14 ms·

San Francisco votes overwhelmingly to recall progressive DA Chesa Boudin

111 points by zthrowaway 4y ago

rigelbm 4y ago
Never thought I would see "overwhelmingly" and "60%" used as synonyms.
gsibble 4y ago
Good. He was a blight upon the city.
lake_vincent 4y ago
"Boudin also became the first San Francisco DA to file homicide charges against city police officers." Wonder if that has anything to do with it. Edit: I am literally wondering - I have no knowledge of the situation.
- gadders 4y ago
  Nah, probably more to do with this: https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/how-george-soros-funded-progressive-das-behind-us-crime-surge/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/how-george-soros-funded-progre...
- dtjb 4y ago
  It was for shooting an unarmed man in the back. "The bodycam footage shows [Officer] Samayoa drawing his pistol while the cruiser was still moving. The video then shows him open the side door and fire a single shot through the window as O’Neil runs by in the opposite direction. O’Neil was not armed." https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/former-san-francisco-rookie-cop-in-court-in-2017-fatal-shooting-of-unarmed-man/2883306/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/forme...
- fatjokes 4y ago
  - Pulcinella 4y ago
    Lol SF has a third of the crime rate of Milwaukee and Kansas City. Are those crime ridden cities as well?
    - justaman 4y ago
      Milwaukee sure is. Check youtube for "Kia boys".
    - tyen_ 4y ago
      Certain parts yes.
    - samatman 4y ago
      Is this a serious question? Yes of course, the murder clearance rate in those cities is sickening.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      If it’s not reported, it’s not crime
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      The official crime rate is artificially low because nobody reports, investigates, or punishes the crimes that occur.
      - less_less 4y ago
        To be clear: are you claiming that the official crime rate is artificially low in SF in general, or specifically under Boudin? For all types of crimes, or just property crimes? And do you have a source for any of this? (I understand that official stats will not be a source for a claim that the official stats are lies, but is there something beyond speculation?) I personally have my doubts. Boudin said he would shift emphasis away from prosecuting individual petty crimes, where the perpetrator would just be out on the street again anyway due to overcrowded prisons, but would still prosecute violent crimes and organized crime. So you would expect reporting rates of violent crimes to be about the same as before, and indeed violent crimes in SF are following trends in other US cities, with a moderate uptick in murder but other violent crime at historic lows. For petty crimes like car breakins and bike theft, the police weren't going to solve this anyway unless it happened directly in front of them. The nationwide clearance rate for such crimes (of the ones people even bother to report) is like 15% or less. People don't report these crimes in hopes of someone getting prosecuted, they report them because their insurance policies require it, and that didn't change under Boudin.
buggythebug 4y ago
The problem I find with lots of politicians is not balancing both short term and long term solutions. Republicans: mental health is definitely an issue that needs to be solved in regards to guns but that's a long term solution - we also need a short term solution of preventing people who shouldn't have access to guns in the first place. Democrats: There are racial issues in this country that can be solved in the long term through education and investment in communities. That being said crime is crime, and we also need a short term solution of arresting and prosecuting people who commit crimes - no matter what their circumstances are. Reform NOT defund the police.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Republicans: mental health is definitely an issue that needs to be solved If this were true, they would have proposed legislation to fund healthcare.
  - dotty- 4y ago
    He's addressing each party, not describing each party's beliefs.
    - jressey 4y ago
      The commenter is comparing a core GOP belief: Minimal gun control with a fringe Democratic belief: Defund the police. Any comparison of the parties can't be done in good faith.
      - bmmayer1 4y ago
        This does not seem like a charitable interpretation of the point OP is trying to make.
      - Bud 4y ago
        "Defund the police" is more of a Republican parody of Democrats than anything else. It's a Fox News slogan. No substantial portion of the Democratic Party supports this, or ever has. But it's a great way to lie about your political opponents to keep anything rational from being done about gun violence or other issues.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
I am both in favor of several of Boudin’s policies and the effort to recall. SF citizens have a right to be pissed off. And innovation in policy is needed.
omega3 4y ago
It seems crazy to me to start the reform of the system from this end by lowering the jail population and laxer prosecution. I'd think that keeping the law & enforcement as is and targeting the underlying systemic causes - war on drugs, unemployment, lack of opportunities etc would be more sensible.
- nostromo 4y ago
  Can we stop pretending the war on drugs is sending large amounts of people in California to jail? It’s not the 80s / 90s anymore. It’s very difficult to end up in jail anywhere on the west coast due to run of the mill drug possession.
  - omega3 4y ago
    I think you are right where it comes to possession. According to the 2018 report [0] only 4.1% were in prison for drug related crimes. It would be interesting to see how many of the other categories (burglary, murder, possession of a weapon etc) are directly linked with drug trade or drug use. [0]https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2020/01/201812_DataPoints.pdf https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/17...
- digianarchist 4y ago
  One takes far more political capital than the other. A DA has direct and immediate influence over prosecutions. Violent crime dropped on his watch. Although thefts are up [0]. The stats show it. Very disappointing result. [0] - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-07/2022-san-francisco-district-attorney-chesa-boudin-recall-election-results?_amp=true https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-07/2022-san...
  - samatman 4y ago
