some individuals.
Even former addicts turned activists like Gina McDonald and Tom Wolfe faced harsh criticism when they dared critique the anything-goes ideology. McDonald argues it's not compassionate to let someone lay on the sidewalk and die or to walk past somebody lying in their own urine and feces thinking they will miraculously make the decision to get better on their own.
Gavin Newsom's Betrayal
The crucial moment for Governor Gavin Newsom came in January 2020 when he delivered what Shellenberger describes as "spectacular" and "almost perfect" speech in his State of the State address outlining what he would do on mental illness, addiction, and homelessness. Newsom called for stopping finger-pointing and joining hands in a "transformational solution," laying out a whole program.
However, the governor essentially didn't implement any of it except additional spending. It was supposed to be a compromise between more spending on addiction and mental illness along with requirements for sobriety and conditions on receiving housing. Newsom abandoned that approach.
What we see in Gavin Newsom, according to Shellenberger, is somebody who needed to pursue a new approach but didn't have the courage to follow through on it. His political ambitions apparently exceeded his compassion for the vulnerable.
Signs of Hope
The city attempted to clean itself up for Super Bowl weekend, herding the homeless to overnight shelters where they couldn't be seen. Police appeared on every corner—beat cops never usually seen. Former addicts argue city residents deserve this level of attention and safety every day, not just for special events.
The good news is that new Mayor Daniel Lurie has dialed back some progressive nonsense, and by some metrics, things are improving. At least some credit goes to activists like Tom Wolfe and Gina McDonald who said enough is enough and said it loudly.
They formed a coalition in 2021 out of desperation because their kids were living on San Francisco streets, severely addicted and homeless, and they felt they had no voice. They protested and "kicked and screamed and yelled" until leaders would listen. McDonald's advocacy work helped change San Francisco's direction, working with many others in recovery to elect Daniel Lurie as mayor and move the plurality of Board of Supervisors members toward a more moderate political view with a common goal.
However, with 37,000 drug addicts still operating in a relatively small city, causing unbelievable damage daily, significant improvement remains difficult to see. In fact, Mayor Lurie's motorcade was recently attacked by Tenderloin thugs right after he gave a speech denouncing the city's broken government.
The Long Road Ahead
San Francisco didn't reach this position overnight—it took approximately a decade to slide to rock bottom, which the city hit in 2024. From there, arguably the only direction is up. However, billions of dollars were wasted on flawed ideology, radical harm reduction, and Housing First models that didn't solve homelessness and arguably made everything worse, evidenced by 650 overdose deaths in San Francisco in the most recent year.
A solution exists but requires federal guidance, which is starting to come from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. It also requires state legislation. States like California must actually change laws around housing and drug use, including where drug use is allowed. Progressives who dominate the state don't want to do that, preferring to let people do whatever they want regardless of damage caused to others.
This is happening for two reasons according to O'Reilly: progressive virtue signaling by people who apparently think they're doing addicts a favor by letting them destroy themselves, and personal behavior of people who say they'll do whatever they want without caring about consequences. While some feel sorry for them, O'Reilly remains on the fence.
The only solution is mandatory substance abuse rehabilitation. Most people in the Tenderloin and throughout San Francisco want to be there and want this lifestyle. They are dangerous not only to other people but to themselves. It's incomprehensible that the United States of America is allowing this to happen, and it has to stop.
