McDonald’s on Haight Street is a magnet for homeless youth, drugs

A man pipe smokes outside the McDonald's at Haight and Stanyan streets, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in San Francisco, Calif. S.F. City Attorney Dennis Herrera is threatening legal action against McDonalds for the drug dealing that goes on outside the store. less A man pipe smokes outside the McDonald's at Haight and Stanyan streets, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in San Francisco, Calif. S.F. City Attorney Dennis Herrera is threatening legal action against McDonalds for the ... more Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close McDonald’s on Haight Street is a magnet for homeless youth, drugs 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

Half a dozen young people sat on the sidewalk in front of the McDonald’s on Haight Street on Wednesday and one of them, 30-year-old Chris Redinger of Minnesota, packed a bowl with marijuana.

He said there’s one reason he hangs out there: “Location, location, location.” The restaurant is the closest place to Golden Gate Park, he said.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to change that and has threatened to sue McDonald’s Corp. for allowing drug dealing and other illegal activity at its restaurant. It’s a new approach to tackling the open drug use and sales that have persisted for decades despite attempts to clean up the area.

Proximity to park

The McDonald’s, across Stanyan Street from the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park, attracts homeless youths and drug dealers and users. It is also, Herrera said, a breeding ground for violence and crime that has generated more calls to the police than any other business in the area.

“If the demand letter changes nothing, the lawsuit we’d file would be no joke,” Herrera’s spokesman Matt Dorsey said of a letter the city attorney sent Tuesday to McDonald’s President and CEO Steve Easterbrook at the corporation’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill.

A Whole Foods is across Haight Street, but the grocery store employs security guards who make homeless people like him leave the property, Redinger said. McDonald’s employees, for the most part, leave him and his friends alone.

According to the draft complaint Herrera sent to the fast-food chain, police have been called to the McDonald’s property nearly 1,100 times since January 2012 for such reasons as auto burglaries, dog attacks, fights, assaults and drug dealing.

“We firmly believe that, in its current condition, your property threatens the health and safety of the surrounding neighborhood,” Herrera’s letter said.

McDonald’s corporate office issued a statement from franchise owner Betty Lin, who said she has had “regular communication” with police and city officials to “discuss the safety of the restaurant” since she became its owner two years ago. She said she “was not made aware of the claimed drug issues” and “will continue to work diligently with the city and officials to make the restaurant a safe and enjoyable place for my customers.”

Even the people Herrera wants to stay away from the property say the restaurant can be a wild place.

“That McDonald’s inside is like a reality show,” said Justin Walker, a 23-year-old from Atlanta who arrived in San Francisco three days earlier and was hanging out on the sidewalk in front. “It’s just the craziest wing-nut people.”

Persistent problems

Haight Street, epicenter of the Summer of Love in 1967, has for years been plagued by homelessness, aggressive panhandling and open use of drugs.

In 1997, then-Mayor Willie Brown initiated a get-tough policy on crime, drug abuse and illegal encampments in Golden Gate Park — with a particular emphasis on the eastern edge. Nearly two decades later, the same problems remain, even though the Park Police Station is nearby. Drugs confiscated at the McDonald’s property over the past six months include LSD, psychedelic mushrooms, hashish and marijuana, according to the city attorney.

Paul Fogel, an appellate attorney with the law firm Reed Smith, said the city could have a difficult time proving the restaurant is at fault.

“The causal link between the owner’s activities and criminal activity is a hard thing to prove,” he said.

Dorsey, with the city attorney’s office, said the city hopes to avoid filing a lawsuit at all. If it does and wins, the McDonald’s franchise could be closed for a year and the defendants, including McDonald’s Corp., required to pay $25,000 plus additional penalties, Dorsey said.

Low-key police approach

The police, meanwhile, have taken a low-key approach to the drug use outside the fast-food restaurant. Plainclothes officers patrol the area but are easily spotted by regulars. Uniformed officers show up intermittently to tell the loiterers to move on, but no one expects them to stay away, despite the city’s “sit-lie” law that prohibits sitting or lying on the sidewalk or in other public spaces during daylight hours. The ordinance, approved by voters in 2010, was inspired by panhandling on Haight Street.

“It’s just a ballet every day. Every day it’s the same dance,” said Ronnie Morrisette Jr., a 29-year-old San Francisco native, sitting on the sidewalk. “The drugs, the hanging out , it’s been going on since the ’60s and all of a sudden they start tripping.”

“It’s not that we leave them alone,” Sgt. Ron Meyer said. “It’s that we go out there, tell them to move on if they are breaking the law, and then they are coming right back and doing it. What we’ve been asking McDonald’s to do is to have some security there. ... It seems they are not willing to do what they need to do as a property owner.

“McDonald’s is getting an exorbitant amount of police services,” he said.