The people at the microphone on Wednesday weren't neighbors complaining about a drug market from a safe distance. They were people who had used on those same sidewalks, gotten sober, and come back to tell San Francisco its flagship $14 million enforcement program is not doing what the city promised.

More than 100 people in recovery, formerly incarcerated residents and treatment advocates rallied on San Francisco streets this week, urging the city to enforce laws against public drug use and to pair arrests with real accountability. Their sharpest target was the RESET Center — the sobering site Mayor Daniel Lurie opened in May as an "alternative to jail or the ER" — which advocates say has failed to deliver the mandatory-treatment teeth it was pitched with, even as the Sheriff's Office points to more than 1,200 people passing through its doors.

The rally unfolded on streets where, by the city's own count, roughly two people die of drug overdoses every day. But the messengers were what set it apart: not merchants or homeowners, but the recovery community itself.

"We are fed up," said Cedric Akbar, executive director of Positive Directions Equals Change, which runs the Eleanora Fagan Center, a recovery-focused transitional housing and stabilization facility. "We get sober, we get responsible. We get jobs, and now we are doing our part for advocacy — for ourselves and other people." Akbar's demand was blunt: "The last time I checked, sleeping on the street, using drugs on the street, is against the law, so I expect the law to be upheld."

Akbar's frustration centered on the RESET Center, which opened May 4 at 444 Sixth Street as the centerpiece of Lurie's shift toward pairing enforcement with treatment. The mayor signed legislation letting officers arrest people for public drug use and route them to the center rather than jail. Akbar says the reality has fallen short of the pitch.

"We spent $14 million for the RESET Center, and the RESET Center — I was told it was going to be used so that if people refused help or treatment, they would be arrested," Akbar told the crowd. "The RESET Center is not that." According to ABC7, Akbar questioned the program's effectiveness and said the city has not sent anyone to his center.

The Sheriff's Office, which oversees the center's operations alongside the Department of Public Health, defended the program by pointing to volume. "I believe the RESET is working," said Chief Deputy Jim Quanico, citing 1,245 arrivals and 1,192 admissions since the May opening, with nearly 400 people referred elsewhere for help.

But Quanico also confirmed the mechanism advocates find hollow: participation is voluntary. People arrested for street drug use are brought in, stabilized for an average of about eight hours, and then offered services they can decline. "The individuals that don't opt for services, we basically provide them with literature," Quanico said. Those who refuse can be arrested again and returned to the center — a loop that critics say substitutes throughput for outcomes.

The center itself is modest for its price tag and mandate: as KQED reported when it opened, RESET runs on 25 reclining chairs across two rooms, staffed around the clock — closer to a sobering station than the coercive treatment pipeline some backers imagined.

Some advocates argued the city keeps reaching for the wrong tool. "We need to just enforce the law. We allow people to do things that are illegal. Nobody's held accountable," said recovery advocate Steve Adami. "Our solution in any public form is to provide more housing. That is not the answer to San Francisco's drug and homeless crisis."

The Department of Public Health, in a statement, defended its broader approach and cited progress: "SFDPH works every single day throughout San Francisco to engage people trapped in the cycle of addiction." The department said that through June 2026, accidental overdoses were down 27% compared with the same period in 2025, and that it remains "focused on high-impact interventions that get people into effective treatment."

That leaves the city and some of its own recovery graduates arguing over the same numbers. To DPH, a 27% overdose drop is evidence the strategy is working. To the people who marched Wednesday, 1,245 arrivals that end in an eight-hour stay and a pamphlet is exactly the accountability gap they came to protest.