Video Transcript
Tonight, You get what you allow. And San Francisco allows a lot. the city by the bay in disarray. What the deuce happened? Rapid homelessness, drug use, untreated
mental illness and crime. Lots of crime. Bro. All because the radical left has been encouraging
this kind of behavior for years. If you're going to be homeless. Pretty f***ing easy. no sobriety requirement, So you can sit in your room
and shoot dope all day. And I So how did this happen? And why didn't the politicians
stop it? Gavin Newsom
needed to pursue a new approach. But he didn't have the courage
to follow through on it. Get ready to get angry. This the decline
and fall of San Francisco. Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly, and welcome
to this News Nation special. The collapse of social
order in San Francisco. I hate to do it. I hate to do this report, but the truth has to be told. I'm standing
here on the Presidio. Used to be federal territory. Golden gate, world famous symbol of one of the most
dramatic cities in the country. It is falling apart. It is dangerous. Places are filthy. Not the whole city. But it is something
that has never been seen in the United States of America. How did it happen? For the next hr,
we will explain it. We will back it up
with every fact you can imagine. There are no two sides
to the story. This city has collapsed
in the social order arena. throughout history,
San Francisco has been a place of acceptance where flamboyant people, people they didn't fit in
other places were welcomed here. And it grew up. Then you had an infusion of politics. Left wing progressive politics. That was off the Vietnam War. And slowly, civility and social order
eroded. The San Francisco of yesteryear
wasn't heaven, but it sure looked a lot better
than what it looks like today. President Trump has noticed. He recently released his video
on True Social with a series of before and after images
of San Francisco. It's disturbing. Now I stand here in a very safe
area. Presidio is beautiful. Three miles over. Free fire zone. A legion of drug addicts, mentally ill miscreants, thieves roaming the city. Nobody does anything about it. Now I sound kind of insensitive. And maybe I am. But I got to tell you the truth. You cannot allow 10,000 mentally
ill and drug addicted people substance
abuse alcohol in there to to roam around the city
doing whatever they want. And that includes
defecating in the street. But get this. The people of California voted in a proposition not to prosecute criminals who steal less than $1,000. Hello? So you walk into a store. You take whatever you want, and you walk out of the store
without pay. This is anarchy. This is San Francisco, 2026. So, as I said, for the next hour or so, we're going
to back up everything we say. How did it happen?
Who are the villains? Are there any heroes? Let's go. Before you say, hey,
every city's got homelessness and crime. Let me stop you. I don't want to hear it. The numbers don't lie. And the story
they tell is absolutely awful. As of 2024, San
Francisco has a homeless rate of 101 per 10,000 people. Compare that to other big cities
like Houston or Miami. It has a population
of approximately 37,000 drug addicts
at risk of overdose every day. Nearly
as many people as there are kids enrolled in San Francisco's
public schools. And last year,
the city spent $106,000 per homeless person again. Look at how that stacks up
against other major cities. Of course you can find similar
examples of municipal lunacy in other progressive strongholds like Portland, Oregon,
Seattle, and LA. But bottom line, San Francisco's
homeless problem is as distinctive to this town as its cable
cars and sour dough brat. The question is why? I think the city is in steep
decline. And, when I used to come here
is clean. now, it's kind of dingy. And there are, people here who are causing
an enormous amount of pain to other people. And it doesn't seem like
the city fathers of the state of California
have any solutions to it at all. Well, you got to know
that over the years, almost every location in America goes through
some revolutionary process. And the newcomers sometimes bring their existing conduct
and culture with them. Willie Brown is a legendary
political figure in California. He served as mayor of San
Francisco from 1996 to 2004. When Willie Brown was mayor around the turn of the 21st
century, you wouldn't have allowed
what is happening today. Okay? Once you left office, the city
spiraled down into anarchy because laws of public
safety were not enforc. Okay. Open use of narcotics, open
sale of fentanyl. Fentanyl.
