Recall this recall
More people died in San Francisco last year from fentanyl overdoses than covid-19, yet District Attorney Chesa Boudin did not convict a single person in 2021 for dealing the lethal opioid.
This helps explain why one of the most liberal cities in America voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recall Boudin and repudiate the prosecutor’s soft-on-crime approach.
Fentanyl is widely available at open-air drug markets in the city, and the proliferation of the synthetic opioid is inextricably linked to other crimes. Junkies break into cars and shoplift from stores to feed their addictions. Many become homeless. They squat in tent cities, defecate on streets, trade sex for drugs, shoot up in front of children and, if they’re not in some stupor, harass productive members of society who are trying to do honest work.
Burglaries are up more than 45 percent since Boudin took office in January 2020. Walk around, and it won’t take long to see smashed car windows. Eleven Walgreens outlets have closed in the city since 2019.
Boudin ran three years ago on a platform of “decarceration,” and used the coronavirus pandemic as cover to enact his extreme agenda. He has bragged about reducing the jail population by around 40 percent and ending cash bail.
In practice, Boudin almost seemed to care more about criminals than their victims, whether Asian Americans experiencing hate crimes or merchants suffering from smash-and-grab attacks.
Boudin insisted that he took the drug epidemic seriously but focused more on treatment than imprisonment. He said his office pursued diversion programs or agreed to lesser charges in many cases, such as “accessory after the fact,” because drug-dealing convictions are grounds for deportation.
Even for San Franciscans, this catch-and-release approach was far too radical, especially as overdose deaths snowballed.
The event that really turned the city against Boudin happened on the final night of 2020, when an allegedly drunken man who was on parole for armed robbery fatally ran down two women in a stolen car. He had been arrested five times between June and December that year for crimes that included burglary, but Boudin didn’t file charges that would have sent him back to prison.
Boudin pulled out all the stops as he clung to his job. He tried to gaslight residents by pretending crime wasn’t as bad as voters perceived. He blamed courts for shutting down during the pandemic. He blamed cops for not making enough arrests. Voters saw through the desperation.
About six months ago, Boudin attacked Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed when she deployed more officers to crack down on drugs in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. The district attorney held a news conference with the head of the public defender’s office to say the mayor should instead use that money for shelters, job training and social services.
“We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of problems that are afflicting the Tenderloin,” Boudin said.
Breed now gets to select Boudin’s replacement.