Why I don't support the campaign to recall San Francisco's DA
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I live in the Tenderloin in SF.
Fun fact: The Tenderloin got its name after Police Department Captain Alexander S. Williams moved from a quieter NYPD precinct to one called “Satan’s Circus” in 1879.
Upon his arrival, Williams reportedly said, "I’ve had nothing but chuck steak for a long time, and now I’m going to get a little of the tenderloin.”
Meaning the bribes he got for looking the other way in the suburbs could only buy him chuck steak, but looking the other way in this neighborhood would let him eat tenderloin. New York, Chicago, and LA also have Tenderloin neighborhoods.
Last time I looked, SF had lower rates of violent crime than the neighborhood I lived in in D.C.
Still, the Tenderloin retains a feeling of lawlessness.
Sometimes it’s easy for me to imagine myself becoming a victim of violent crime while walking around my neighborhood. Especially at night when I’m alone.
But I’m more worried about the campaign to recall Chesa Boudin than I am about being robbed or raped by a stranger.
Mathematically, I’m many more times more likely to be assaulted or killed by someone I know.
The recall campaign scares me because I know what’s on the line. I know how powerful and unaccountable prosecutors are. I know the legal and illegal levers they have to pull to get convictions and get re-elected. I know a prosecutor can hide exculpatory evidence, stack charges, deny defendants a jury trial, threaten witnesses, cover up for lying cops, work in cahoots with corrupt medical examiners, put expert witnesses on the stand who peddle pseudoscience. And I know that they know they can do this without ever facing any negative repercussions. Most of the time no one outside their departments ever even finds out.
It’s also because I can see myself committing a crime. I remember listening to the You’re Wrong About podcast and one of them was talking about their 5’2” professor who woke up with a much larger rapist kneeling on her chest who nevertheless threw him off her bed and out of her apartment.
You can never know for sure how you’re going to act in an extreme situation. I believe this to be true of everyone, including myself.
I can also see myself being falsely accused of a crime. Or, more likely, being arrested for pissing off the wrong person on the pretext of one of the many crimes I and everyone else breaks every day.
I haven’t read deeply into the recall campaign, so I might have missed something. But as far as I can tell the only real policy solution on offer is “Replace Chesa with someone who will put more people in prison.”
And so the biggest reason I’m opposed to the recall campaign is that “tough on crime” is bullshit. All the evidence which with I’m familiar indicates it’s extremely unlikely we can incarcerate enough people to have a significant impact the likelihood I’ll be a victim of violent crime. But more importantly, all the evidence which with I’m familiar indicates “more arrests, more convictions” policies create unnecessary friction between police and communities of color, exacerbate racial and economic inequality, and shift priorities for police away from solving violent crimes and toward meet quotas by over-policing low-income and minority neighborhoods.
I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the time, money, and energy going into the “Recall Chesa” campaign went into attacking the underlying causes of violent crime, such as poverty and racial and economic segregation, rather than the perpetrators.
I don’t think Chesa is perfect, by any stretch. And I don’t think the recall will be successful. But I’m worried that a reactionary segment of San Francisco may be growing in number and power.
And that scares me a lot more than my neighbors in the Tenderloin.
Chesea Boudin has been in office since December, and almost immediately after he was voted into office, we had the pandemic with its shelter in place and other restrictions. So these are unusual times. He was elected by the voters and deserves a chance to try his approach before we try to impeach him. I voted for Boudin but it was a tough call. We should not impeach people willy-nilly and try to overturn the will of the voters. If someone is doing a bad job, they should be thrown out of office at the ballot box except in cases of extreme malfeasance. Also, violent crime in SF is actually down overall:
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard
I believe this impeachment effort will fail as it is driven by a few ideologues and does not represent San Francisco majority values. I doubt that they even gather the signatures: these sorts of things require 15,000 signatures and almost everyone needs to use paid signature gatherers so unless someone donates the $300-400k required it will just fizzle out.
As someone who is somewhat on the fence about this, and who talks to a fair number of recall supporters, my sense is that there are two main motivations.
First, the mishandling of the Troy McAlister case. This was a repeat violent offender who really should have long since been in prison, and was repeatedly released instead, and ended up killing two innocent people. There is a complicated question about how much that's the DA's fault and how much the fault of other actors in the system, and I don't know how to evaluate that question. But for those who think the DA could and should have acted earlier to keep him incarcerated, this is a clear sign to them that he just isn't motivated to protect the public from such people.
Second, while many kinds of crime have not gone up recently, and homicides have increased no more here than in other cities, residential forced-entry burglaries really have gone up a lot. In the area of the city where I live, this makes people feel much less safe in their homes than they were before, because it's so common for burglars to break into garages in the middle of the night to steal whatever they can steal quickly (usually bikes, sometimes other valuables). Whether you think this should count as violent crime or not, it is scary and feels tremendously violating to not feel secure in one's own home. And as far as we can tell these burglars basically never get caught and never suffer any consequences.
And Boudin has not given any sign of being particularly motivated to do anything at all about this-- he comes across as basically shrugging and saying, well, the people who used to prey on tourists are preying on homeowners instead now because there aren't any tourists, whaddayagonnado? Again, there is a complicated question of whether he *could* actually do anything effective about this if he wanted to and I don't have a high-confidence answer to that. But I do think it is harder for Boudin than for most to credibly signal that he actually cares about defending people's homes and property, because of his Chavista past.
I can certainly see the argument that even with these faults, if the only alternative is traditional overcriminalization and failure to hold abusive cops accountable, on balance we're better off with Boudin. But I think at least some recall supporters would like to find someone who will continue to resist overcriminalization and continue to hold abusive cops accountable, but who will both actually care and credibly appear to actually care about protecting the public from serial violent criminals like Troy McAlister and about imposing some consequences on forced-entry burglars. Maybe that's not a realistic desire, but I wouldn't call it a reactionary one.