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“San Francisco’s progressive district attorney [Chesa Boudin], elected on a platform of reducing incarceration, faces a recall election driven by a pandemic in which brutal attacks against Asian seniors and viral footage of smash-and-grab robberies tested residents’ famously liberal political bent.” AP News
Many on both sides are critical of Boudin’s treatment of crime victims:
“In a recent local Chamber of Commerce poll, an overwhelming majority of city residents said they thought that crime rates had gone up. ‘The results were consistent across gender, age, ethnicity, party affiliation, and neighborhood, and homeownership status,’ the business group noted. Separate polls by The San Francisco Standard and the Bay Area Council found much of the same… Whether it is real or not, the crime wave is coming for Boudin. San Franciscans do not feel safe and secure…
“[Fellow progressive prosecutor Brooke Jenkins argues] that Boudin simply isn’t good at the job. Half the lawyers working for him have quit, retired, or been fired. She personally decided to quit after he declined to hear her out on not accepting the insanity plea of a defendant who had murdered his mother. ‘He never requested to meet with me via Zoom or any other mechanism,’ she said. ‘He never requested to see the file to review.’… Boudin has also shown himself to be less than adept at the political role he’s taken on as D.A. He’s arguing with his own constituents about their lived experience. He’s sniping at the mayor and feuding with the police force. I can’t remember interviewing a politician who seemed less politic.”
Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic
“There were 42 people working in victim’s services when Boudin took office. Since then 20 of them have left. Dr. Gena Castro Rodriguez, who led the office, quit last year. Boudin’s office has hired replacements, some of [whom] quit after a few weeks. His spokesman has an explanation for that, claiming people are leaving lots of jobs because of the pandemic. But there’s another explanation that makes more sense. The office is now full of former public defenders who see the people they are prosecuting as victims and aren’t really interested in the actual victims…
“Jason Young, a former supporter of Boudin whose 6-year-old son was shot by a 17-year-old in 2020 became angry that Boudin wouldn’t charge the shooter as an adult. Young collected 3,000 signatures for the proposition that the shooter should be charged as an adult and Mayor London Breed arranged a meeting between him and DA Boudin. At the meeting, Boudin was fiddling with a pen and just kept [repeating] that he couldn’t bring their son back… The child’s mother, who was also present told the Chronicle, “It didn’t look like he was paying attention to anything we were saying. His mind was already made up.’”
John Sexton, Hot Air
Other opinions below.
“Homelessness and drug use are rampant on San Francisco streets. Shoplifting of less than $950 in goods is a mere misdemeanor across California, and Walgreens said last year that it spent 46 times the chain average on security at its San Francisco shops. Retail theft nevertheless drove five Walgreens locations out of business in the city last October…
“A May Public Policy Polling survey found that voters favor the recall 48% to 38%. Another mid-May survey by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce found that 66% had an unfavorable opinion of the district attorney, and 67% supported the recall.The poll also reported that three-fourths or more said it is a high priority to enforce laws against open-air drug dealing, send more police to high-crime areas, and provide ‘court-ordered treatment for those who are unable to care for themselves due to severe mental illness.’ It’s notable that this is now the growing consensus even in progressive San Francisco.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Don’t be fooled by the Orwellian newspeak of the ‘unhoused’ that completely ignores the problem of mental illness and addiction rampant in San Francisco. Count 640 drug overdose deaths in 2021—more than Covid deaths…
“These were predominantly from fentanyl, yet the district attorney had zero convictions for dealing fentanyl and only three convictions of any kind for drug dealing vs. more than 90 in 2018 under George Gascón of Los Angeles County, another Soros-backed prosecutor. Instead, according to the San Francisco Standard, 80% of Mr. Boudin’s narcotics convictions were classified as ‘accessory after the fact.’ Why? So dealers wouldn’t be subject to deportation…
“Prosecute narcotics crimes and cut off the flow of the lethal stuff. Increase help for the mentally ill. Find temporary housing for families. Increase education. Provide jobs… California is more concerned with renewable energy, electric-car subsidies and paper-straw mandates than doing anything about crime, homelessness or junkies shooting up in broad daylight. Recalling Chesa Boudin might be a first step toward change.”
Andy Kessler, Wall Street Journal
“The city’s rates of robbery, rape, and larceny theft are below pre-pandemic levels and decreased between 2020 and 2021. The number of reported crimes in San Francisco dropped by 28,000 during Boudin’s first two years in office, while arrest and clearance rates also dropped in several categories…
“In March, Boudin’s office released new data on prosecutions and arrests during his tenure which showed that he has filed charges on cases presented by police at an overall higher rate than his predecessors over the last decade… While Boudin’s critics have claimed that he does not prosecute certain crimes like car burglaries or shoplifting, his office launched initiatives to target both offenses…
“Boudin acknowledged that crime is a major concern for people across the country. But the role of police needs to be given more scrutiny, he said. ‘A recall, or replacing me with another DA, is irrelevant when police are only arresting less than 3 percent of people in reported thefts.’”
Akela Lacy, The Intercept
“[Homicide is an] exception to the trend of falling crime… The 36 percent spike in homicides equates to 15 additional homicides in 2021 compared with the year before the pandemic, when there were a total of 41 homicides. Even with that uptick, San Francisco has one of the lowest homicide rates of all major cities in the United States…
“In one recent study, the think tank Third Way found that murder rates were a whopping 40 percent higher on average in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump in the last election compared with states that voted for President Biden. ‘For example,’ the report’s authors note, ‘Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations…
“In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry, over the stunning levels of murders in these and other places.’”
Samantha Michaels, Mother Jones
