Video: San Francisco resident records alleged open-air drug deal in Tenderloin

SAN FRANCISCO - A San Francisco resident caught filming a blatant drug deal was apparently threatened with a knife by one of the people involved in the transaction.

Elliot Quinones said he witnesses drug deals every day in the Tenderloin. He said it's like a fast food restaurant for drugs, right outside his window.

While he was recording a recent exchange involving a few people crouched beside a parked car, he told them to  ‘smile’ before one person appears to throw a knife at him. The knife shattered his window, he said.

"Hopefully I can help build a case about what's going on in the neighborhood," said Elliot Quinones. Hopefully I can help the DA, hopefully I can help the police with the evidence they need to just bring down what's going on out there because it's just, it's not good. 

 San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins says since she was sworn in in July her office has filed 125 felony drug cases, holding five of these defendants before trial. She says following two years under District Attorney Chesa Boudin, her office is now cracking down on repeat offenders, and it will take them getting re-arrested and working their way through the judicial system to start seeing changes in the tenderloin. 

"Now we are obviously handling things differently, and so as that continues to happen you will see stiffer pre-trial of those defendants, and so that will too, lead to something visible on the street," said Jenkins.

Quinones said he reports the drug deals to the San Francisco police but they never come to help and usually tell him it's not an emergency. He decided to take matters into his own hands by recording.

ALSO: San Francisco DA cracks down on drug dealers; public defender calls policies 'regressive'

Quinones said the drugs he sees are usually white powder substances or crystals.

Open-air drug use has been a persistent problem in the troubled neighborhood.

Randy Shaw from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic says he's hopeful that DA Jenkins will make a difference, but that for now, it's too early to tell. The true measure of success, Shaw says, will be simply going out onto the streets to see if drugs are still being dealt out in the open; not official data from law enforcement. 

"I don't care how many arrests they've made, I don't care about felony prosecutions," said Shaw. "The strategy isn't working. The goal is to close the drug market and that's what we have to see."

The police department has said it will do what it can to make sure there is a visible police presence in the tenderloin. 

"We have a staffing issue in San Francisco, we're short over 500 officers," said Assistant Chief David Lazar from the San Francisco Police Department. "Given the fact that we have that staffing shortage we still are doing our very best that there are police present in the Tenderloin."