Boudin: tapping a spirit for reform
Here’s the fourth and final installation of The Chronicle’s D.A. Tuesday — and surely the most interesting one when it comes to a candidate’s biography. Chesa Boudin, 39, is an attorney in the San Francisco public defender’s office who Hollywood script writers should get to know.
His upclose view of our prison system began before he can even remember. When he was just 14 months old, his parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, leftwing radicals in the Weather Underground — the militant group active in the 1960s and ’70s — served as getaway drivers in a notorious 1981 Brinks armored car robbery outside New York City that ended in the killing of two police officers and a security guard.
Boudin was adopted by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, also Weather Underground radicals, and spent most of his childhood in Chicago. His biological father remains in prison, and Boudin visits him a couple of times a year. She was paroled in 2003 and works as an assistant professor at Columbia Uni
versity.
Boudin’s life has turned out far differently than the lives of most children of incarcerated parents — or the lives of most children, full stop. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, two master’s degrees from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes scholar, and a law degree from Yale. A fellowship in the public defender’s office led to a fulltime job.
He’s a surfer at Ocean Beach near the Outer Sunset apartment he shares with his fiancee, Valerie Block, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF focusing on how to use wearable technology to track the progression of multiple sclerosis. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese, plus some Cantonese, Mandarin, Swahili, Russian and Arabic. He’s also an avid traveler who has visited more than 110 countries on all seven continents. What’s more, he boated the entire Amazon River on cargo boats twice — once upstream and once downstream. As you do.
The candidates were invited to show off a talent during our recording of San Francisco City Insider podcast episodes. Boudin arrived with homemade sourdough bread, saying that you can’t have his last name in this town and not know how to bake.
“People ask me if I’m a member of the Boudin family, and I say yes, but not the one you’re thinking of,” he said with a laugh.
So, like I said, worthy of a movie. But worthy of serving as San Francisco’s next district attorney? That’s up to the voters.
Boudin has the most distinct platform of the four candidates because he’s the farthest to the left politically. He’s the choice of San Francisco’s bestknown progressives including supervisors Sandra Fewer, Gordon Mar, Aaron Peskin and Hillary Ronen.
Here are some highlights of our conversation about his background and policy proposals. To hear the full conversation, visit sfchronicle.com/insider.
On how his unusual childhood informs his desire to reform the criminal justice system:
“My earliest memories are going through prison gates to visit my parents,” Boudin said. “It’s something that’s dramatically and profoundly shaped really every moment of my life.”
He remembers as a little kid waiting to go through metal detectors and noticing almost everybody else in line was black or Latino. He said he wrote letters to prison wardens advocating for reforms when he was just 10.
San Franciscans fed up with misery on our streets and property crime might bristle at electing a public defender to be our top prosecutor. But Boudin said the best legal advocates are the ones who have experience across the aisle — whether it’s a prosecutor who has worked as a defense attorney or the other way around.
He said he’s committed to a “victims first” platform and would require every prosecutor in his office to call the victim in his or her case within 48 hours of it being filed. He said victims often hear from the district attorney’s office only when they’re subpoenaed to testify.
“We need to focus our resources on healing the harm that crime causes — not only on punishment,” he said.
On untreated mental illness and drug addiction on our streets:
Boudin called this a “tremendous public health crisis,” one that shouldn’t be the job of police officers to fix. He said the city needs to take a more proactive approach in getting people the treatment they need before they commit crimes, rather than making our jails de facto homeless shelters and mental health wards.
“It’s inhumane, ineffective and a waste of money,” he said.
He said every arrest of a homeless person, mentally ill person or drugaddicted person — or some combination thereof — should be used as an opportunity for the city to connect them to services, treatment and job training. And that the district attorney needs to ensure those released from jail are connected to services and support, rather than sending them back to the street.
He said expanding San Francisco’s conservatorship program for mentally ill people “won’t solve our problems” and that it’s far more important to have robust treatment programs. He said he’s not opposed to conservatorship of those who refuse services, as long as the treatment they need is actually available.
He supports safe injection sites, though receiving state permission for those was put on hold until next year.
On openair drug dealing in the Tenderloin:
Boudin said the city needs to do a better job stopping the inflow of drugs, whether pills from pharmacies or illegal drugs from the East Bay.
He said police officers’ “buybust” operations on street corners are part of the failed War on Drugs and don’t work because more drug dealers replace those who are arrested. He said city officials need to work regionally to better understand why so many young men from Honduras are commuting to the Tenderloin from the East Bay to sell drugs in the first place.
“They’re not Salvadorans, not Guatemalans, not Mexicans,” he said. “Many of them have been trafficked here. Others came here willingly, but now owe coyotes tremendous amounts of money. Honduras is such an unsafe place, if they don’t come up with payment, their families might be killed.”
On car breakins and property crime:
Boudin has had his own car broken into three times in the past few years.
He said for the homeless, mentally ill or drugaddicted people who are smashing car windows as crimes of opportunity, services to address their underlying problems are the answer. But for the outoftown organized rings, the district attorney and police should partner to break the networks.
“Let’s get a rental car from SFO, put a laptop bag in the backseat and leave it on Lombard Street for a week with no police officers around, not even undercover,” he said. “Let’s see where that laptop goes . ... We need to trace it upstream and take apart the networks that are creating this demand.”
Readers have suggested this many times, but police have always dismissed it. Why not give it a shot?
On pedestrian deaths:
Boudin has been slammed by his opponents on this topic for seeming to dismiss the role of prosecutors in traffic deaths. He said the answers are more bike lanes, pedestrian scrambles and speed bumps. He said police need to ticket Uber and Lyft drivers who double park, and he’d like the city to regulate ridesharing companies more.
He said it’s very hard to prove to a jury that a traffic collision wasn’t an accident, which is “why prevention is so much more effective and important when it comes to traffic safety.”
He has also referred to drunken driving as a “victimless crime” though he explained he was referring to those pulled over through traffic stops when there was no collision and nobody was hurt. Boudin said he’d create a program to give those pulled over for the first time an incentive to admit their guilt, perform community service, be charged fees according to their ability to pay, take traffic safety classes and eventually have their case dismissed.
On how he would grade George Gascón:
Boudin gave the current district attorney, who is not seeking reelection, an A. He said Gascón has been “really creative with his policies” and has presided over a time with recordlow violent crime rates. He said property and drug crime prosecution need improvement.
He also took issue with the characterization in last week’s column that Suzy Loftus, an attorney in the sheriff’s office, is the frontrunner in the race.
“Representing the failed status quo and the law enforcement establishment doesn’t make Suzy the frontrunner,” Boudin said. “Our campaign is finding great enthusiasm for reform, and we think this race is wide open.”
And with that, D.A. Tuesday is complete. Now the work turns to San Francisco voters. May the best candidate win. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight @sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf