In March of this year, petitions to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin began to circulate. As frustration over increased crime mounted, support for the recall of Boudin gained traction.
The California Globe reports that two groups working on separate petitions to recall Boudin garnered more support than the anti-recall efforts as the crime in San Francisco worsens and fewer criminals are being put in jail. Like the effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom, visibility for these petitions has been assisted by highly publicized criminal events.
Boudin is an incredibly far-left figure who was raised by radicals, and his biological parents were Weather Underground activists convicted of murdering two police officers and a security guard in 1981 just outside New York City. Boudin won his position as San Francisco District Attorney by running on a platform of ending mass incarceration, eliminating cash bail, refusing to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and prosecuting ICE agents who violated “sanctuary city” laws. Boudin also said he hoped to move away from prosecuting “quality-of-life crimes” to focus on tackling corporate corruption.
The San Franciscans for Public Safety Supporting the Recall of Chesa Boudin group has raised approximately $650,000 and has until October 25 to collect 51,325 signatures. The other group working to oust Boudin, the Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, has raised $273,000 and has until August 11 to collect the signatures they need. Groups supporting Boudin against the recall efforts have raised a collective $500,000, including a large donation from a George Gascón PAC. Gascón is also facing recall as current Los Angeles County DA. He was San Francisco DA before Boudin and has been linked to far-left mega-donor George Soros.
In recent months San Francisco has dealt with a sharp uptick in brazen retail theft, assaults, and car break-ins. In June, footage of a broad daylight theft at a San Francisco Walgreens by a man on a bicycle with a garbage bag went viral, highlighting the costly effects of prop 47. California’s prop 47 was passed in 2014 and reduced certain non-violent felonies to misdemeanors in an attempt to free up police and prosecutors so they could focus on violent crimes. The proposition was supported by California Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union but is seen by critics as a huge mistake that gives criminals the go-ahead to steal anything under $950.
Since the passage of prop 47, retailers have felt the sting of shoplifting, most notably Walgreens. They have closed 17 of their San Francisco stores and stated that their locations in the city experience four times more theft than the rest of the country despite spending 35 times more on security guards.
In addition to the recall efforts, the Police Officers Association has faulted Boudin for failing to prosecute certain thefts. Recently he has vowed to crack down on retail crime but his senior director, Kate Chatfield, has dismissed concerns over the rising crime as racist, stating in a tweet, “the crime surge crowd holds the same ideology as Birth of a Nation.” The backlash from the tweet prompted the director to lock her tweets as lawlessness continues to plague the region.
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