Would you kill you? All right. Defecating in the street. All of that not enforced. Who is at fault for that libertine
philosophy? Who did it? wasn't anybody's fault as such that you could point to
the rest will left leadership. It's not worth wasting time
discussing whose fault it is. I want to continue
as I'm currently doing, participate in
and altering the process. Brown doesn't
want to name names, but we will. The people responsible
for this catastrophe are former mayor London Breed Governor
Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi and Brown's
ex-girlfriend Kamala Harris, all of them committed
to a progressive ideology. The reason
we have a homelessness epidemic is that essentially,
progressives got it in their heads that
the incentives for good behavior and the consequences for bad
behavior were bad, Journalists and former lefty activist
Michael Shellenberger was so horrified by what he saw happening in San Francisco
that he did two things. First, he stopped being a lefty. Second, he wrote a book about
what was happening and gave it this title. San Francisco. somehow
it was immoral to require, mentally ill people
drug addicts, poor people, people with problems
to change their behavior. The idea was
that it's not empathetic for people to demand that people
change their behavior. Instead, you get policies like San Francisco's
General Assistance Program. It gives every qualifying
homeless person hundreds of dollars a month. On a debit card. You know,
the city pays him about $1,000 a month and some cash. No no, no, no, not that much. They do get they do get
some assistance. Why? Because this city has always
had a great level of generosity. Fine. But do you think it's smart to
give people money to buy heroin? Because that's worse. I don't think anyone in his
right mind would tell you. It would be smart to give money
and money to buy any drugs. Well, arming themselves, but no. You provide resources. Some people
take advantage of them. I would tell you
that there is conduct by some people
that live in this city, and they just got here, period. Because they were chased
out of Denver, they were chased
out of wherever, and they were chased here. And they get the money they're
going to be they are usually we are more generous,
or at least we have been giving money
to drug addicts. Oh, and you're not prosecuting t Look at people. You
give money to people in need. they've created
an incentive for homelessness. The numbers are shocking.
In San Francisco. It's somewhere between 100,100
and 20,000 per homeless person spent per year just by the city
of San Francisco. That's not including
the 24 billion that was spent by Gavin Newsom over the last
six years at a state level. It also doesn't
include federal programs. So you've got
a huge amount of money going in to incentivize
homelessness. This video from 2022, shot
by Shellenberger, says it all. If you're going to be homeless. Pretty f***ing easy. I mean, if we're going
to be real estate, they pay you to be homeless
here. When you said that
San Francisco pays people to be homeless,
what did you mean by that? You mean that literally? Yeah. I mean, I get 620 bucks a month
in from General Assistance. Are you? Wouldn't you? How was that? Hard to get? F***ing phone
call, bro. And that's just the tip. For years, the city poured billions into a policy
called Housing First. What does that mean? Well, instead of building
temporary shelters where people need
to seek treatment or look for a job, the city just gives them
an apartment. You heard that right. You can find hotels like this
all over town. Converted into free
housing for the homeless. these single resident
occupancy hotels. So basically become modern day
opium demos where people are in there,
they're partying together, they're smoking fentanyl
or smoking meth. There's drug dealing
happeng inside of them. They're extremely dangerous
places. People are assaulted in them.
People are murdered. People overdose and die. And so when you say,
we're going to go in, take care of the homeless, why building
more of those facilities? It's actually just creating
a death sentence for people that are addicted to hard drugs. And suffer from mental illness. That part about the death
sentence is not hyperbole. We now know from a 2021 study
done by Harvard University they gave, housing
unconditionally to homeless, homeless people, 86% of whom either had a drug addiction
or a mental illness, and half of them died
within ten years. Only 12%
actually remained housed. Those are terrible numbers. When you're killing four times
more people than you're actually
keeping housed, those are absolutely
terrible numbers. And don't let anybody tell you
that B.S. about homelessness being caused by high rents or other
inequities of capitalism. Look, these other cities were
housing costs have increased. I've actually seen
a homeless decline. The fact is, homelessness got
out of control in San Francisco because the city intentionally
made itself a magnet for anyone looking for freebies
with no strings, lax law enforcement and cheap
drugs added to the problem. So how do we know that? Because we talked
to some former street people. you can buy fentanyl for as little
as $5 on the street right now. So drugs were available
all the time. I look back and can't believe
I've been through what I've
been through, That's next. Do you like getting drunk high? Stoned, you know, lighting it up
like the 4th of July? Well, then San Francisco
is your kind of town. There's about 37,000 hardcore
drug users in San Francisco, Tom Wolfe knows
what he's talking about because he was a drug
addict himself. How long were you,
a hardcore drug addict. At least about five years. I was hardcore.
