San Francisco DA to Charge 80 Protesters Who Blockaded Bay Bridge Last Month
Interestingly DA Brooke Jenkins replaced the recalled Soros-backed Chesa Boudin and is making other intriguingly sensible decisions.
Just before Thanksgiving. Professor Jacobson reported that approximately 80 anti-Israel protesters were arrested and cars towed away after they blocked all westbound lanes of the Bay Bridge.
The protest started around 7:45 a.m. and no cars were able to get into San Francisco for hours. Westbound lanes of the bridge could be seen empty as traffic backed up and all lanes didn’t reopen until just before noon.
Images show cars blocking the lanes on the eastern span of the bridge as the protesters call for a cease-fire in the Middle East.
Protesters were lying down with white sheets over their bodies that said “Stop the genocide.”
Now comes news that the San Francisco District Attorney will charge all arrested protesters.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said her office will charge all of the protestors who were arrested after halting traffic on the Bay Bridge during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in November.
In total, 80 protestors calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip will face charges of false imprisonment, refusing to comply with a peace officer, unlawful public assembly, refusing to disperse and obstruction of street, sidewalk or other place open to public, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
“While we must protect avenues for free speech, the exercise of free speech can not compromise public safety,” Jenkins said in a press release….
…According to officials, protestors who were cited and released are expected to appear for their arraignments anytime between Monday and Friday next week.
The demonstrators will be arraigned on misdemeanor charges.
“The demonstration on the Bay Bridge that snarled traffic for hours had a tremendous impact on those who were stuck on the bridge and required tremendous public resources to resolve,” said Jenkins.
On Nov. 16, 80 protesters were arrested on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and 29 vehicles were towed after demonstrators blocked all lanes on the upper deck, with some drivers tossing their keys into the bay. One person was booked into county jail but the others were cited and released, the San Francisco’s Emergency Operations Center said in an email.
Those 80 protesters are being charged with five misdemeanors which include:
False imprisonment (PC 236)
Refusing to comply with a peace officer (VC 2800(a))
Unlawful public assembly (PC 407)
Refusing to disperse (PC 409)
Aggressive panhandling (PC 647(c)
Looking into this, I have to say that DA Brooke Jenkins is an intriguing replacement for the recalled Soros-backed DA Chesa Boudin. Jenkins was a former employee of Boudin who left the office and became a vocal proponent and surrogate of the recall campaign.
For example, Jenkins upset progressive sensibilities when she said homeless people should be made to feel uncomfortable.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins is taking heat for recent controversial comments that homeless people “have to be made to be uncomfortable,” a reference to the idea that regularly sweeping encampments encourages unhoused people to accept offers of shelter.
During a Dec. 4 public forum, dubbed “Take Action: San Francisco,” Jenkins was asked by KGO-TV reporter and former Chronicle columnist Phil Matier if anything “legal” could be done about thousands of unsheltered San Franciscans declining shelter and services.
Jenkins initially replied that “the recourse is obviously outside the criminal justice system.”
She has also raised the city’s conviction rate for crime for the first time in eight years.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, appointed to the top prosecutor role last year, has, in her first 15 months, raised the city’s conviction rate for the first time in eight years, according to data from her office.
Conviction rates rose from 37 percent of cases in 2022 to almost 43 percent in 2023. It is the first time since 2016 that those rates have risen.
The conviction rate was largely flat between 2011 and 2016, when it began a steady decline until this year.
The change in direction fulfills a campaign promise: Under Jenkins, people accused of crimes are being pushed into the justice system more often, and a smaller proportion are being diverted to non-carceral programs. The DA ran on a platform of tough accountability for transgressions, promising to crack down on petty to violent crimes.
Personally, I wish Jenkins a lot of success in her new role. Thia has been the most positive report I have put together on San Francisco since I began writing for Legal Insurrection over ten years ago.
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Comments
Now let’s see if the court hands down appropriate sentences.
You spelled slap on the wrist wrong.
That is ridiculous. The false imprisonment charge should be as a felony and it should be one charge for every single person on the road who was imprisoned in his car. These nihilist leftist idiots deserve to be charged with their actual crimes.
