A Republican senator is calling for the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco to be shut down over the open-air drug market and dangerous conditions that plague the area just outside.
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) sent a letter Tuesday to the General Services Administration, which manages the building, suggesting it “shuttered for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m calling to shut down the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building,” Ernst said in a statement. “After all, they’ve already been forced to abandon it, so why should taxpayers keep the lights on in Nancy Pelosi’s haunted house?”
In August, hundreds of employees who work at the Nancy Pelosi building were told to work from home indefinitely due to public safety concerns right outside.
Outside, one of San Francisco’s worst open-air drug markets rages, with dealers and addicts doing business in broad daylight daily. Addicts often hang out and use drugs on the federal building’s concrete benches, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The block around the federal building had 525 drug-related incidents over the past year, city data shows.
In recent months, federal employees had knives pulled on them three times, and one person was chased with a hammer, the San Francisco Standard reported.
Recently, a fence was put up along part of the building to block people from sitting on a concrete ledge where drug dealers were frequently spotted.
In June, two men were charged with attempting to deal drugs in full view of the federal building’s surveillance cameras, the U.S. Attorney said in a press release. One of the men was in possession of a gun when he was arrested and may have fired a gun at someone near the building months earlier, the release said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Protective Service has increased its activity in the area, and some employees have asked to be escorted in and out of the building.
Ernst said the building is now a dangerous place to work thanks to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) herself as well as “the other liberal politicians that have allowed criminal chaos to overtake the streets of San Francisco.”
“Ironically, the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building is a symbol of the way government doesn’t work, … if it’s not safe for federal employees to work here, it certainly can’t be safe for businesses to operate and families to live here,” Ernst said.
The 18-story federal building includes Pelosi’s local office as well as the offices of several federal agencies, including HHS, the Labor Department, and the Transportation Department.
Ernst said the San Francisco area has at least five other federal buildings where federal employees could work, allowing taxpayers to interact with government agencies face-to-face “without fearing for their lives.”