I had surgery on my foot. I was given oxycodone
as a prescription for the pain. I got addicted to those pills
that spiraled into heroin and eventually, fentanyl,
which led me to the street. Okay. Yeah. Living in a tent. Is that where you were? Actually, I was just sleeping
in a doorway. Not even a tent. So you sleep in a doorway? You buy drugs? Easy.
It was easy to get them, right? Oh, yeah. We have an organized drug
dealing network in San Francisco that work in shifts
like a union job. 24 over seven,
That's the culture that you have in this city, but it is not
as dominant as you make it. This city is as interesting and as in transition
as most cities in America. But you know, and believe me,
they are all okay. But there's no strategy here. I don't see one. There's no strategy
to solve this problem that's been going on now for
almost a decade, Come on, you. There's nobody knows
San Francisco better than you. I know you're
trying to put a good face on it. And sure, a city I understand. But you know,
the social problem, you know that there's doesn't
seem to be a solution to it. Well, you cannot take away
somebody who's right to stand on the corner. But hang on. It's not just a matter of live
and let live. For years, San Francisco has
encouraged intravenous drug use. That's right. It's all because of a policy
called harm reduction. harm reduction is just a model
for maintaining addiction and trying to reduce the harms
of addiction. It's a case of where that logic
was taken to such extremes that now harm reduction
advocates give away crack pipes. Meth pipes. Not at all clear how what harm
that's being reduced. It got so crazy that at one point, city was
actually paying for billboards with taxpayer money
that encourage people to actually use hard
narcotics safely. they showed people at a party,
they showed a homeless guy they communicated the message
that there was a safe way to use really hard drugs
like fentanyl and meth. The irony, says Shellenberger,
is that San Francisco, like most of California,
is no libertarian free for all. At least not for the rest of us. It's the ultimate nanny state
when it comes to legal but unhealthy substances like food, chemicals,
and especially tobacco. San Francisco has cracked down
severely on secondhand smoke. So you would think, okay, then they're going to be against
the second hand smoke from smoking
fentanyl and meth. But on the contrary,
within the progressive mind. By definition, if you're a homele,
if you're a street addict, you are a victim
and everything to you should be given
and nothing required. That is the key. In San Francisco,
it's all carrots, no sticks. Gina McDonnell
knows all about that. She was an addict
on these streets. We have permanent supportive
housing in the city where they literally take
a person off the street and put them in a room alone, and they
take drugs all day long. no supervision. And there's all these services
that we pay for that are available to them. that they can take advantage of. But there's zero requirement
for them to participate. No sobriety requirement,
no sobriety requirement, no checking in
with your caseworker. No any of that. So you can sit in your room
and shoot dope all day. And I
I personally knew 15 people when I was out on the street that died of a drug
overdose, 15, 15, including waking up next
to three different people three different times,
who had died overnight from drug overdose
that were decent human beings. They were just sick
with the disease of addiction. But even though you woke up
next to three corpses, yeah, you still did your fentanyl
that day, right? Absolutely. Addiction wins every single time
And yet both Tom and Gina turn their lives around
and got clean. How did they do it? Well, they got locked up. I thank God every day
for Alameda County sheriff for putting me in handcuffs,
put me in the back of a car so. The system actually saved you
because you went so far over that you had to be, put
in a facility against your will. You didn't
want to be in there, right? But they did that. Yeah,
that's an interesting lesson. The moral of that story is
simple. You have to hold people
accountable for their destructive behavior. If you ever want that behavior
to change. Coming up. Drug addiction
is only part of the problem. What about the crisis
of mental illness? We'll tell you
about San Francisco's approach. Spoiler alert. The policy is really crazy. You are looking at security
footage of a San Francisco woman being randomly attacked by a
mentally ill homeless man outside her condo building
in the South Beach neighborhood. Pulled to the ground. She fights for her life before finally escaping
with minor injuries. The accused lunatic
was arrested, but San Francisco
being San Francisco, he was back on the streets