These charges are bogus. This DA is soft. Sure, not as bad as the Chesa chick, but bad, nonetheless.
Agreed. It should be a felony, and if protesters get run over, there should be no charges brought against the motorist.
I’m.sure it’s not this this DA,s fault if these maggots are only charged with misdemeanors. No doubt it’s all the law allows in Kal and in any case she has to get convictions in SF.
You know Chesa’s a guy, right?
Cautiously optimistic. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good or something.
Yeah, ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ so ….better than previous DA. I suppose getting them booked and into the system is a plus. Not to mention this at least creates a deterrent for those ‘activists’ with any warrants or those woke aholes unwilling to do a night in county lock up, SF jail probably has some folks outside the experience of the woke.
They have flown their virtue signal flag and now comes the bill. They have to pay the ‘generous’ towing charges SF inflicts on any criminal towing, wade their way through the justice system filled with the ‘beautiful’ people they so admire, and cough up major money to hack Leftist lawyers. It will be educational. Hopefully, they will learn something. I doubt it, but I can hope.
There’s no reason to be optimistic here, this is all a show. She will bring the charges they will plead down to nothing or to an infraction, or one of the cuckoo judges in the SF system will declare the charges discriminatory.
There’s no reason for cautious optimism or optimism of any kind.
Believing anything else is simply naivete.
Upvote.
If convicted, maybe the protesters could be sentenced to community service: cleaning up the human excrement on the streets and sidewalks, and piling it up in front of City Hall.
Pooper scooper duty should be at least a year.
You can get good paying public sector union job pressure washing the sidewalks of SF of human waste, $90k/year.
False imprisonment was the entire intention of the act. And false imprisonment of thousands and thousands of people was the reason they committed that act where they did. They set out to imprison people in their cars for hours and hours – days if they could. This was not an ancillary feature of the action … it WAS the action. These criminals earned false imprisonment felony charges for every single person who was falsely imprisoned.
The leftist nihilist scum also deserve federal charges for thousands of civil rights crimes that the feds so love to bring against people for doing much, much less.
And then there are all the conspiracy charges that these scum deserve (including those who financed this in any way – for even 20 cents – and worked the logistics and planning).
And we haven’t even gotten into any of the “restricting commerce” crimes that could and should be brought against these America-haters.
And on and on … but they are all going to get off with a slap on the wrist – and they’ll probably be pulling a lot of the same crimes while this process is still ongoing, because they are not going to be held over for trial (as they should since they are a danger to society and are a good bet to falsely imprison others, etc. if they are free on bail).
I’m intrigued as to —
— who are the defendants’ lawyers
— who arranged for the defendants’ lawyers
— who are paying for the defendants’ lawyers
— who are coordinating the legal response for the defendants
— who are paying the bails for the defendants
I use ‘who’ in the plural because it’s an organization somewhere. Sure wish an investigative reporter would take a look.
There are so many non-profit orgs in the bay area with free legal counsel.
The FBI probably knows the answers but refuses to act. I recall the public knew much more about who was behind the radicals of the 60’s-70’s.
Its the People Democratic Republic of SF. The city votes 90% dem. Expect nothing more than 1 day jail with probation. Meanwhile historic record fentanyl fatalities this year for the homeless junkie capitol of CA.
Which makes the primary election the key vote. While SF is always going to vote D, even in SF most people don’t like the inconvenience of these public protests, so they are more likely to vote for a DA who at least charges people.
Jungle primaries.
SF is lost cause. Facing lost decade under dems.
I must admit… I have no problem with record high fentanyl fatality rates. I will go with the “my body, my choice” crowd on this one, and say what you put in your body is your choice, and if it leads to self-unalivement, go with it.
People need to accept the consequences of their actions, good, bad, or indifferent.
Now, this is not to say that drug use is a victimless crime. The victim is the drug addict, the people they steal from, the damage they do to society, etc. So, I say, arrest the dealers, arrest the users, and give appropriate sentences.
But these are the same people who claimed that my desire not to get the clot-shot meant that I should be denied healthcare. OK. These people should be denied healthcare.