    Which department in San Francisco releases statistics on violent crime and who heads it?
    - 4y ago
farmerstan 4y ago
The biggest mistake he and Democrats keep making is blaming “billionaire Republicans”. It’s not Republicans it’s Democrats voting him out. He either refuses to acknowledge that the Democrat voters themselves are rejecting his policies out of hubris or it’s a way to shame democrats by accusing them of acting like Republicans. But it didn’t work and only infuriated and calcified anti-Boudin people even more. Democrats at the federal level better take heed. If San Francisco who is overwhelmingly Democrat will reject extreme progressive policies like Boudin’s, hopefully it means the Dems can regain some sense of rationality. My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is. That’s the only way we can change behavior is through voting, and in CA they have come to take voters for granted for decades and left California a progressive experiment gone off the rails to the point of lunacy.
- orblivion 4y ago
  > blaming “billionaire Republicans” I just can't imagine a world where an ousted politician (or elected bureaucrat in this case) says "wow I guess I really fucked up, I'm sorry. I'll pack my things and be out in the morning". They have to save face by blaming somebody.
  - dash2 4y ago
    Maybe it is different in the UK. John Major, 1997: "Tonight we have suffered a very bad defeat, let us not pretend to ourselves that it was anything other than what it was. Unless we accept it for what it was, and look at it, we will be less able to put it right." Ed Miliband, 2015: "I take absolute and total responsibility for our defeat. I'm so sorry for all those colleagues who lost their seats."
  - belval 4y ago
    No, maybe this is the norm in the US, but this is not normal and we should not pretend it is. In Canada, most defeat speeches I've watched were about the candidate mistakes, what they were proud of having accomplished, etc... Playing the blame game is pathetic. If you want an example, Stephen Harper's concession speech in 2015 was pretty good.
tinco 4y ago
The solution to mass incarceration isn't less tough policing, it's a more effective justice system with reasonable punishment and thorough prevention and rehabilitation programmes. Part of prevention is more policing, not less. Being Reasonable or thorough never got anyone elected though.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  Chicago has the largest police budget in the country and it still has very high crime. We need smarter policing, not more.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    The US is under policed compared to any Western European country. Its rate of murder per capita is above practically all European countries when excluding gun homicides. It should at least have as many police per capita as Spain, 534/100k, not 239, which is less than even Taiwan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
    - scarface74 4y ago
      What circumstances do police prevent crime? If someone breaks into my house, what are the chances that police will get there in time to stop it? If someone is victim of crime committed by a family member (20%), how will the police help? Then you have the case where the police were afraid to go into a school during an active shooter incident because they were “afraid of getting shot” https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/texas-cops-feared-getting-shot-during-uvalde-school-shooting-lieutenant/ https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/texas-cops-feared-getting-shot...
      - thereisnospork 4y ago
        A person in jail can't break into your house. People incompatible with society need to be removed from it.
sealthedeal 4y ago
Let’s not get to crazy with politics on HN. Remember this is not meant for us to get heated, it’s to have open discussion. Check yourself before you write, very easy to be blindsided by anger with issues like this.
- steve76 4y ago
- newsclues 4y ago
  Why is this discussion flagged?
api 4y ago
Last time I visited SF the city literally smelled like a toilet. I've lived in and visited a lot of "bad" parts of various cities and the condition of SF was shocking. I'd never seen anything in the US quite that filthy or with so many obviously mentally ill people roaming around in a state of perpetual psychiatric distress. I've been to places that probably had higher crime rates but the condition I saw in SF seemed more degrading. Even in the nicer parts of the city you could smell pain and squalor. How is allowing the city to get that bad progressive? Isn't that creating an even more radically two-tier city where the rich live in gated homes and work in posh offices while everyone else can't afford to live somewhere that doesn't smell like human waste? (If they can afford a roof over their head at all. Real estate costs in SF are still batshit insane.) SF may well be the city in the US with the most radical division between rich and poor. Nobody who isn't rich can ever hope to afford homeownership unless they want to commute three hours. How is any of this progressive? To me it looks like a lot of elitism plus general political incompetence and corruption coated with a superficial veneer of low-effort progressive rhetoric to sell it to naive young liberals who vote for mere words and don't pay attention to outcomes. I've become fond of saying this: "Texas is more progressive than California because in Texas a working class person can afford a place to live." That seems to sometimes wake people up to the rank hypocrisy of all this. We've created a political environment where we give far, far too much weight to words and not nearly enough to deeds or outcomes. Ultimately only outcomes matter and when measured by outcome SF's policies are not progressive.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  When has progressivism ever led to a different outcome? ISTM that you're quite simply in denial about what progressive policies entail, as a matter of fact. The Progressive movement, starting from its earliest origins in the late 19th and early 20th c., has consistently been pro-elite and opposed to meaningful, grassroots-led improvement for "the little guy".
  - api 4y ago
    There seems to be a certain species of naive leftist who is about as clueless about economics and how to get things done as some rightists are about things like womens' reproductive health. Stuff like "we need to subsidize mortgages to bring down housing costs" or "stop evil developers! housing is too expensive!" is the same level of ideologically driven willful stupidity as "a woman can't get pregnant from rape."
