San Francisco officials said they uncovered secret casinos and sleazy drug dens in nine convenience stores all located in one notorious downtown neighborhood.
The stores in the Tenderloin area, known as an epicenter of the city’s drug and homelessness crises, attracted “drug-driven lawlessness” and ran fencing operations where stolen merchandise was hawked to sleazy customers, said City Attorney David Chiu.
“These convenience stores were magnets for drug activity, and, in some cases, the stores were selling illegal drugs themselves,” Chiu said in a recent statement, saying his office has been able to shut down or sue the businesses over the last year and a half.
At the US Smoke Shop, cops didn’t just find tobacco — they reportedly hauled out five gambling machines, $17,269 in cash, two pistol magazines and cannabis products.
A 2025 raid of Family Corner Discounts store uncovered nearly 51 grams of methamphetamine stashed under a display shelf, hundreds of glass pipes, six electronic gambling machines, $4,456 in cash and stolen goods from CVS.
The crack down on the illicit spots stems from a nighttime safety ordinance that passed in July 2024, the city attorney said. The two-year pilot program bars certain retail stores in high-crime areas from operating between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m.
Under that law, shops like convenience and corner stores that violate the curfew can be fined up to $1,000 or face lawsuits. Officials now hope to extend the ordinance by 18 months and expand the curfew zone to other crime-battered areas of the city.
Matt Dorsey, a member of the city’s board of supervisors pushing to expand the ordinance, said the crackdown gives residents a “cooling-off period” that makes the streets less inviting to illegal activity.
City police Chief Derrick Lew praised the effort, saying police will remain “relentless” in pursuing illegal drug markets wherever they appear.
Several other stores were also evicted after property owners were notified of the illegal activity by city attorneys, according to Chiu’s office.