On June 7, San Francisco voters, led by independent Richie Greenberg, recalled district attorney Chesa Boudin by a 60-40 margin. As a replacement, mayor London Breed appointed former prosecutor Brooke Jenkins, who got off to a roaring start.
The newly appointed DA, the California Globe reported, “fired 16 people in the DA’s office on Friday, continuing her large shifts away from the previous administration of ousted DA Chesa Boudin.”
Named after fugitive cop killer Joanne Chesimard, Boudin is the offspring of Weather Underground terrorists. When elected in 2019, Boudin proclaimed, “The people of San Francisco have sent a powerful and clear message. It’s time for radical change to how we envision justice. I’m humbled to be a part of this movement that is unwavering in its demand for transformation.”
Boudin transformed an already troubled city into a place where the murder rate, violent crime, shoplifting, burglaries, and open-air drug dealing are all surging. The new DA, who shows great empathy for families and parents of homicide victims, wants to turn things around.
“Today, I made difficult, but important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms,” Jenkins said in a statement. The ousted Boudin cadres didn’t like it.
“After over 2 years of tireless and devoted service to the City and City of SF, I was unceremoniously fired without cause via phone by the Mayor’s appointed DA,” tweeted Arcelia Hurtado on Friday. “I am the highest ranking Latina/LGBTQ member of the management team at that office.”
Jenkins also canned Boudin’s chief of staff Kate Chatfield, and his communications director and policy advisor Rachel Marshall. As Marshall proclaimed, “I joined Chesa Boudin’s leadership team to fight for criminal justice reform; that battle has never been more urgent.”
The ousted Dylan Yep, formerly in the data department denounced the “racist carceral and data-free policy plans” of Jenkins, a black woman. None of those fired presented any data on rising crime in the city, or any revealed second thoughts about Chesa Boudin. His provenance should have served as a warning.
His parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, took part in a robbery in Nyack, New York, that claimed the lives of police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady along with security guard Peter Paige. With his parents imprisoned, Chesa Boudin was raised by Weather Underground stalwarts Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, who gained fame for her celebration of the Manson murders.
For progressives, criminals are the victims of an unjust capitalist society. In the revolutionary struggle, as George Orwell explained in Animal Farm, the rats are comrades. So the charge that Chesa Boudin is “soft on crime” is not even close to capturing it. He is effectively pro-criminal while showing utter contempt for victims of crime.
On his own terms, the terrorist offspring (Kathy Boudin died in May) is a great success. For their part, the people of San Francisco, and new DA Brooke Jenkins, appear to have learned valuable lessons.
Rhetoric about “transformation” and “radical change” is camouflage for a pro-crime and anti-victim agenda. Being a “Latina and Latina/LGBTQ member” is not an accomplishment, not a job qualification, and not a substitute for a proven record of convicting criminals, maintaining public safety, and upholding the rule of law. That’s what the district attorney’s office is supposed to do, and that’s what the people want.
Boudin claimed “the right-wing billionaires outspent us three to one,” but it was the people of San Francisco who tossed him. Jenkins has fired his loyalist team and wants to finish the job.
“Yes, I will be running for election in November,” Jenkins recently proclaimed. “And so we’ll see who else enters that race.” It could be the man she replaced.
“A lot of my supporters and endorsements and donors and Democratic clubs that were behind me are urging me to run now, or in 2023,” Boudin told reporters. “I’m committed, as I always have been my entire life, to doing the work to support our communities, to fight for a fairer system of justice.”
Down in Los Angeles, crime is surging under Boudin’s predecessor, George Gascón. The people have gathered more than 700,000 signatures to get a recall vote on the Soros-backed DA for the November ballot. As that plays out, the midterms are shaping up as a recall vote for the administration of Joe Biden, whose reality dysphoria is making things worse by the day.
Nationwide many more people will have to be told “you’re fired!” if the rights, liberties and safety of the people are to be protected and preserved.