kosyblysk666 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tims33 4y ago
Reforming the criminal justice system is a good idea, but a DA still needs to be competent at their day job.
yeahSo 4y ago
This will be held up as a failure of progressive politics. Nationally, media will ignore the community progressed right on from their mistake. That is actual progressive politics; moving politics along. Conservatism is keeping the same defective political process in place and forcing deference to it. Progressivism is not embodied in one DA, or policy pipe dream. It’s simply not being kowtowed by the past. Electoral turnovers should be the norm, not the exception: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766
nickpinkston 4y ago
It's amazing how many people who otherwise believe in data driven decision making got caught up in the hype/fear of this recall instead of looking at the data and otherwise trying to reason at the system level. (ie Why do they never mention the police work stoppage?) https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-police-crime-16931399.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article... I wonder if all the pro-recallers will use stats to say the next DA is doing a good job, or if the data will start mattering then? If the new DA's stats stay mostly the same or get worse, will they recall their own DA because they believe in effectiveness, or was this whole recall movement was just full of shit? I'm not optimistic changing DAs will do anything to improve safety or increase quality of life in SF, especially with the recession coming. I just hope that people who claim to "still support criminal justice reform" actually vote like that, because I'm betting they vote for people unwilling to make the hard / unpopular decisions to enact real reforms, who instead talk reform while continue the status quo. All of this is also just window dressing on an otherwise broken social safety net that leaves us with a large / desperate underclass who commit most of the crime. We're never going to arrest our way out of this, and likely unable to solve a lot of it with reform alone. We need real change to our social contract in the USA, but we can barely pass things that are already broadly popular. Easy to be pessimistic...
- zanderz 4y ago
  San Francisco has had all the problems being blamed on the DA for decades. Things got worse during the pandemic in most cities, regardless of what DA they had. People act like Boudin personally emptied out the jails and stopped prosecuting anyone for anything but this is a ridiculous charicature - as you point out, the actual data says otherwise. He was enacting some reforms promised to us voters, and attempting to hold police more accountable turned out to be an outrageous notion to some. It hardly rose to the emergency people pretend it did, and for which the recall mechanism is intended. Far worse to me is that the police can do as they please and simply stop doing their job and get away with blaming someone else for the result. The recall process is being twisted into a do-over for wealthy interests who don't like an election result.
sergiotapia 4y ago
Good riddance, happy for the people of SF.
spicyusername 4y ago
> Boudin sought to reform the criminal justice system, ending the use of cash bail, stopping the prosecution of minors as adults, and focused on lowering jail populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Boudin also became the first San Francisco DA to file homicide charges against city police officers. It seems like it's hard to know: - If these policies would have helped reduce crime over the long term, but not impacted it over the short term - If these policies would have helped reduce crime over the long term, but increased it over the short term - If these policies increase crime over the short-term and the long-term It seems like it's going to be difficult to follow a data-driven approach here. It could take a long time to collect enough data and like most of the other social sciences, it's difficult to isolate causal from correlative factors. I empathize with San Francisco not wanting to be the guinea pigs to find out. Being tough on crime feels like the right solution even if we don't know objectively if it is or isn't. Also nobody likes hate crimes are getting their car broken into.
- mynameishere 4y ago
  It seems like it's hard to know: No, man, no. It's not hard to know. Pro-crime policies increase crime. That's what they do, and that's their entire purpose. Everyone here seems to think this guy was acting in good faith. No. He comes from a proud terrorist tradition [1], and he's playing his part. Almost every "right wing" news source points out that he is bankrolled by George Soros, and the left (Who could hardly stop repeating "Koch Brothers" whenever they could) needs to realize that there are powerful forces out their intentionally trying to harm society. [1] Literally.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Is he also a “secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law to the US?” I think we should check his birth certificate.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      He is Jewish, and his terrorist parents were Weathermen (Weatherpersons?), not Al-Qaida or their ilk.
pmoriarty 4y ago
SF (and California in general) have this reputation for being some kind of crazy leftist/communist utopia (or dystopia, depending on your political leanings), but it's really pretty moderate, capitalist, and even conservative in some ways. This recall is just one example of this.
tyen_ 4y ago
Bad news for the Auto glass replacement businesses.
thaway2839 4y ago
Unfortunately, it appears that the Progressive DAs elected across some cities are just really bad at being DAs. They've identified a real issue where 10% (arbitrarily chosen number...it could be higher/lower) of the justice system is not working well. But at the same time, 90% of it does work. They've turned out to be really bad at handling that 90%.
ameister14 4y ago
I hope whoever replaces him doesn't end some of the more fundamental reforms like not charging minors as adults. Pretty hard to prosecute petty theft with Prop 47 in power, and it sounds like there was also a pretty major decrease in policing of petty crime over the last few years - that's not a DA fault, that's the mayor.
- sporkland 4y ago
  The common refrain was that they'd arrest folks multiple times and the DA would release them, so why bother arresting them in the first place. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle and the police deserve a fair slice of blame, but so did Chesa. I think San Franciscans are sick of both sides and looking to send a message. Now the police have no excuses, and if it doesn't get better Chief of Police and Breed will be next.
