The east entrance to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park at Haight and Stanyan streets should be a welcoming gateway into the park. Instead, neighbors and tourists are pestered with offers to buy drugs as they pass through the gate and through Alvord Lake.

The problem area is in the backyard of the Park Police Station, which makes the open drug dealing all the more baffling.

"You can't walk 5 feet without getting approached by a drug dealer," said Ken Miller, 54, a professional musician who lives in the Inner Sunset.

Drug dealing, which is a felony, has persisted for years. Loiterers ask, "Need some weed?" and advertise, "Ganja food, brownies." On a recent Sunday afternoon, Chronicle Watch was approached to buy marijuana three times in 30 minutes.

"I've got a 6-year-old," said Simone Haas, 37, who lives in the Inner Sunset. "It's not a fun walk to do with a small child."

Park Station's captain, John Feeney, recognizes that the station had let park drug enforcement lapse, but said since he became captain in mid-January, plainclothes officers have focused on busting dealers in the area.

Last year, police made 60 arrests on suspicion of narcotics sales or possessing narcotics for sale, mostly marijuana, in the Upper Haight region, according to police data.

By the end of April last year, police had made 25 arrests.

So far this year, police have made 42 narcotics sales arrests in the area: none in January, five in February, 34 in March and three in April.

The San Francisco police Violence Reduction Team helped Park Station police to get the drug enforcement efforts started in March, Feeney said.

Yet the problem continues. Why?

It's hard to get an answer from the district attorney's office, which doesn't seem to be coordinating with the promised efforts at Park Station.

Office spokesman Omid Talai said the district attorney doesn't track how many people arrested in the area were eventually charged, so they have no way of knowing what happens to all those people arrested by the Police Department.

For anyone who was charged with felony possession of narcotics for sale, Talai said the D.A.'s office would request a stay-away order at arraignment for the area in which they were arrested. Of course, mere marijuana possession is only a misdemeanor.

How many people have those stay-away orders? No city official seems to have a clue.

But, assuming there are some who fit that description, police officers could search him or her without probable cause or a warrant in the stay-away area.

The trouble with getting a felony charge - and thus the stay-away order - is that police have to catch offenders in the act so prosecutors are able to charge for narcotics sale and not just possession.

"If you catch someone after they've sold, it's just a person with money and weed," Talai said. "If you can't find a buyer then it's not as strong a case."

We'll keep an eye on this to see if it stops.

What's not working Issue: Aggressive drug dealers keep selling in the east end of Golden Gate Park and around Alvord Lake. What's been done: The Park Station police captain says he has ramped up narcotics sales arrests in March with extra help from SFPD's Violence Reduction Team. Who's responsible: Park Station Capt. John Feeney, john.feeney@sfgov.org, (415) 242-3026; district attorney spokeswoman Stephanie Ong Stillman, stephanie.ong.stillman@sfgov.org, (415) 553-1167.