Back in 2019, I blogged about billionaire busybody George Soros successfully backing a district attorney in San Francisco: Socialist Son of Imprisoned Weather Underground Terrorists Who Was Raised By Bill Ayers and Worked for Hugo Chavez Elected D.A. What could go wrong?
As it turned out, plenty. So much, in fact, that at least 50 attorneys have left the DA’s office since Boudin took office in January of last year and began enacting his pro-crime and pro-criminal policies that have devastated public safety in the city.
The most recent prosecutor to quit is speaking out . . . and getting to work on Boudin’s recall. The recall has been brewing for months now, and it sounds like the effort just got a major boost from a young, progressive criminal prosecutor.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports (archive link):
Sitting on a bench in Golden Gate Park on a recent afternoon, Brooke Jenkins made clear the city’s raging debate over crime and how District Attorney Chesa Boudin responds to it is more complicated than left versus right.Jenkins, a former homicide prosecutor, just quit. Her last day was Oct. 15. She’s now one of about 50 attorneys — roughly a third of the office — to leave since January 2020, when Boudin took charge.But Jenkins’ decision to speak out about what she views as chaotic management, high turnover and ideologically driven decisions at the D.A.’s office sets her apart in the normally tight-lipped criminal justice community. And so does her new role: volunteering for the campaign to recall her former boss.Jenkins, 40, is Black and Latina and — like Boudin — describes herself as a progressive prosecutor who has long sought alternatives to incarceration. She told me she agrees with the central tenet of Boudin’s campaign: that the criminal justice system is racist and needs reform.
Let that sink in. Jenkins is a progressive who apparently actually believes the criminal justice system is racist. She sounds like your typical San Francisco regressive social justice warrior.
And Boudin is too radical for her.
She is at least grounded enough to see that there are actually criminals and that crime is bad. She gets that letting criminals run around unchecked, unprosecuted, and free to commit further, even escalating crimes, is kind of a bad idea. Who knew?
The San Francisco Chronicle continues:
But she disagrees with what she sees as Boudin prioritizing ideology and politics over the day-to-day handling of cases, which she said has yielded an unorganized office, plummeting morale and bad outcomes for victims and their families.It’s important to note that this is personal for Jenkins. One of those families was her husband’s — devastated by the slaying last year of his 18-year-old cousin and what the family views as an ineffective prosecution of his alleged killers.“The D.A.’s office now is a sinking ship,” she said. “It’s like the Titanic, and it’s taking public safety along with it.”
The Chronicle, of course, does its duty in propping up Boudin as much as it can by claiming that he’s been “unfairly” targeted by inconsequential “residents concerned about crime” and by the evil right-wing blah blah. But they cannot ignore Jenkins, a fellow progressive, nor two of her fellow prosecutors who have also left the DA’s office to join the recall effort.
Up to this point, Boudin has been mostly criticized by residents concerned about crime and by the traditionally conservative police officers union. Less than two years into his tenure, he’s been blamed unfairly for everything from Walgreens closures to long-rampant car break-ins.But this is the first time critics inside his office — including Jenkins and two other newly resigned prosecutors — have come forward to take issue with his approach to specific cases and his management style. That may pose a significant challenge if the recall goes to voters.
Interestingly, it seems Boudin (cynically?) promoted Jenkins to a cushy new position in homicide, and by his own account, he’s now surprised to learn that she has principles.
He told me he was surprised by Jenkins’ decision to share her frustrations publicly and work for the campaign to recall him, because he promoted her to the homicide unit.“Usually when you promote people, they think you have good judgment,” he said.
Skeevy, right? I wouldn’t be surprised if he is so cocky and unbearable that he actually let her know that he promoted her in exchange for her gratitude . . . and her silence. Good on her for speaking out, if so.
Another prosecutor, Don Du Bain, has also quit Boudin’s DA office and joined the recall effort (which already, according to the Chronicle, has 32,000 more signatures than needed).
“Chesa has a radical approach that involves not charging crime in the first place and simply releasing individuals with no rehabilitation and putting them in positions where they are simply more likely to re-offend,” Jenkins said.”Being an African-American and Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work, but when you are a district attorney, your job is to have balance.”Both attorneys accuse Boudin of making San Francisco more dangerous by regularly handing down lenient sentences, releasing criminals early, and, in some cases, not filing charges at all, despite sufficient evidence proving those individuals committed violent crimes.”He basically disregards the laws that he doesn’t like, and he disregards the court decisions that he doesn’t like to impose his own version of what he believes is just -and that’s not the job of the district attorney,” du Bain said.”The office was headed in such the wrong direction that the best thing I could do was to join the effort to recall Chesa Boudin as district attorney.”
Can you even begin to imagine how truly horrific and dangerous Boudin must be perceived that progressive prosecutors think he’s too radical?
NBC Bay Area continues:
Jenkins and du Bain point to specific cases:In one case, a man charged with robbery, who had eight prior felony convictions, was released early by the district attorney. He was then arrested four more times for other crimes, but the district attorney’s office never charged him. Then, nine months after he was set free, he hit and killed two women while driving a stolen car, drunk.“The fact that killers may go free, just doesn’t sit very well with me,” said Jenkins, who spent seven years prosecuting cases in the district attorney’s office, most recently serving in the department’s homicide unit, taking on the city’s most violent criminals.In another case, prosecutor Don du Bain said Boudin ordered him to request a more lenient sentence for a man who was convicted of shooting his girlfriend in the stomach. The request, du Bain argues, would have been a violation of state statutes, which govern criminal sentences. As a result, du Bain said he withdrew from the case. “I’ve done 136 jury trials in my career – never, never withdrawn from a case before,” he said. “I’ve seen decisions made in this office in the last year plus, since Chesa took over, that shocked my conscience – and I’ve been a prosecutor for 30 years.”. . . . “Public safety is not his focus. That is not his goal,” said Jenkins, adding, “Chesa has a radical approach that involves not charging crime in the first place and simply releasing individuals with no rehabilitation and putting them in positions where they are simply more likely to re-offend.”
Note to Soros: it’s one thing to buy a DA’s office and plant your anti- and un-American radicals. It’s quite another to keep them there.
My guess is that Jenkins will run for DA after Boudin is recalled.
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