Bid to recall San Francisco DA could be bellwether for progressive prosecutors

[brooklynite]

The Guardian

Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, elected on an agenda of tackling mass incarceration, is facing a recall election that could have ramifications for criminal justice reform efforts across the US.

A former public defender and the son of two leftist Weather Underground radicals who spent decades in prison, Boudin pledged to undo the harms of racism in the system, hold police accountable for misconduct and end the criminalization of poverty. After his election in November 2019, he became one of the most prominent leaders in a growing movement to elect progressive prosecutors.

Boudin, 41, enacted many campaign promises: he became the first San Francisco district attorney to charge an officer for on-duty manslaughter; created a wrongful conviction unit that freed a man imprisoned for decades; stopped prosecuting contraband cases stemming from minor traffic stops; eliminated cash bail; and reduced jail and prison populations.

But amid escalating anxieties about crime during the pandemic, Boudin has faced intensifying opposition from law enforcement, conservatives, tech investors and some constituents and elected Democrats in the city, including the mayor. Critics have blamed Boudin for the city’s struggles with violence, homelessness and addiction and have called for a law enforcement crackdown and harsher punishments.

After an initial recall campaign failed to get enough signatures last summer, a newly formed committee of his opponents, called San Franciscans for Public Safety, in November succeeded in placing the measure on the 7 June ballot. If the recall succeeds, the mayor will appoint a successor.

I'm a Democratic Party official. I'm voting to recall Chesa Boudin.

I am a California Democratic Party Executive Board member, and I support the recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. I have consistently supported criminal justice reform as a three-time, elected delegate representing San Francisco’s Assembly District 17. I feel compelled to speak out because I’m sick of Boudin’s disingenuous campaign, and I believe recalling Boudin will save lives.

As a Democratic delegate, I have put my name on countless reform resolutions. They include removing barriers to education for formerly incarcerated individuals, providing access to permanent housing after release from prison, stronger background checks and psychological testing for police officers, and decriminalizing sex work. Like Boudin, I want us to invest in a society that eliminates foundational causes of crime.

In short, I am a Democrat and criminal justice reformist. This is why it infuriates me to see Boudin call the recall a Republican effort to institute their right-wing agenda. To support his claim, he often points to one donor who has donated to Republicans. His campaign committee sent a mailer telling voters not to trust the recall. It included images of Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson to make you think they are behind the recall. They are not. Importantly, Boudin neglects to mention his own top donor, Chris Larsen, has donated to a whole slew of Republicans, including Tom Cotton. If Boudin wants voters to make their decision based on donors to each campaign, he and his supporters should be honest. The fact is San Francisco Democrats put the recall on the ballot with 83,000 signatures, and a recent poll shows the recall is supported by 64% of San Francisco Democrats.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics-op-eds/article/Democratic-official-supports-Boudin-recall-17214953.php

[Zeitghost]

1. His office only prosecutes

Last edited Fri Jun 3, 2022, 04:08 PM - Edit history (1)

15% of the felony DV cases brought to it. That's not going to win you any votes. I think it's safe to say that when the City of San Francisco thinks you're too radical, you might want to revaluate your policies.

[nycbos]

4. Exactly

Similar to the San Francisco recall of the members of the school board. They were focusing on whether or not Abraham Lincoln's name should be taken off of school instead of how to get the kids back to school safely.

One of the members called Asian Americans House N****s

https://missionlocal.org/2021/03/alison-collins-school-board-tweets/

[Celerity]

27. Alison Collins would have likely been charged with hets mot folkgrupp (incitement of racial group

hatred) here in Sweden. That school board was off the charts fucked up.

That POS Collins herself is an ultimate hypocrite for calling anyone a 'house ni**er' as she herself married a multiple millionaire white real estate developer and leads a life of posh privilege in Russian Hill (one of the whitest, most expensive neighbourhoods in San Francisco).

[cbabe]

2. Boudin/democracy now: the rest of the story

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/6/3/chesa_boudin_recall_san_francisco

“We Can’t Jail Our Way Out of Poverty”: San Fran. DA Chesa Boudin Defends Record Ahead of Recall Vote

…
He now faces a recall campaign, with opponents blaming rising crime rates on his policies, even though sources like the San Francisco Chronicle report that crime rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Boudin says the recall campaign is spearheaded by wealthy donors, the real estate industry and Republicans who desire a conservative DA who will not hold police and other powerful actors accountable. Opponents who attack Boudin’s social justice reform without any of their own proposals “are a scourge to democracy,” says Boudin. “We don’t need to jail our way out of poverty or other social programs.”

…

During his time in the office, Boudin has taken many historic actions, from charging an officer for manslaughter to creating a wrongful conviction unit that recently led to the freedom of a man wrongfully imprisoned for 32 years. Chesa Boudin has also cut the juvenile jail population in half.

But his efforts to reform the system have faced a backlash, funded in part by the real estate industry and ultra-wealthy donors. Key backers of the recall include the billionaire Republican donor William Oberndorf; former PayPal executive David Sacks; Ron Conway, an early Doordash investor; and Garry Tan, an investor in Instacart.