just a short time later. And that's
just one guy in San Francisco. There are thousands of homeless,
mentally ill people roaming the streets,
and they are a danger to themselves and others. Okay. You saw a lot of mentally
ill people out of tons, tons As we saw for ourselves,
you can't stand on a sidewalk for ten minutes. In some parts of the city without a mentally ill person
approaching you. Very You need some help? Yeah. Okay, sir. All right. You do. You need help? Good. Yeah. You're good. All right. This is bad for poor old guy. More than half of the city's homeless population
has psychiatric conditions. Mix that with the rampant drug
use and government handouts. And you've cooked up a recipe
for disaster. the research is really strong
on this, that the schizophrenics
that are at greatest risk to themselves or others are ones that use hard drugs
because they create psychosis. They create this heavy
intoxication or states of mania. was in psychosis so bad that I believed
people were following me. I was eating parts
of my phone Bill. I was eating the SD
card out of my phone. That?s how crazed you got
from the drugs. This is what happens
when mental health care gets rebranded
as a human rights violation. a big part of that was the ACLU
was adamantly against any anything
that would have a court order to require mentally ill people
to be in psychiatric asylums. That's the American Civil
Liberties Union. Same folks who continue
to oppose involuntary psychiatric intervention
to this day. you have
these organizations that tell you that people have the right
to do what they want. They have civil rights. You have the ACLU coming at you. because the ACLU and the
progressive left in California are so adamantly
against anything they perceive to be coercive or mandatory,
we're not getting the serious mentally ill.
The care that they need. By the year 2004, the state of
California passed prop 63, also known as the Mental Health
Services Act. California
passed a ballot initiative that put a special tax
on billionaires and for mental health,
everybody supported it seemed like a great idea
at the time. I supported it well. We didn't understand
it was hidden in the fine print. Is that the only provides
mental health care without any mandatory
or coercive methods. But as we already know,
the people who need the help the most are usually too sick
with mental illness. Drug addiction,
or both to seek it themselves. It's the illness or the addiction
making their decisions. Did you talk to the other
drug addicts? Did you did you, you know, was
there any kind of, sense of. Look, we all got to kick this
got to get back into normality. Was there any of that? No.
Not that. I mean,
we did talk to each other. And, look, there's a community
on the street. It's just a very unhealthy
community where everybody's motivated by
the sasame thing, their addictin and getting more drugs. So what happened? The state collected the taxes,
spent billions, and the problem got worse. This is what happens
when ideology overpowers common sense. would argue with people
about this, you know, some, if your senile grandmother
escapes from the nursing home and is on the mean streets
in San Francisco, wouldn't you want to impose
an intervention on her so that she gets back
to the nursing home? I think that the vast majority
people would say, of course. So why is it then you wouldn't
want to do the same with somebody
with schizophrenia? when you were mayor. That's what
I'm trying to get at. You were able in eight years to
kind of control the craziness. What the deuce happened? I can
tell you that. I think people and almost every city in America have altered
their own social conduct. And in many places,
more than in some other places. these drug addicts
and these mentally ill people are wandering around and they have been wandering
around for a long time. But there's a considerable
amount of attention that's being given to everybody in need in this city
Attention. I'd call it enabling. d if you think it's limited
to self-destructive behaviors, think again, because you are about to see
what San Francisco's radical left did
to the criminal justice system. the police didn't even bother arresting people anymore
for a huge number of crimes. And so it just became a free for all on the streets
of San Francisco. How law and order became
absolute anarchy. Next. So this is the tenderloin district
of San Francisco, one of the worst places
in the United States of America. The reason it's so bad
is because there's no law enforcement at all here. There's violence, drugs
everywhere. They call this stretch
of the tenderloin cartel alley. Now, I'm
reporting with a mixture of anger and sadness. Should not be happening
in the United States. All right. And it's happening