- samatman 4y ago
  Get shoplifters on camera and trespass them immediately as soon as they touch merchandise, then throw the book at them with vandalism and assault charges (they will yell, they always do). Where there's a will there's a way.
subsubzero 4y ago
Whether people like it or not these "policies" Chesa and his predecessor George Gascon(also under threat of recall in LA) have really turned what used to be a world class city into a complete dumpster fire. I worked in SF for the better part of a decade on and off and every year it seemed like things got worse, human shit on sidewalks everywhere you looked, needle casings littering the ground, aggressive homeless and crime that was out of control(only time in california I ever got a car window smashed in and stuff stolen). I didn't see SF for 2 years during the pandemic but the week I did visit in 2022 it was down right apocalyptic, no normal people on the street at all, just homeless/drug addicts everywhere, graffiti and trash at levels I have never seen, no wonder the city saw its population drop by the largest percent of any major american city. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-population-decline-us-census-data-17203868.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-populat...
- MathYouF 4y ago
  Just a perspective for other readers: I recently moved to the Bay Area. I've lived quite a few places around the world and US. Some I consider the nicest in the world (Tokyo) and some I don't consider nice at all. I'd formed my view of SF based on comments I'd heard like these on HN, and was prepared for the worst when beginning to visit for the weekend. Having now had several excursions into the city including places considered not that nice like the Tenderloin or Mission, I can't see how it's any worse than any other US city, and in fact consider it nicer than most other large cities in the US I've been to, like NYC and Chicago. Maybe it's because I only visit on weekends and don't live there, but from the perspective of a frequent visitor it seems really nice to me, and I didn't go in expecting that nor am I a person particularly biased towards having rose colored views of things. I wonder if maybe people in SF expect it to not have the same problems as other large metros like NYC. I'd be curious to hear from someone who has lived in both and thinks SF is "apocalyptic" what experiences made them think that. I think in the Bay Area there's a large number of people who don't realize (or have chosen to forget) how inconvenient life can still be on average around the world and even the country, compared to the idyllic circumstances they've created here (especially in the valley). It's what makes it so easy for them to come across as judgemental or tone deaf when discussing problems at the national level.
timcavel 4y ago
photochemsyn 4y ago
The phrase 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic' is appropriate here. The problems are a lot more regional than the national political media would have you believe, because SF is not an island in the ocean. The East Bay and the South Bay are all in similar economic conditions. There's been an uptick in homelessness in the once-suburban commuter cities, and if those places can't provide services then migration to SF is one possibility because more services are provided in the city. People might be able to get a hotel room in SF, for example. "New data shows explosive growth of homelessness in these Bay Area suburbs, May 2022" https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/east-bay-homeless-17179271.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/east-bay-homeles... One of the main political flashpoints in SF is this: nobody wants homeless services in their neighborhoods, and the wealthier the locale, the more political power they have, and so that's where you'll see police responding to homeless mental health incident disturbances. The result is a ridiculously wealth-stratified city, with the police basically being asked to serve as a barrier between the wealthy regions and the poor regions. This isn't even something the state of California can address: if all the money in the state went into providing housing and services for the bottom rung of society, and no other state did that, you'd again have the migration problem. See the Great Depression and 'Grapes of Wrath', for example. Indeed, it is an international problem as all the desperate poor people seeking entry to the USA over the past decade demonstrates.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > This isn't even something the state of California can address Of course they can address it. Make it easy to build housing for everyone. State and local governments control housing policy.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    What I meant is, desperate people will migrate to wherever there more likely to be able to find housing and jobs. If SF 'solves' poverty and homelessness but it remains high in surrounding communities, SF will be overwhelmed by migration from those communities. If California does the same, there'll be migration from other poor states. If the USA does the same, there'll be migration from other poor countries. Hence, these issues really need to be addressed at all levels - local, state, federal and international - in a cooperative manner.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
This is wonderful news, but also quite shocking. The most progressive city in America has tilted to the right. There’s an old saying: a neocon is a liberal that’s been mugged. The district attorney’s policies were tantamount to state permission to commit crime. If you give Criminals an inch, they will always take a mile.
zephrx1111 4y ago
Serve for people and serve for voter are different. A politician serving for people assumes his policy would benefit all people, no matter some non-voters agree or not. He believes eventually people will agree. On the contrary, politician serving for voter, in order to solicit votes, would intentionally surrender a part of people's benefits, for his votes. Decades ago, most politicians were shame of doing this. But now, seems their bar is getting lower and lower. Sadly, Chesa is the latter.
say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
I posted an LA Times article about this and it was flagged and eventually marked DEAD. Yours was flagged. Not sure what @dang is doing about this censorship.

