Latino SF Cop Called Racist For Arresting Latino Drug Dealers

San Francisco cop Daniel Solorzano, who is Latino, is being accused of racism by leftist lawyers because he was only arresting Latino drug dealers in the Tenderloin district where he patrolled until recently.

The rub is that only Latinos are dealing drugs there, according to law enforcement experts and community activists. But under the loosely worded California Racial Justice Act, which treats disparate impact as discrimination,  the arrests may qualify as racially discriminatory and grounds for having sentences reduced or reversed.

So the office of the San Francisco Public Defender is casting the arrests as racially discriminatory with the hope of later filing some kind of motion to dismiss the arrests under the California Racial Justice Act.

The legislation, enacted in 2020, prohibits convictions based on race or ethnicity. That sounds good but the legislation allows someone to challenge his conviction without any evidence of bias in his particular case. Instead, overall disparities in how other members of a racial group are charged or convicted for the same crime is allowed.

The San Francisco Public Defender, which accused Solorzano of “racial bias and animus toward Hispanic or Latinx persons,” represents some of the alleged drug dealers that Solorzano has arrested. So far this year he has seized 18 pounds of drugs.

The Public Defender’s office claims over roughly two years Solorzano arrested 53 people, all of whom were Latino. But of the 43 people detained or surveilled but not arrested only two were Latino.

The rest were other ethnicities. Five detained but not arrested were drug users who were holding the drugs for dealers, which is a lesser offense.

Nicole Pifari, Solorzano’s lawyer, told the California Globe that he is a good cop being targeted for harassment by the public defenders office for simply doing his job.

“The Public Defender’s Office is targeting Sergeant Solorzano because he is a champion in the battle against the epidemic of Fentanly deaths in San Francisco,” Pifari emailed. “This year alone he has taken over 18 pounds of drugs off the street. These motions are nothing but a form of harassment designed to dissuade the police from protecting San Francisco from the scourge created by Fentanly sales in the Tenderloin.”

“When all the facts are out, the world will know this officer has never made a race-based arrest decision,” she added.

Solorzano is currently not giving interviews. But earlier this month he told local television station KTVU that  “I’m not targeting people. I’m targeting areas.”

Indeed, it’s only Latinos who are  dealing drugs in the Tenderloin, according to prosecutors, community activists and even one defense lawyer who represents accused drug dealers.

San Francisco defense attorney Anthony Brass told the California Globe that “racial bias is not a very likely explanation” for why only Latinos are being arrested since they are the ones doing the drug dealing to begin with.

“Police departments are responding to clean up certain trafficking areas that have yielded complaints from the community,” Brass explained. “What the residents are observing [is] a group of people who have taken over the drug turf. There’s not going to be a lot of diversity in the group.”

He said the whites being let go are probably buying the drugs but they are let go because “buying drugs in San Francisco has has been virtually decriminalized.”

Rene Colorado, executive director of the Tenderloin Merchants Association, did not respond to a request for comment but told local television station  WKTU, “I’m always calling [the police] about drug dealers.”

“99.9 percent of the drug dealers in the Tenderloin are Hispanic. The majority are immigrants from Honduras,” said Colorado. “Residents want police to be more aggressive in the Tenderloin.”

Tom Ostly, who prosecuted drug dealers in Tenderloin for the San Francisco DA and knows Solerzano personally, echoed Colorado’s words in an interview with the New York Post. He noted that most of those selling non-prescription drugs in the Tenderloin are Honduran members of Mexico’s  Sinaloa Cartel.

 “Maybe it’s the cartel that’s racist for only hiring from one ethnic group and national origin,” Ostly said sardonically. “When the defense used to argue a particular race was being targeted I would suggest they contact the Sinaloa Cartel and tell their HR department they need to implement a more robust diversity plan that aligns with San Francisco values.”

In an email to the California Globe Ostly said “I had direct interactions with Sgt. Solarzano on cases we prosecuted. He was professional and hard working, but also demonstrated that he cared about the defendants in drug sale cases. He would talk to them about alternatives to selling drugs and tried to help them find alternate employment. Trying to find solutions besides arrest and incarceration is exactly what we would hope officers would be doing.”

“If a particular race is being targeted by law enforcement that should be addressed. However, the use of the [California Racial Justice Act] against Sgt. Solarzano is an attempt to stop law enforcement from going after organized crime that comes from a specific region overseas.”

“If a patrol officer is citing people from one demographic, but giving warnings to people from a different demographic for the same conduct, that’s a problem. But if an officer is trying to address a criminal organization, the ethnicity of that criminal organization is not the officers fault.”

“There are different groups that sell dope in SF, and they sell different narcotics in different locations. If you target a particular location it is likely most of the arrests will be of one group.”

Solerzano is backed by the San Francisco police union.

In a statement union president Tracy McCray said that these “baseless allegations are nothing more than a shameless scheme by criminal defense attorneys looking to get their fentanyl-dealing clients off the hook. In the midst of an overdose epidemic, these dealer defenders are smearing a good officer for simply doing his job.”

“These arrests reflect that Sgt. Daniel Solorzano is an effective officer who gets drug dealers off the streets and helps addicts in need. If these defenders of poison pushers are successful, the opioid epidemic will expand exponentially and that is bad for every resident and business in San Francisco.”