…

And the folks who are behind them, as we saw with the attempted recall of Governor Gavin Newsom, are Republicans and police union operatives and ultra-right-wing groups that have learned the hard way that they cannot win at the ballot box if they put their candidates or their ideas to voters. In other words, their only path to winning is not to actually tell voters what their policies or principles or values or even their candidates are, but rather to attack those of us that have won elections democratically.

As you mentioned, the primary individual donor of the recall against me is a man named William Oberndorf. And to be clear about who he is and what his values are, he has given over $6 million to the PAC controlled by one-time Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And he helped Mitch McConnell, “Moscow Mitch,” as they called him, pack the U.S. Supreme Court. His values include eradicating gun control laws, taking away women’s right to control their own bodies and attacking the right to vote. These are not San Francisco values. But he would never be able to win with his chosen candidate.

And so, instead, they’ve spent the incredible sum of $7 million in a local election without putting forward a single concrete proposal for addressing the problems that San Franciscans face every day, without building a homeless shelter or helping to support our underfunded school teachers, without even advancing one iota of concrete policy proposals or evidence for how we can do better than what we are doing every day.

…more

[brooklynite]

3. Republicans may "desire a conservative DA " but the Mayor appoints the replacement

And from polling, it appears that a substantial number of Democrats support the recall as well.

[nycbos]

6. Indeed.

Asian Americans in-particular since there is been an upswing a violent.

https://www.edleedems.org

Many other local Democratic clubs in San Francisco are supporting the recall.

[cbabe]

7. Whose polls? Process? Link?

[nycbos]

8. Here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_San_Francisco_District_Attorney_recall_election

[brooklynite]

9. "New poll of Chesa Boudin recall shows closer, but still bleak, race for San Francisco DA"

A third poll of the Chesa Boudin recall election in San Francisco shows a closer race than two previously released polls showed but is still hardly good news for the district attorney.

Commissioned by the anti-recall campaign and shared with SFGATE, the new poll from Public Policy Polling (rated as an "A-" pollster by FiveThirtyEight) found that 48% of San Franciscans plan to vote "yes" on recalling Boudin, 38% plan to vote "no" and 14% are undecided. The poll was conducted over the weekend among 697 likely voters and has a margin of error of 4.3%.

There have been two previous polls of the race: one from Bay Area-based EMC Research commissioned by recall organizers, which found that 68% of voters support recalling Boudin in the June 7 election and 32% of voters oppose the recall, and a separate poll from the SF Standard that found that 57% of San Franciscans plan to vote to recall Boudin while 22% will vote "no."

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chesa-Boudin-recall-closer-poll-shows-17177181.php

[kimbutgar]

5. 3 no votes in my family

[tishaLA]

10. Might happen in LA, too

even though Gascon is pretty much doing what he campaigned & won on. It'd be better to get rid of our corrupt sheriff, but we seem to be screwing that (and potentially the mayor's race), too.

[quakerboy]

11. Its interesting how any DA who stands up to the police

ends up with a crime wave and gets blamed when they dont immediately fix it.

I will just note it is aweful hard to prosecute crimes if the police dont properly investigate and bring evidence

[brooklynite]

14. "it is aweful hard to prosecute crimes if the police dont properly investigate"

Do you have evidence that this is occurring?

[tenderfoot]

20. Yes.

https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/03/new-report-finds-the-police-are-a-huge-part-of-the-problem-in-san-francisco/

https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/03/columnist-sf-police-take-a-stand-against-da-boudin-by-not-doing-their-job/

Have a nice day.

[quakerboy]

23. I can personally testify to its occurance in my city

Ive witnessed or experienced several fairly serious crimes (gun violence, man chasing me with an axe, stolen cars, etc) around my neighborhood. The police did not want audio/video evidence or personal testimony offered.

They dont even take a report unless you insist. Matter of fact, they often do not show up at all. When they do they shrug and say "no point in perusing this, the prosecutor/Mayor/city council wont do anything".

[Hassin Bin Sober]

25. A buddy of mine is a retired Cook County Illinois public defender.

When he retired he did some part-time work taking overflow - like many private attorneys do. After the Laquan McDonald shooting (where the cop was convicted and others got off on obvious perjury and destruction of evidence charges) cops stopped arresting people. Cops when on on-the-job strike. The private attorney business all dried up because there was no overflow.

[quakerboy]

26. My understanding is they arent legally allowed to strike

So they just do it anyway, with unofficial "work slowdown"

Their unions hold a LOT of power. And yet Ive only ever seen them shoving the ILWU protestors around, never standing with them.

[Zeitghost]

17. Maybe he' too busy protecting women from abuse?

Oh wait, he lets the vast majority of felony DV charges off. In the age of Me Too and the impending doom of Roe, you would think a progressive DA would be protecting women.

[quakerboy]

24. Id be curious

to know more. I dont know much about this particular prosecutor, aside from whats in this particular message thread.

But.. Im curious how his stats compare to his predecessors, or other similarly placed prosecutors?
Are the police giving him cooperation to accomplish these cases?