because of one major reason. You people
don't care about these people. You don't care. All right. So every indignation you could possibly imagine happens
right out here in full view. So we're going
to stop for a moment. So this is our hotel right here. Up there. You can't stay in that hotel because you will be
beaten to a pulp. All right. What the currency here is, is heroin. Cocaine, methamphetamine, all of it tinged now with fentanyl,
which will kill you like that. Now, these addicted people
whose street people, they don't care
whether they live or die. Most of them. Okay. Their whole lives
centered around intoxication. That's it. At the same time,
the city gives them needles, crack pipes. It's just insane. So the problem never get solved. It's circular. Now, why do they come here? Why not go to Des Moines
or someplace like that? Because the city of San
Francisco in the state of California
gives them money. As we discussed earlier, cash. Okay. For nothing. And they use the cash to
get intoxicated, to buy drugs. So why wouldn't
you come here to San Francisco? Doesn't snow. It's not hot in the summer. And the people who live here
are just terrorized. an attack on a San Francisco
police officer. A San Francisco restaurant
owner, stabbed multiple times
inside of his business. The weapons
that they're carrying. I get it. I'm speechless. It's like what
you see in the movie. For years, law abiding
citizens in San Francisco have had to endure yet
another layer of progressive insanity
radical criminal justice reform. First, California's
Proposition 47, which reduced many felonies
and misdemeanors, all in the name
of reducing prison overcrowding. when you dive into this,
you find out it's not really the police
that aren't doing their job because they are It's
our judges. It's our state law. It's our state policymakerss that have reduced penalties for what they call quality
of life crimes. And so our court system
has become a revolving door. Okay. So they arrest them
in a back out. Nothing happens. That's right. And that's only
when arrests are made at all. In 2019, when radical leftist
Chesa Boudin became San Francisco's
district attorney, it became a true
reign of terror. He was raised
by two other radicals, but had a very radical,
you know, anti-police, anti incarceration
agenda, came into office and did exactly what he promised,
which was to stop enforcing a huge number of laws
that he claimed were, the reason for racial
disparities in criminal justice. all sorts of activities
drug dealing, drug use, prostitution,
illegal camping. police didn't even bother
arresting people anymore for a huge number of crimes. And so it just became a free for all on
the streets of San Francisco. And let's not forget about the decriminalization
of shoplifting. Totally insane. Right? And of course, it had a highly
predictable result. And so you'd have these organized syndicates of people
that would go into stores and engage in smash and grabs
for higher value items, with the understanding
that there would be no consequences for it. That's
why many retailers made the rational decision to close up
shop in San Francisco. Take a look at the list of some of the biggest stores
that said sayonara to downtown. Citing crime
and safety is driving factors. Just around a corner from here
at target store, I had to close, retail stores closing
all over the place because, the city will prosecute
shoplifting and theft. When you were mayor,
and I remember that, you were fairly tough on crime. Correct. I was literally mindful of conduct for people,
as I currently am, but without the authority that I had
when I served as mayor. And I am really focused
on having all of us obey and mutually respect each other
and obey the law and obey all the rules. Not happening. And it goes without saying,
but we're going to say it anyway that San Francisco
was one of the first and remains one of the most ardent
sanctuary cities in the country. So how's that working out? San Francisco has an organized
drug dealing problem. It's mostly, undocumented immigrants from Honduras
that are brought up here by the cartels
to sell drugs on our streets. They control about
95% of the drug trade on the streets right now
throughout the city. Armed. They got guns, knives.
Absolutely. Guns, knives, machetes,
whatever you can think of. They had
they used to have baseball bats and steel poles
stashed around the corner next to trees and all that. But, these days,
because everything's so much more volatile,
most most of them have guns. Who were these people
selling you? The narcotics Hondurans. There were no Honduran
drug dealers in Oakland these were mean
guys, right? They'd hurt you. They would? Yes. I was kind of in and out of. I've seen them hurt people.
