Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s Prime Prosecutor, Faces Recall

San Francisco attorney Chesa Boudin is due to be removed from office next year after a backlash in one of America’s most liberal cities against its policies to reduce the number of people in prisons and prisons.

Election officials in San Francisco confirmed this week that supporters of the memorial had gathered enough signatures to force a June election when Californians vote in a statewide area code for gubernatorial and congressional seats. The prosecution competition will serve as a test of how far liberal prosecutors can go in changing the judicial system in a time of growing crime concerns.

Mr Boudin, a former public defender whose story as the son of imprisoned parents was the focus of his campaign two years ago, is one of a number of liberal prosecutors recently elected with promises to reduce incarceration and tackle racial prejudice within the EU Criminal justice system.

But Mr Boudin, like other liberal prosecutors in places like Philadelphia and Los Angeles, has faced stiff resistance from conservative activists, as well as other residents concerned for public safety, who say he is not cracking down on crime and that his policies are Made San Francisco less safe.

Mr Boudin also faced opposition in his own office, which had high turnover rates, with some prosecutors stepping down in protest of the ministry’s policies.

A homicide prosecutor in the office, Brooke Jenkins, said she supported Boudin’s efforts to reduce prison sentences and tackle racial prejudice, saying she identified as progressive, recently stepped down and did the recall efforts citing mismanagement and low morals supports.

“In my opinion, Chesa lacks a desire to actually and effectively prosecute crimes in any way,” said Ms. Jenkins. “Although he ran on a platform of progress and reform, his methodology for doing this is simply to release individuals early or offer very lenient plea offers.”

During his tenure, Mr. Boudin has become a polarizing figure in San Francisco, a place where many voters have embraced the idea of ​​reshaping the criminal justice system by locking fewer people away while getting tired of petty crime and scenes of desperation City streets.

Fears of growing crime have divided the city, despite not facing the kind of murder and gun violence that other major cities have seen since the coronavirus pandemic began. Unlike Oakland across the bay, which is facing a sharp rise in homicides, the top concerns in San Francisco are property crimes such as theft and break-ins, and quality of life issues such as drug trafficking in the open air and the proliferation of homeless camps.

“Everyone is saying why don’t the prosecution just pick these people up and throw them in jail so I won’t have to look at them again,” said Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, who is a supporter of Mr. Boudin . “That’s not how the law works. It is not a crime to be homeless. “

Mr Boudin described the recall efforts as being driven by traditional law-and-order conservatives who want to back off efforts such as not taking judges to cash bail, asking for lighter sentences and sending fewer juveniles to jail.

“This is clearly about reform of the criminal justice system,” he said. “This is a question of whether we will go ahead and continue to implement data-driven policies that put crime victims first, invest in crime-hit communities, and use empirical evidence to address the root causes of crime in our communities. if we go back to the failed policies of Reagan and Trump. “

While crime fears have fueled recall efforts, the data tells a more nuanced story: Overall, serious crimes fell 23 percent over the past year, although burglaries and car thefts increased, according to the San Francisco Police Department.

Part of the problem, Boudin said, is that police arrested fewer people – a problem he attributes in part to the pandemic because many perpetrators who wear masks to protect them from the virus are difficult to identify.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Boudin was leaving an event at a local university when a man came up to him and said, “When are you going to start arrests?”

“I told him I wasn’t going to start making arrests,” he said. “The public prosecutor’s office doesn’t do that. We’re not making any arrests. “

While some of the big money behind the recalls came from Conservative funders – the biggest funder for a previous action was David Sacks, a Conservative venture capitalist and former PayPal executive – the coalition opposing Mr Boudin also includes Democrats and others like Ms Jenkins, who describe themselves as progressive but consider Mr Boudin’s policy to be too radical.

These recall efforts follow a failed attempt to overthrow Governor Gavin Newsom, fueled primarily by conservative anger over the policies and business closings the governor used to contain the virus.

George Gascón, Mr Boudin’s predecessor as District Attorney for San Francisco, has faced similar efforts to remove him from office since he was elected Los Angeles Chief Prosecutor, who made a similar promise to reduce prison sentences. An initial signature-collection campaign has failed, but a new attempt to recall him is underway.