111 points by zthrowaway 4y ago

rigelbm 4y ago

Never thought I would see "overwhelmingly" and "60%" used as synonyms.

gsibble 4y ago

Good. He was a blight upon the city.

lake_vincent 4y ago

"Boudin also became the first San Francisco DA to file homicide charges against city police officers." Wonder if that has anything to do with it. Edit: I am literally wondering - I have no knowledge of the situation.

gadders 4y ago
Nah, probably more to do with this: https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/how-george-soros-funded-progressive-das-behind-us-crime-surge/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/how-george-soros-funded-progre...
dtjb 4y ago
It was for shooting an unarmed man in the back. "The bodycam footage shows [Officer] Samayoa drawing his pistol while the cruiser was still moving. The video then shows him open the side door and fire a single shot through the window as O’Neil runs by in the opposite direction. O’Neil was not armed." https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/former-san-francisco-rookie-cop-in-court-in-2017-fatal-shooting-of-unarmed-man/2883306/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/forme...
fatjokes 4y ago
- Pulcinella 4y ago
  Lol SF has a third of the crime rate of Milwaukee and Kansas City. Are those crime ridden cities as well?
  - justaman 4y ago
    Milwaukee sure is. Check youtube for "Kia boys".
  - tyen_ 4y ago
    Certain parts yes.
  - samatman 4y ago
    Is this a serious question? Yes of course, the murder clearance rate in those cities is sickening.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    If it’s not reported, it’s not crime
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    The official crime rate is artificially low because nobody reports, investigates, or punishes the crimes that occur.
    - less_less 4y ago
      To be clear: are you claiming that the official crime rate is artificially low in SF in general, or specifically under Boudin? For all types of crimes, or just property crimes? And do you have a source for any of this? (I understand that official stats will not be a source for a claim that the official stats are lies, but is there something beyond speculation?) I personally have my doubts. Boudin said he would shift emphasis away from prosecuting individual petty crimes, where the perpetrator would just be out on the street again anyway due to overcrowded prisons, but would still prosecute violent crimes and organized crime. So you would expect reporting rates of violent crimes to be about the same as before, and indeed violent crimes in SF are following trends in other US cities, with a moderate uptick in murder but other violent crime at historic lows. For petty crimes like car breakins and bike theft, the police weren't going to solve this anyway unless it happened directly in front of them. The nationwide clearance rate for such crimes (of the ones people even bother to report) is like 15% or less. People don't report these crimes in hopes of someone getting prosecuted, they report them because their insurance policies require it, and that didn't change under Boudin.

buggythebug 4y ago

The problem I find with lots of politicians is not balancing both short term and long term solutions. Republicans: mental health is definitely an issue that needs to be solved in regards to guns but that's a long term solution - we also need a short term solution of preventing people who shouldn't have access to guns in the first place. Democrats: There are racial issues in this country that can be solved in the long term through education and investment in communities. That being said crime is crime, and we also need a short term solution of arresting and prosecuting people who commit crimes - no matter what their circumstances are. Reform NOT defund the police.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> Republicans: mental health is definitely an issue that needs to be solved If this were true, they would have proposed legislation to fund healthcare.
- dotty- 4y ago
  He's addressing each party, not describing each party's beliefs.
  - jressey 4y ago
    The commenter is comparing a core GOP belief: Minimal gun control with a fringe Democratic belief: Defund the police. Any comparison of the parties can't be done in good faith.
    - bmmayer1 4y ago
      This does not seem like a charitable interpretation of the point OP is trying to make.
    - Bud 4y ago
      "Defund the police" is more of a Republican parody of Democrats than anything else. It's a Fox News slogan. No substantial portion of the Democratic Party supports this, or ever has. But it's a great way to lie about your political opponents to keep anything rational from being done about gun violence or other issues.

dr_dshiv 4y ago

I am both in favor of several of Boudin’s policies and the effort to recall. SF citizens have a right to be pissed off. And innovation in policy is needed.

omega3 4y ago

It seems crazy to me to start the reform of the system from this end by lowering the jail population and laxer prosecution. I'd think that keeping the law & enforcement as is and targeting the underlying systemic causes - war on drugs, unemployment, lack of opportunities etc would be more sensible.

nostromo 4y ago
Can we stop pretending the war on drugs is sending large amounts of people in California to jail? It’s not the 80s / 90s anymore. It’s very difficult to end up in jail anywhere on the west coast due to run of the mill drug possession.
- omega3 4y ago
  I think you are right where it comes to possession. According to the 2018 report [0] only 4.1% were in prison for drug related crimes. It would be interesting to see how many of the other categories (burglary, murder, possession of a weapon etc) are directly linked with drug trade or drug use. [0]https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2020/01/201812_DataPoints.pdf https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/17...
digianarchist 4y ago
One takes far more political capital than the other. A DA has direct and immediate influence over prosecutions. Violent crime dropped on his watch. Although thefts are up [0]. The stats show it. Very disappointing result. [0] - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-07/2022-san-francisco-district-attorney-chesa-boudin-recall-election-results?_amp=true https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-07/2022-san...
- samatman 4y ago
  Which department in San Francisco releases statistics on violent crime and who heads it?
  - 4y ago