Homeless junkies have massive negative impact on cities like SF. They illegally occupy public spaces, blocking sidewalks and alleys and parks, dumping their trash and human waste. They terrorize people waiting at bus stops or public transit. They run wild shoplifting retail stores putting them out of business. They block lobbies to office and apartment buildings destroying them for tenants. They terrorize tourists with panhandling for change and public defecation. They are cancer on civilization enabled by woke progressive lefties policies.
Fentanyl is used with other drugs to make them more potent.. Many times users are not aware.. I agree with you in general.. but some of those self-unalivements were not really addicts, just kids experimenting. Teenagers are really stupid,, but that is too high a price.
“Now, this is not to say that drug use is a victimless crime. The victim is the drug addict, the people they steal from”
I really hate this “logic,” I hear it all the time from police and politicians.
Theft is a crime of its own. It’s not a direct consequence of drug use.
How would you like someone saying, “Gun use is not a victimless crime. The victim is the people they shoot.” Carrying, target shooting, hunting, are all victimless. Shooting people non-defensively is a crime all its own. Right?
Henry. I think you got this WRONG. big time.
I was making a point for the crew on this site who keep saying drug use is a victimless crime.
I don’t have the desire to qualify every comment I make, and others would not r was a dissertation only my opinion.
I believe I stated, although not to your satisfaction, that there are victims of drug use, and it’s not just the addict.
I think we just basically disagree.
Yeah, the choice to use drugs hurts others. Just like the choice to get divorced, or give up a sure salary to find your real career passion, or convert and sell a rental unit, or to have another kid, or to sell your stock in a company you founded, or discover you are actually gay, or a thousand other decisions people make every day. That doesn’t make any of these things crimes, and it doesn’t make the people negatively affected your criminal victims.
Seize their cars
The only time I have seen a dead body in the wild is when someone got run over by a car on the freeway. It must have happened less than thirty seconds after we came across him. His corpse was badly mangled.
He was ejected from his vehicle after an accident. We almost ran over him again.
If you want to walk out onto the freeway, you are taking your life in your own hands. Let the buyer beware.
Erroniuos
What about the lost tolls?
4 hours of no tolls collected. That’s $6/car (assuming the cheapest tolls, weekday off-peak – though that isn’t the case, here).
Friday hourly traffic on the Bay Bridge around 7am to noon averaged over 6500 cars. So, that’s about $150,000 in lost tolls for the 4 hours. Figure about $2,000 per leftist, not including fines and penalties that would have to be added to that. And all of the other costs involved in dealing with this should be tacked on, too. And they should be criminally charged for all of it. They set out to deprive the city/port authority/whatever of these funds (the equivalent of burning the money) and they set out to cost the authorities the huge amount to deal with this.
But … they’re being charged with misdemeanor “Aggressive Panhandling” … so there’s that.
FInes are meaningless. Not one of the 80 will ever pay a penny out of their pocket.
Fines are just on top of the criminal charges that should be brought. My point about depriving the bridge tolls is that that is a crime, in and of itself.
Heck, I remember stories about cities that arrested people for putting coins in parking meters that were going to run out. The city claimed that the person was “stealing” city funds by staving off the parking ticket that would have been issued.
There are all sorts of different crimes that should be leveled at everyone who thinks that they have the right to force people to do or not do things in order to get their voice in the public. We have allowed these nihilists to run amok and the hammer really needs to brought down on them. And these would be legitimate charges, since they set out intending to do all these things, and are even stupid enough to say so.
Oh, and I would make anyone who pays for anything for these leftists part of the conspiracy, which they certainly would be.
People are being tried in Georgia (and impoverished by the process) for having done nothing more than make legitimate phone calls.
Amen.
Sounds like it was an insurrection to me. Put them in prison.
It would be tasty to see a conservative outfit bankroll a creative civil case for monetary damages. The cost to citizens, business and the municipality must be in the millions. The threat of financial ruin could significantly reduce the number of well-off protestors who are role playing to fight the old ennui.
Leftie protestors block a bridge in the bay area once a year. Nothing is ever done. SF fat black mayor breed, her appointed black DA, black chief of police, all give themselves pat on back and raise.
It’s that old black magic.