Activist who tried to recall Boudin says he was accosted at knifepoint
Richie Greenberg, the former San Francisco mayoral candidate who spearheaded the failed recall against District Attorney Chesa Boudin was attacked at his home Friday night by an assailant wielding a knife, according to Greenberg and a video and photos he posted on his Twitter page.
Greenberg told The Chronicle he was unharmed but shaken by what he said seemed like a random attack.
“It shook me up, as it would anybody,” he said.
Greenberg said he stepped outside his door Friday night to find a woman sitting on the top step of his home on Lake Street in San Francisco.
He asked her to leave, and the woman said, “I’m going to cut you, b—,” Greenberg said. She claimed that property was hers, he said, leading him to believe that, “This is someone that’s not all with it.”
The video shows a disheveled looking woman in a heavy coat raising her hand holding what appears to be a knife as Greenberg shouts at her to leave and apparently calls the police. The woman repeatedly kicks at the partially open door as he moves inside.
Greenberg said the woman swatted at him with the knife and with her other hand knocked away a box he was holding.
“I definitely feel it was random,” Greenberg said.
He added the police showed up a few minutes later and arrested the woman a couple of blocks away.
Greenberg, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2018 mayoral special election, has been critical of the city’s approach to law enforcement and launched the unsuccessful recall effort against Boudin earlier this year.
“This is just another bit of evidence that these kinds of issues are spreading out to the quiet neighborhoods,” and not confined to notoriously troubled areas like the Tenderloin, Greenberg said.
Greenberg said a police report hadn’t been generated yet but sent a picture of an SFPD form with a case number. He also sent what he said was the booking information from the arrest early Saturday morning.
Police declined to comment on the incident Sunday via email.
The San Francisco
Sheriff ’s Office website showed a woman booked and charged with making criminal threats, false imprisonment, resisting arrest and battery at about 4 a.m. Saturday.
The person named in the report could not be reached by phone for comment on Sunday.
“This is a person who should not just be let back out on the street,” Greenberg said.