farmerstan 4y ago

The biggest mistake he and Democrats keep making is blaming “billionaire Republicans”. It’s not Republicans it’s Democrats voting him out. He either refuses to acknowledge that the Democrat voters themselves are rejecting his policies out of hubris or it’s a way to shame democrats by accusing them of acting like Republicans. But it didn’t work and only infuriated and calcified anti-Boudin people even more. Democrats at the federal level better take heed. If San Francisco who is overwhelmingly Democrat will reject extreme progressive policies like Boudin’s, hopefully it means the Dems can regain some sense of rationality. My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is. That’s the only way we can change behavior is through voting, and in CA they have come to take voters for granted for decades and left California a progressive experiment gone off the rails to the point of lunacy.

orblivion 4y ago
> blaming “billionaire Republicans” I just can't imagine a world where an ousted politician (or elected bureaucrat in this case) says "wow I guess I really fucked up, I'm sorry. I'll pack my things and be out in the morning". They have to save face by blaming somebody.
- dash2 4y ago
  Maybe it is different in the UK. John Major, 1997: "Tonight we have suffered a very bad defeat, let us not pretend to ourselves that it was anything other than what it was. Unless we accept it for what it was, and look at it, we will be less able to put it right." Ed Miliband, 2015: "I take absolute and total responsibility for our defeat. I'm so sorry for all those colleagues who lost their seats."
- belval 4y ago
  No, maybe this is the norm in the US, but this is not normal and we should not pretend it is. In Canada, most defeat speeches I've watched were about the candidate mistakes, what they were proud of having accomplished, etc... Playing the blame game is pathetic. If you want an example, Stephen Harper's concession speech in 2015 was pretty good.

tinco 4y ago

The solution to mass incarceration isn't less tough policing, it's a more effective justice system with reasonable punishment and thorough prevention and rehabilitation programmes. Part of prevention is more policing, not less. Being Reasonable or thorough never got anyone elected though.

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
Chicago has the largest police budget in the country and it still has very high crime. We need smarter policing, not more.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  The US is under policed compared to any Western European country. Its rate of murder per capita is above practically all European countries when excluding gun homicides. It should at least have as many police per capita as Spain, 534/100k, not 239, which is less than even Taiwan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
  - scarface74 4y ago
    What circumstances do police prevent crime? If someone breaks into my house, what are the chances that police will get there in time to stop it? If someone is victim of crime committed by a family member (20%), how will the police help? Then you have the case where the police were afraid to go into a school during an active shooter incident because they were “afraid of getting shot” https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/texas-cops-feared-getting-shot-during-uvalde-school-shooting-lieutenant/ https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/texas-cops-feared-getting-shot...
    - thereisnospork 4y ago
      A person in jail can't break into your house. People incompatible with society need to be removed from it.

sealthedeal 4y ago

Let’s not get to crazy with politics on HN. Remember this is not meant for us to get heated, it’s to have open discussion. Check yourself before you write, very easy to be blindsided by anger with issues like this.

steve76 4y ago
newsclues 4y ago
Why is this discussion flagged?

api 4y ago

Last time I visited SF the city literally smelled like a toilet. I've lived in and visited a lot of "bad" parts of various cities and the condition of SF was shocking. I'd never seen anything in the US quite that filthy or with so many obviously mentally ill people roaming around in a state of perpetual psychiatric distress. I've been to places that probably had higher crime rates but the condition I saw in SF seemed more degrading. Even in the nicer parts of the city you could smell pain and squalor. How is allowing the city to get that bad progressive? Isn't that creating an even more radically two-tier city where the rich live in gated homes and work in posh offices while everyone else can't afford to live somewhere that doesn't smell like human waste? (If they can afford a roof over their head at all. Real estate costs in SF are still batshit insane.) SF may well be the city in the US with the most radical division between rich and poor. Nobody who isn't rich can ever hope to afford homeownership unless they want to commute three hours. How is any of this progressive? To me it looks like a lot of elitism plus general political incompetence and corruption coated with a superficial veneer of low-effort progressive rhetoric to sell it to naive young liberals who vote for mere words and don't pay attention to outcomes. I've become fond of saying this: "Texas is more progressive than California because in Texas a working class person can afford a place to live." That seems to sometimes wake people up to the rank hypocrisy of all this. We've created a political environment where we give far, far too much weight to words and not nearly enough to deeds or outcomes. Ultimately only outcomes matter and when measured by outcome SF's policies are not progressive.

zozbot234 4y ago
When has progressivism ever led to a different outcome? ISTM that you're quite simply in denial about what progressive policies entail, as a matter of fact. The Progressive movement, starting from its earliest origins in the late 19th and early 20th c., has consistently been pro-elite and opposed to meaningful, grassroots-led improvement for "the little guy".
- api 4y ago
  There seems to be a certain species of naive leftist who is about as clueless about economics and how to get things done as some rightists are about things like womens' reproductive health. Stuff like "we need to subsidize mortgages to bring down housing costs" or "stop evil developers! housing is too expensive!" is the same level of ideologically driven willful stupidity as "a woman can't get pregnant from rape."

