A recall effort to remove San Francisco District Attorney Soros is moving forward with support from people across the political spectrum.
Boudin campaigned on radical progressive policies of eliminating cash bail and reducing incarceration rates by declining to prosecute. After being sworn into office on January 8, 2020, Boudin implemented the policies as promised, eliminating cash bail and reducing the frequency of prosecution. Boudin terminated seven veteran prosecutors who disagreed with his policies, and more than thirty have left office voluntarily.
Out of the 6,333 cases that have come to his office, Boudin has taken only 23 to trial. During the final three months of 2020, of 131 arrests on felony domestic violence charges, Boudin dismissed 113. He elected to pursue charges against 13, the Daily Mail reports.
Since last year, arson in San Francisco has increased by 52 percent, motor vehicle theft is up 21 percent, and burglaries are up 59 percent. Last year in San Francisco there were more deaths from drug overdoses than from COVID-19. The city has the nation’s highest rate of property crime.
One of the high-profile cases that has prompted the recall effort was the death of a seven-month-old infant at the hands of a man previously arrested twice for domestic violence. The baby showed signs of severe trauma and eventually died in the care of the man Boudin had declined to prosecute.
A neighborhood association group wrote a letter to Boudin and Mayor London Breed explaining the impact of Boudin’s policies.
“Our neighborhood can’t wait another day,” the letter states. “Our homes are repeatedly broken into and robbed. Our merchants suffer unsustainable losses from theft and smashed windows. Employees are threatened with guns. Residents are robbed at gunpoint on our own streets. The sound of gunshots is no longer unusual.”
Even before Boudin took office, the city was under siege by crime, writes Michael Gibson at National Review.
“There were more drug addicts on the streets than there were students in the schools,” Gibson writes. “Tent encampments of homeless people had sprouted in every nook and alley and under every highway overpass. Commuters faced a daily gauntlet in the form of an appalling humanitarian crisis in the streets.”
The “Recall Chesa Boudin” website says the district attorney’s policies are responsible for an already bad situation descending into chaos.
“The duty to enforce criminal laws, hold criminals accountable, and represent the law-abiding citizens by prosecuting and convicting is the duty of the District Attorney,” the website states.” In San Francisco, this obligation to the people is from Chesa Boudin. Under Mr. Boudin, elected November 2019, our city’s criminal justice system has instead been virtually suspended. Criminals are emboldened due to lack of accountability; those perpetrators arrested are simply let go, commit more crimes, and unfortunately, many are deadly. Our beloved city has seen an astronomical increase in violent crime, home invasions, shops looted, car-jackings, rampant and unchecked drug dealing and business property theft, even under Covid-19 restrictions. Every resident and every visitor to San Francisco is a potential target. Our homes, our property and our lives are at risk.”
“The city has banned plastic straws, plastic bags, and McDonald’s Happy Meals with toys,” writes Gibson. “And yet, all the while, drug dealers sell their wares, COVID or no COVID, openly and freely at all hours of the day and night, users shoot up or pop fentanyl in public and defecate on the street, robbers pillage cars and homes with the ease of Visigoth raiders, and the district attorney frees repeat offenders who go on to sow disorder, pain, devastation, and grief.”
The recall effort will require organizers to obtain 51,325 signatures, approximately 10 percent of registered voters in the city, by this August.
Boudin, the son of Weather Underground members who were convicted of the murders of two police officers and a security guard in a 1981 robbery, was raised by radical activists and former Weather Underground members Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Boudin’s 2019 campaign for district attorney is reported to have been backed by groups funded by leftist European billionaire George Soros, and his policies have reflected their priorities.