Absolutely, absolutely. it's all consolidated
underneath the Sinaloa cartel. So you essentially have salesmen
working for the largest and most violent
multinational corporation in the world,
being protected by laws that were meant
to protect their victims. And now they're being used
to protect perpetrators. By the year 2022,
it had gotten so bad that voters had finally had enough
and recalled Chesa Boudin. in San Francisco decided
to recall District Attorney Chase Aberdeen. Overwhelmingly,
more than half of voters say the city
well said yes to proposition H, which was the question
should he be recalled. And now that Boudin is recalled, the next step is to figure out
who's going to replace him. You had to recall your D.A. here because he wouldn't
prosecute any crime. But that's why we got him out. We took him out,
but the damage was done. But that's just one local D.A.. What about the real power
players? responsibility do they have
for making this mess? Thank you all very much,
California. his political ambitions
were greater than his compassion
for the vulnerable, That's next. So I'm here in a Pacific Heights
neighborhood of San Francisco. House behind me. Nancy Pelosi lives there. So why am I here? Because Mrs. Hello.c is speaker of the House. Was the most powerful politician outside of the president
and maybe the Senate majority leader in the country
for a good number ofears. She did not object to her hometown going down a drain. now, not in this neighborhood. Nancy bought her house
for 2.3 million. It's worth about eight. Pristine neighborhood. Beautiful. You had a major amount of very, very powerful people
attached to San Francisco. Gavin Newsom
now governor in the state. Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, none of them intervened or even objected to the rapid downfall of social order in this city. Despite living in one of the most affluent
neighborhoods in San Francisco, not even the Pelosis are immune to the consequences
of progressive policy. On October 28th, 2022,
a hammer wielding intruder broke into the home and attacked Paul
Pelosi, fracturing his skull. The assailant, Canadian citizen
David Wayne DePape, who was in the country illegally
and according to friends, had a history of mental illness
and drug abuse. The progressive movement,
and we mentioned it before. Voters
okayed a law that says, hey, you can steal $1,000,
but nothing will happen to you. Sot's
not just the politicians, right? That is where San Francisco
politics lives in the progressive zone. One more story. When I come to
San Francisco and I rent a car, the agent says, do not leave
anything on the car seat. When you park. Why? Because the drug addicts
will break the window and steal
whatever is in the car. Will not be prosecuted. It's insane. But this is the reality
of present day San Francisco. are you? I'm pretty good. How are you, Now, Willie
Brown is a lifelong Democrat. But when he was mayor and tried
to maintain some order, he was vilified.
you got attacked by the progressive left,
is that correct? Full time. And I still am. Without the power
and the authority When we say attacked,
we mean both figuratively and literally. This is his honor. Catching cherry, pumpkin
and tofu pies in the face hurled by activists
who opposed his housing policy. And believe me,
the collection of people from on thank from the social workers
world mean well, but don't understand the mentality
of some individuals. But I was surprised
because what you were promoting when you were in power was fairly common sense. You got a big city here, and everybody has to be respected,
and you can't have a huge group intruding on other people
and causing trouble. And you were attacked
by progressives of being a mean guy. You were a mean guy. Did that take you by surprise? Yes, there were people who really, I think meant well, but they did not understand. They Even former addicts
turned activists like Gina McDonald
and Tom Wolfe got lambasted when they dared to criticize the
anything goes ideology. Well, you know, people call it
less compassionate. It's I say it's
not compassionate to let someone lay on the sidewalk and die. I think it's not compassionate to walk past somebody
who's laying in their own urine and feces
and think that they are going to make the decision to, miraculously get better. And what about Governor
Gavin Newsom, who may run for president? What's he done to clean up
the disaster zone? the crucial moment for Gavin
Newsom is in January 2020 when he gives a spectacular
like an for me, almost perfect speech,
everything you would want in his state of the state
address outline what he was going to do
on mental illness, addiction and homelessness. It's time to stop pointing