kosyblysk666 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tims33 4y ago

Reforming the criminal justice system is a good idea, but a DA still needs to be competent at their day job.

yeahSo 4y ago

This will be held up as a failure of progressive politics. Nationally, media will ignore the community progressed right on from their mistake. That is actual progressive politics; moving politics along. Conservatism is keeping the same defective political process in place and forcing deference to it. Progressivism is not embodied in one DA, or policy pipe dream. It’s simply not being kowtowed by the past. Electoral turnovers should be the norm, not the exception: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766

nickpinkston 4y ago

It's amazing how many people who otherwise believe in data driven decision making got caught up in the hype/fear of this recall instead of looking at the data and otherwise trying to reason at the system level. (ie Why do they never mention the police work stoppage?) https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-police-crime-16931399.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article... I wonder if all the pro-recallers will use stats to say the next DA is doing a good job, or if the data will start mattering then? If the new DA's stats stay mostly the same or get worse, will they recall their own DA because they believe in effectiveness, or was this whole recall movement was just full of shit? I'm not optimistic changing DAs will do anything to improve safety or increase quality of life in SF, especially with the recession coming. I just hope that people who claim to "still support criminal justice reform" actually vote like that, because I'm betting they vote for people unwilling to make the hard / unpopular decisions to enact real reforms, who instead talk reform while continue the status quo. All of this is also just window dressing on an otherwise broken social safety net that leaves us with a large / desperate underclass who commit most of the crime. We're never going to arrest our way out of this, and likely unable to solve a lot of it with reform alone. We need real change to our social contract in the USA, but we can barely pass things that are already broadly popular. Easy to be pessimistic...

zanderz 4y ago
San Francisco has had all the problems being blamed on the DA for decades. Things got worse during the pandemic in most cities, regardless of what DA they had. People act like Boudin personally emptied out the jails and stopped prosecuting anyone for anything but this is a ridiculous charicature - as you point out, the actual data says otherwise. He was enacting some reforms promised to us voters, and attempting to hold police more accountable turned out to be an outrageous notion to some. It hardly rose to the emergency people pretend it did, and for which the recall mechanism is intended. Far worse to me is that the police can do as they please and simply stop doing their job and get away with blaming someone else for the result. The recall process is being twisted into a do-over for wealthy interests who don't like an election result.

sergiotapia 4y ago

Good riddance, happy for the people of SF.

spicyusername 4y ago

> Boudin sought to reform the criminal justice system, ending the use of cash bail, stopping the prosecution of minors as adults, and focused on lowering jail populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Boudin also became the first San Francisco DA to file homicide charges against city police officers. It seems like it's hard to know: - If these policies would have helped reduce crime over the long term, but not impacted it over the short term - If these policies would have helped reduce crime over the long term, but increased it over the short term - If these policies increase crime over the short-term and the long-term It seems like it's going to be difficult to follow a data-driven approach here. It could take a long time to collect enough data and like most of the other social sciences, it's difficult to isolate causal from correlative factors. I empathize with San Francisco not wanting to be the guinea pigs to find out. Being tough on crime feels like the right solution even if we don't know objectively if it is or isn't. Also nobody likes hate crimes are getting their car broken into.

mynameishere 4y ago
It seems like it's hard to know: No, man, no. It's not hard to know. Pro-crime policies increase crime. That's what they do, and that's their entire purpose. Everyone here seems to think this guy was acting in good faith. No. He comes from a proud terrorist tradition [1], and he's playing his part. Almost every "right wing" news source points out that he is bankrolled by George Soros, and the left (Who could hardly stop repeating "Koch Brothers" whenever they could) needs to realize that there are powerful forces out their intentionally trying to harm society. [1] Literally.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Is he also a “secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law to the US?” I think we should check his birth certificate.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    He is Jewish, and his terrorist parents were Weathermen (Weatherpersons?), not Al-Qaida or their ilk.

pmoriarty 4y ago

SF (and California in general) have this reputation for being some kind of crazy leftist/communist utopia (or dystopia, depending on your political leanings), but it's really pretty moderate, capitalist, and even conservative in some ways. This recall is just one example of this.

tyen_ 4y ago

Bad news for the Auto glass replacement businesses.

thaway2839 4y ago

Unfortunately, it appears that the Progressive DAs elected across some cities are just really bad at being DAs. They've identified a real issue where 10% (arbitrarily chosen number...it could be higher/lower) of the justice system is not working well. But at the same time, 90% of it does work. They've turned out to be really bad at handling that 90%.

ameister14 4y ago

I hope whoever replaces him doesn't end some of the more fundamental reforms like not charging minors as adults. Pretty hard to prosecute petty theft with Prop 47 in power, and it sounds like there was also a pretty major decrease in policing of petty crime over the last few years - that's not a DA fault, that's the mayor.

