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by The Examiner Editorial Board<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The recall campaign\u2019s case against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin<\/a> tends to be light on facts but heavy on anecdote, emotion and accusations that usually prove untrue. For example, take the charges leveled at Boudin in two new television ads supporting Proposition H, which would remove Boudin from office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one ad, a former deputy DA gives viewers the impression Boudin disbanded a unit dedicated to solving auto burglaries. In reality, the auto burglary investigations continue and recently busted a major distributor of stolen goods who worked out of a boba shop<\/a> in the Tenderloin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the other ad, a former business owner named Max Young says he had to close his Mid-Market cocktail lounge due to rampant drug dealing<\/a> in the area. Yet Young\u2019s establishment, Mr. Smith\u2019s, closed months before Boudin won election to office in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven when they were arrested, they\u2019d be right back here,\u201d says Young in the ad, providing definitive evidence that the revolving door of drug sales in The City preceded Boudin\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Easily disprovable claims typify the recall\u2019s attacks on Boudin. They also raise an important question: If the charges against Boudin are so strong, why does the recall promote so many falsehoods?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given this reliance on half-truths and disinformation, it\u2019s unlikely the recall supporters\u2019 case against Boudin would stand up in a court of law. The court of public opinion, however, is another matter. Polls suggest<\/a> San Francisco voters are inclined to boot Boudin from office on June 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to popular belief, Boudin\u2019s record<\/a> so far largely resembles those of previous DAs. In addition, San Francisco has experienced far smaller crime spikes <\/a>than Sacramento, which has a supposedly \u201ctough on crime\u201d DA. Boudin does not take credit for these relatively positive statistics, but he gets blamed for nearly every individual act of crime even though his own critics admit that\u2019s illogical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe DA obviously doesn\u2019t have a direct effect on the increase in crime, right?\u201d said Don du Bain, a former deputy DA now supporting the recall campaign, in an interview with The Examiner. \u201cThe DA, however, does set the tone in the community for how crime is going to be addressed once people are arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the criticism of Boudin hinges on \u201ctone,\u201d but his message of criminal justice reform is what voters chose when they put the former public defender in the DA\u2019s office. It was an audacious victory for the national movement to elect progressive DAs. Now comes the backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ousting Boudin will not solve voters\u2019 frustration with crime and disorder. It will, however, send a strong message to Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors that voter impatience with ineffective leadership has entered a new phase. This ripple of popular Democratic anger will seek further victories when Boudin\u2019s removal fails to improve things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After all, Boudin does not control the police department, which makes very few arrests for quality-of-life crimes and allows open-air drug markets<\/a> to flourish in the Tenderloin. Breed does. Boudin does not play a direct role in solving The City\u2019s crisis of homelessness and poverty on our streets. The mayor and the supervisors own that problem. Boudin has flaws, but any honest analysis reveals he\u2019s being held responsible for the failures of other politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boudin is certainly guilty of keeping his campaign promise. He said he would be an evidenced-based prosecutor who would work to increase public safety without relying only on jails. Californians repeatedly have voted to reform the state\u2019s prison industrial <\/a>complex<\/a>, which had for decades vacuumed up billions of taxpayer dollars while producing a constant crop of newly-hardened criminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We locked up so many people \u2014 a large number of them poor Black and brown people \u2014 that in 2011 the United States Supreme Court found conditions in California\u2019s overcrowded prisons<\/a> violated the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This ruling kicked off a series of reforms, led by Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, to improve public safety through criminal justice reform. The state\u2019s crime rate dipped to historic lows, but a rise in crime, drug addiction and homelessness in the pandemic era has heightened safety concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Timing is everything, and Boudin has become a scapegoat for rising public anxiety in The City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s been over $5 million spent blaming me,\u201d said Boudin, who nevertheless said he feels \u201cpretty optimistic\u201d about beating the recall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During an interview with The Examiner, Boudin defended his record in painstaking detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe notion that any one person, district attorney or otherwise, could single-handedly in a one- or two-year period bend the arc of crime trends goes in the face of everything every serious academic policymaker and criminologist tells us,\u201d said Boudin. \u201cWe have to look at the big picture. Unfortunately, what the recall is doing \u2014 and the millions of dollars they\u2019re spending on it \u2014 is distracting all of us as San Franciscans from the nuanced, complex conversations we ought to be having about the Tenderloin, about how we can support our small businesses, about how we can make sure we\u2019re preserving the kind of character that makes San Francisco so unique.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In person, Boudin acquits himself well and demonstrates a mastery of the details. Unfortunately, feelings often outweigh facts in political campaigns and it\u2019s not clear he can get his message across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But his critics fail to articulate a convincing argument for a recall. Their complaints against Boudin consist mostly of anecdotes of supposedly bungled cases similar to those that exist in every DA office in the nation. They clearly dislike Boudin, who is the son of infamous 1960s <\/a>radicals<\/a>, but they don\u2019t seem to have any solution to crime besides more jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In light of these facts, The Examiner Editorial Board cannot endorse Proposition H. We do, however, recognize the legitimate public distress animating the recall movement and we urge the leaders actually responsible for managing this city to pay close attention to Boudin\u2019s fate. He will serve the sentence, but the voters\u2019 judgement of Boudin will also deliver a verdict on the failed leadership at City Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY NEWSLETTER<\/a> S.F. district attorney recall based on falsehoods, won\u2019t fix crime or homelessness By The Examiner Editorial Board \u2022 May 13, 2022 1:30 pm – SFExaminer.com by The Examiner Editorial Board The recall campaign\u2019s case against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin tends to be light on facts but heavy on anecdote, emotion… Continue reading
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