fingers and join hands in a transformational solution. And he really laid out
a whole program, the governor
essentially didn't do any of it. All he did
was the additional spending. So it was supposed to be some sort of a compromise
between some more spending on addiction and mental illness,
along with requirements for sobriety and some sort of
conditions on receiving housing. And he abandoned that,
And so what we see in Gavin Newsom is somebody who,
needed to pursue a n approach. But he didn't have the courage
to follow through on it. Okay, but wait. There's a new mayor in town. And guess what? He's not completely nuts. Is there a new day
dawning on the city by the bay? That's next. So we shot this
special on Super Bowl weekend, and the city
tried to clean itself up for the tourists and the TV
cameras, hurting the homeless to overnight shelts
where they could not be seen. So of course, the city
has put on their Sunday best and everything's
kind of looking good. it's wonderful. It's there's police on every corner, beat cops,
which you never see. But I also think that the residents of this city
deserve this every day. Now, here's the good news. The new mayor, Daniel Laurie, has dialed back some of the
progressive nonsense. And by some metrics,
things are getting better. At least some of the credit goes
to activists like Tom and Gina,
who said enough is enough. And they said it loudly. We formed in 2021
out of desperation. Our kids were living out here
on the streets of San Francisco,
severely addicted and homeless. And we felt we had no voice. And we came together and, protested and kicked and screamed and yelled
until they would listen to us. so part of my advocacy
work was to kind of change the, the direction
that San Francisco was going in. So I worked hard
with a lot of other people. We had a whole coalition
of people in recovery to get someone like Daniel Luria elected mayor of San Francisco,
to to move the plurality of the members of the Board of Supervisors,
our city council, to a more moderate
political view, where they all kind of
had a common goal of, but that's all well and good,
but you just told me 37,000 drug ads running around,
and I get it. It's not that big of city. Right? Okay, 37,000. on. It's a legion of people
causing unbelievable damage every day. I don't see it
getting a lot better. What you on In fact,
just this month, Mayor Laurie's motorcade was attacked
by tenderloin thugs right after he gave a speech denouncing
the city's broken government. I mean, come on. We didn't get into this position
overnight. It took us like,
a decade for us, for San Francisco
to literally slide to rock bottom,
which we hit in 2024. Right, right. And so there's really kind of no where to go from there
but up. And we can't forget the billionons of dollars
that the city wasted. Wasted on flawed ideology, on radical harm
reduction, on Housing First models that actually didn't
solve homelessness. And you could argue that it
actually made everything worse, because we still had 650
overdose deaths in San Francisco last year. I want you back in six months, and then I will
come back in place. You'll come back, and you and I will walk the
tenderloin as I did yesterday. They thought I was dirty
Harry down there. And I walked down there. Okay. Whoa! Is there a solution? There is a solution,
but it's going to require, federal guidance,
which we're starting to get from the Department of Housing and Urban Development
and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But it's also going to require
state legislation. States like California are going to have to actually
change the law. State law around
housing and around drug use, and where drug use is allowed and where progressives
don't want to do that. And you dominate the state as they want to let you do
whatever you want to do, no matter how much damage
you cause other people So this is happening
for two reasons. Progressive virtue signaling. They, I guess, think that they're
doing these people a favor, letting them destroy themselves,
I guess. All right. And the second reason
is their personal behavior. These people have said, hey,
blank you. I'm going to do whatever I want. I don't care. Now, some people feel sorry
for them. I'm on the fence about it. Okay. But I will tell you what
the only solution is. Mandatory substance
abuse rehab. That's it. Because most of the people here
in the tenderloin in San Francisco,
they want to be here. They want this. And they are dangerous not only to other people,
but to themselves. It's just incomprehensible
that the United States of America
is allowing this to happen. And it has to stop. This has been a News Nation
Bill O'Reilly special. Thank
you very much for watching.
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