sporkland 4y ago
The common refrain was that they'd arrest folks multiple times and the DA would release them, so why bother arresting them in the first place. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle and the police deserve a fair slice of blame, but so did Chesa. I think San Franciscans are sick of both sides and looking to send a message. Now the police have no excuses, and if it doesn't get better Chief of Police and Breed will be next.
samatman 4y ago
Get shoplifters on camera and trespass them immediately as soon as they touch merchandise, then throw the book at them with vandalism and assault charges (they will yell, they always do). Where there's a will there's a way.

subsubzero 4y ago

Whether people like it or not these "policies" Chesa and his predecessor George Gascon(also under threat of recall in LA) have really turned what used to be a world class city into a complete dumpster fire. I worked in SF for the better part of a decade on and off and every year it seemed like things got worse, human shit on sidewalks everywhere you looked, needle casings littering the ground, aggressive homeless and crime that was out of control(only time in california I ever got a car window smashed in and stuff stolen). I didn't see SF for 2 years during the pandemic but the week I did visit in 2022 it was down right apocalyptic, no normal people on the street at all, just homeless/drug addicts everywhere, graffiti and trash at levels I have never seen, no wonder the city saw its population drop by the largest percent of any major american city. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-population-decline-us-census-data-17203868.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-populat...

MathYouF 4y ago
Just a perspective for other readers: I recently moved to the Bay Area. I've lived quite a few places around the world and US. Some I consider the nicest in the world (Tokyo) and some I don't consider nice at all. I'd formed my view of SF based on comments I'd heard like these on HN, and was prepared for the worst when beginning to visit for the weekend. Having now had several excursions into the city including places considered not that nice like the Tenderloin or Mission, I can't see how it's any worse than any other US city, and in fact consider it nicer than most other large cities in the US I've been to, like NYC and Chicago. Maybe it's because I only visit on weekends and don't live there, but from the perspective of a frequent visitor it seems really nice to me, and I didn't go in expecting that nor am I a person particularly biased towards having rose colored views of things. I wonder if maybe people in SF expect it to not have the same problems as other large metros like NYC. I'd be curious to hear from someone who has lived in both and thinks SF is "apocalyptic" what experiences made them think that. I think in the Bay Area there's a large number of people who don't realize (or have chosen to forget) how inconvenient life can still be on average around the world and even the country, compared to the idyllic circumstances they've created here (especially in the valley). It's what makes it so easy for them to come across as judgemental or tone deaf when discussing problems at the national level.

timcavel 4y ago

photochemsyn 4y ago

The phrase 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic' is appropriate here. The problems are a lot more regional than the national political media would have you believe, because SF is not an island in the ocean. The East Bay and the South Bay are all in similar economic conditions. There's been an uptick in homelessness in the once-suburban commuter cities, and if those places can't provide services then migration to SF is one possibility because more services are provided in the city. People might be able to get a hotel room in SF, for example. "New data shows explosive growth of homelessness in these Bay Area suburbs, May 2022" https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/east-bay-homeless-17179271.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/east-bay-homeles... One of the main political flashpoints in SF is this: nobody wants homeless services in their neighborhoods, and the wealthier the locale, the more political power they have, and so that's where you'll see police responding to homeless mental health incident disturbances. The result is a ridiculously wealth-stratified city, with the police basically being asked to serve as a barrier between the wealthy regions and the poor regions. This isn't even something the state of California can address: if all the money in the state went into providing housing and services for the bottom rung of society, and no other state did that, you'd again have the migration problem. See the Great Depression and 'Grapes of Wrath', for example. Indeed, it is an international problem as all the desperate poor people seeking entry to the USA over the past decade demonstrates.

zozbot234 4y ago
> This isn't even something the state of California can address Of course they can address it. Make it easy to build housing for everyone. State and local governments control housing policy.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  What I meant is, desperate people will migrate to wherever there more likely to be able to find housing and jobs. If SF 'solves' poverty and homelessness but it remains high in surrounding communities, SF will be overwhelmed by migration from those communities. If California does the same, there'll be migration from other poor states. If the USA does the same, there'll be migration from other poor countries. Hence, these issues really need to be addressed at all levels - local, state, federal and international - in a cooperative manner.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

This is wonderful news, but also quite shocking. The most progressive city in America has tilted to the right. There’s an old saying: a neocon is a liberal that’s been mugged. The district attorney’s policies were tantamount to state permission to commit crime. If you give Criminals an inch, they will always take a mile.

zephrx1111 4y ago

Serve for people and serve for voter are different. A politician serving for people assumes his policy would benefit all people, no matter some non-voters agree or not. He believes eventually people will agree. On the contrary, politician serving for voter, in order to solicit votes, would intentionally surrender a part of people's benefits, for his votes. Decades ago, most politicians were shame of doing this. But now, seems their bar is getting lower and lower. Sadly, Chesa is the latter.

say_it_as_it_is 4y ago

I posted an LA Times article about this and it was flagged and eventually marked DEAD. Yours was flagged. Not sure what @dang is doing about this censorship.