He could be a schmuck for all i know. Plenty of "progressives" are anti-woman jerks.

But I am certain that the police do everything they can to spike anyone who tries to prosecute one of their own, even if its fully justified. And they do it no matter who it hurts along the way.

[AZProgressive]

12. I remember he had to bring in the Postal Police because the local PD wouldn't do their job

The case for recalling DA Chesa Boudin: There isn’t one. But that hardly matters.

(Snip)

The embattled District Attorney announced on May 10 that a long-running undercover sting operation had led to the arrest of a man named Quoc Le and the recovery of some 1,000 items allegedly filched from San Francisco cars. In a theatrical touch, the nexus of this alleged international fencing operation was a Quickly (a less-than-enviable product placement for the boba tea chain, once again, courtesy of San Francisco).

Just days before the planned arrest and seizure, Boudin says he received a “somewhat frantic” phone call from his lieutenant leading the operation. Detaining Le and moving a Best Buy’s worth of electronics from the Larkin Street Quickly would require logistical assistance and vehicles the District Attorney does not possess; namely, a car with a secure cage in the back. But, Boudin says, the San Francisco Police Department declined to participate.

“We can arrest somebody,” says the DA. “We can put handcuffs on them. How do we transport them to the county jail without a car? How do we seize the evidence without a truck to move evidence? Usually what we do is ask the police to come to assist at that stage of the process. And we did here. I was shocked they said ‘no’ … They were too busy.”

So, the DA’s office rented a U-Haul. It loaded 130 bankers’ boxes of electronics into the truck. Boudin says the transport of Le was handled by officials from the United States Postal Inspector and Homeland Security Investigations.

https://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/

[dalton99a]

13. Boudin coddles violent thugs and has no business being a DA

[cbabe]

15. Facts? Stats for him and previous DAs? Links?

[nycbos]

16. Hate crimes against Asian Americans often don't result in charges

https://www.kqed.org/news/11915634/why-high-profile-attacks-on-sfs-asian-communities-rarely-lead-to-hate-crime-charges




https://twitter.com/EdLeeDems

Just incase you think only Republicans

https://twitter.com/BrookeJenkinsSF This is a twitter account of a former DA. She highlights many decisions that Boudin has made that can be described charitably as questionable.

[tenderfoot]

19. How about the SF police not doing their jobs arresting thugs?

https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/03/new-report-finds-the-police-are-a-huge-part-of-the-problem-in-san-francisco/

New Report Finds the Police Are a Huge Part of the Problem in San Francisco

San Francisco, CA – Opponents of the SF District Attorney have attempted to put the blame on Chesa Boudin for many of the perceived problems of crime, but recent information has found that the San Francisco police—who have been on the forefront of the efforts to remove the DA since before he was even elected—may be a much larger part of the problem.

A new publication released on Tuesday by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice reforms examines performance trends within the SFPD and finds that San Francisco spends more and gets less from their police department than most major cities in the state.

“At an annual cost of about $704 per resident, the SFPD remains a disturbing outlier among police agencies across the state. The SFPD solves fewer crimes compared to other large California cities while arresting Black people with the widest racial disparities of any jurisdiction evaluated statewide,” the report found.

Moreover, “The SFPD has a history of mismanagement, wasteful spending, disproportionate policing of communities of color, and lack of transparency.”

[tenderfoot]

18. Too bad the DA isn't responsible for the current state of SF

and it's disgusting that so many are buying into the right wing funded campaign to oust him.

[ripcord]

21. The problem is that many see Boudin and Garcetti as advocating for the defense

They worry that if the DA and defense attorney are both worried about the defendant getting too much jail time who is fighting for the victim?

[PufPuf23]

22. Meanwhile farther north in Humboldt County, the BOS has sent letter to the San Francisco DA,

about fentanyl purchased in The Tenderloin to traffic in Humboldt and Mendocino counties.

THE SF-MENDO-HUMBOLDT FENTANYL PIPELINE IS SURGING, OVERDOSES ARE RISING, THE MENDO DA WARNS OF REDUCTIONS IN PRISON SENTENCES
May 29, 2022 Matt LaFever

https://kymkemp.com/2022/05/29/fentanyl-is-flowing-through-mendocino-and-humboldt-counties-as-the-mendocino-da-warns-of-reductions-in-prison-sentences/

[UPDATE 10:21 A.M.] DTF BUST TODAY JUST NORTH OF THE MENDOCINO CO. LINE ONLY DAYS AFTER BOARD OF SUPES SENT STRONGLY WORDED LETTER TO SF DA ABOUT DRUG SALES THERE
May 5, 2022 Kym Kemp

>>Samantha Karges of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department has confirmed this is a Humboldt County Drug Task Force stop.

It is common for that agency to observe local suspects making an alleged purchase of drugs in the Bay Area and then wait until they return to Humboldt County before stopping and searching them. She has said more details will be released later.

Just two days ago, on May 3, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors sent a strongly worded letter to Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco District Attorney, complaining of the prevelence of open drug dealing in that city making it easy for local people to purchase large amounts of illegal substances and bring them back to Humboldt County. See below: