DA, police chief detail crackdown targeting downtown Sacramento drug trade
A drug operation targeting dealers and buyers in Sacramento’s downtown core racked up dozens of arrests and took thousands of dollars of narcotics off capital city streets, authorities said.
Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester and Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho detailed the results of the five-week campaign by the DA’s Central Narcotics Enforcement Team in a joint news conference Wednesday outside Sacramento City Hall.
The haul: two-dozen felony arrests for felony narcotics sales and the seizure of a “significant quantity of narcotics,” said Lester, including heroin, ecstasy, the powerful hallucinogenic DMT and deadly fentanyl — all from what Lester and Ho called “open-air drug dealing” in the blocks on and around K Street.
“We can’t have enforcement just at the top. We also need to have enforcement on the street level,” Ho said. “The truth of the matter is this: Drugs are here on our streets. They’re being sold in our communities. They’re being sold in broad daylight. They’re having a damaging effect, so we need to act now.”
The “focused and targeted” drug operation in the heart of downtown used surveillance and undercover officers in drug buys to shut down the open-air drug sales, Ho said.
“These are the types of crimes that impact our small businesses, that affect public safety,” Ho said. “We will continue to hold these dealers of death accountable.”
The operation netted 6,000 fentanyl pills, 260 grams of ketamine, 6 pounds of cocaine, 4.6 pounds of methamphetamine and 311 grams of heroin, along with $31,000 in cash as well as assorted weapons used in the drug trade. Twenty-five people face charges related to narcotics sales. Another four arrests are pending, Lester said.
Cracking down on Sacramento’s fentanyl trade was a key component of the enforcement push. Ho said 467 people died after overdosing on fentanyl in 2023. That number dropped by roughly half to the 200s in 2024. As of July 1, the city logged 41 overdoses of the deadly drug.
“We’re going after the fentanyl dealer and we’re also going after the supply side,” Ho said after the news conference. “We take out the product, we take out the drug dealers and we reach out to the community to educate the community about the dangers of fentanyl. That’s how we get numbers down and how we go after dealers.”
Sacramento narcotics officers and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents focused on 15 areas around the central city, a “data-driven” approach that honed in on the central city’s hot spots for drug sales, Lester said.
“These seizures, quite literally, saved lives,” Lester told reporters Wednesday.
“The message is that if you want to deal drugs in the city of Sacramento, there’s a police department that’s going to hold you accountable and a district attorney who is going to prosecute you,” Lester said.
This story was originally published July 16, 2025 at 2:55 PM.
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