Evidence that most Americans see the value of funding the police continues to come in. An excellent example last week occurred in San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in America, where voters recalled a district attorney who seemed determined not to prosecute lawbreakers.
“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,” columnist James Hohmann observed on The Washington Post website.
Hohmann added, “Boudin’s defeat is the latest wake-up call for Democrats, who have lost the public’s trust on criminal justice and play down voter anxieties about crime at their peril.”
It takes talent to be removed from office in the middle of a term, but it is clear that Boudin was up to the task. One report cited court records that said in 2021 the DA’s office convicted only three people of possession with intent to sell drugs like meth, heroin and cocaine. In 2018, Boudin’s predecessor obtained 90 such convictions.
Some might take the lower conviction rate as a sign that San Francisco has been tough on crime, but Hohmann writes that the opposite is the case. Fentanyl, a deadly and addictive synthetic opioid, “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 are stealing from stores and breaking into cars to feed their addictions. Burglaries are up more than 45% since Boudin took office in January 2020. Smashed car windows are a more common sight in the city. Walgreens, one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains, has closed 11 of its stores in San Francisco in the past three years, presumably because of the DA’s tolerance of shoplifting.
Boudin, who got elected on a platform of “decarceration,” was pleased that he reduced the city jail’s population by 40% and ended the practice of requiring cash to post bail.
He also said that when it came to drugs, he took the problem seriously but focused more on addiction treatment than imprisonment. Claiming that up to half of San Francisco’s drug peddlers are from Honduras — there go those immigrants, taking away more good American jobs! — Boudin said his office sought to get defendants into treatment or agreed to lesser charges because a drug-dealing conviction is grounds for deportation.
Hohmann believes the beginning of the end for Boudin occurred in December 2020, when a man on parole for armed robbery fatally ran over two women in a stolen car. He had been arrested five times in seven months, but the DA’s office never filed charges to get him off the streets.
Balancing probation with imprisonment is always tricky. But public safety is one of government’s vital roles, and when a DA ignores that in favor of “decarceration,” he puts his job at risk. Even in San Francisco.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
