Recall Effort Against San Francisco D.A. Boosted by Rampant Crime

Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

The effort to recall ultra-radical San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has been boosted by a series of high-profile crimes that have shocked the city and made news around the world. Money has been pouring in to two separate recall campaigns, and they appear to be on schedule to obtain the number of voter signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The two recall efforts are SaferSF and Recall Chesa Boudin.

In the midst of his city’s crime wave, Boudin has further infuriated many San Franciscans, including liberal-left Democrats who previously supported him, by refusing to prosecute foreign drug dealers who are fueling a wave of deadly drug overdoses in the city’s Tenderloin District. In a video that has gone viral, Boudin attempted to explain why he isn’t prosecuting the drug dealers who are flooding the Bay Area with deadly fentanyl from Mexico and China.

According to Boudin, most of the dealers are Hondurans who were “trafficked” here and they are simply trying to earn enough money to pay back the traffickers so that their family members won’t be killed in Honduras. If Boudin arrests them and sends them back, he says, they will be killed, and/or their family members will be murdered. That makes a good heartstring story that may possibly even be true in some cases (or not). But even if it were true, it obfuscates a number of other important issues that should be priorities for the prosecutor, but which Boudin is dodging:

The Honduran drug dealers are here illegally (a crime), selling deadly contraband drugs (a crime);
The drugs are killing people (nearly 700 deaths in San Francisco in the past year);
Boudin and other city officials continue to support the city’s “sanctuary” policy and refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials;
Boudin and San Francisco city officials support President Joe Biden’s open borders policies that are allowing the illegal alien drug dealers and their drugs to pour into the city;
His job is to protect the people of San Francisco by prosecuting criminals who endanger them, not play social-work savior by casting the criminals as the victims.

Thieves, Flash-mob Gangs Operate With Impunity — in Broad Daylight

The word has gone out: You can steal with impunity in San Fran. Store security officers won’t stop you. Police won’t arrest you. The D.A. won’t prosecute you. The stores won’t even press charges. New videos of individual thieves and gangs of thieves brazenly stealing from neighborhood stores and major luxury retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Luis Vuitton seem to pop up every week. (See here, here, and here.)

While COVID lockdowns and trillions of dollars in federal and state payments helped tamp down some crime statistics during 2020, San Francisco is still struggling with a major crime crisis. “Increases were shown in many violent crime categories,” the California Globe reported on July 13. “Mid-year homicide rates went up to their highest levels since 2017 while gun violence crimes stood at 119 so far this year, the highest it has been in decades. Burglaries also reached their highest point in recent decades, capping out at 3,717 at the end of June.”

San Francisco’s lax-on-crime attitude appears to have infected the whole Bay Area, seemingly inspiring copycat crime sprees in Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland, Antioch, Emeryville, and other cities. The region also has witnessed a horrifying rise in carjackings, some of which have been caught on video, such as the one below of two women tourists from Hawaii who had their vehicle, cash, purses, and credit cards stolen in a violent carjacking in the parking structure of a major shopping mall.

They Even Rob — at Gunpoint — a Reporter Who Is Reporting on SF Robbery Spree!

The experience of local television reporter Don Ford and his cameraman sheds a little light on just how brazen San Francisco’s criminals have become. Ford was in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks area to report on a series of automobile break-ins for KPIX-5, the CBS affiliate, when armed robbers drove up and stuck a gun in his face.

“The car came up here while we were about to do an interview, three guys jumped out,” said Ford.

“One had a gun and put in my face and said, ‘We’re taking the camera.’”

“My whole thought at the moment was be calm,” Ford recounted. “Let’s not get this guy excited. He’s got the gun. I don’t. So you take the camera. It’s yours Buddy.”

That encounter concluded without shots being fired and with no injuries, but many other Frisco crime victims are not so lucky.

“My Heart Goes Out” — But the Blood Is on Boudin’s Hands

The 2021 death toll for the City by the Bay began on New Year’s Eve with a double homicide by a career criminal who had been released on parole several months before. The paroled criminal, Troy McAlister, was recklessly driving a car stolen two days earlier in Daly City when he ran a red light and hit two adult females in a crosswalk, 60 year-old Elizabeth Platt and 27 year-old Hanako Abe, killing them both. According to police reports, McAlister was believed to be under the influence of alcohol and methamphetamine at the time he committed the hit and run. He is also alleged to have committed a burglary earlier that day. Inside the abandoned stolen car was a semiautomatic handgun with an extended high-capacity magazine and 23 grams gross weight of methamphetamine.

D.A. Boudin, who is a poster boy for the new wave of Soros-funded “progressive” district attorneys that infamously refuse to prosecute criminals, had little choice but to prosecute McAlister in this case. Public outrage demanded it. He charged McAlister with multiple felony offenses, including two counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

“My entire office is distraught over this, and our hearts break for the families of Ms. Abe and Ms. Platt,” District Attorney Boudin said.

“Let me speak directly to those families: I am so sorry for your loss. The pain you are suffering is unthinkable. This is a true tragedy. We will hold Mr. McAlister accountable.”

But Boudin was trying to pass the buck and conceal his own culpability in the matter. “This horrific tragedy is an example of many different agencies each failing to intervene effectively,” he said. “Although of course no one predicted this tragedy, it is true that the Daly City Police, the San Francisco Police, Parole, and my office all could have done things differently, which might have avoided this terrible outcome,” he continued. “I have to start with what we could have done differently in house and we are carefully reviewing what happened and how the District Attorney’s Office can work to prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future.”

Yes, he blamed the police (who had done their job of capturing McAlister — before Boudin had turned him loose), and emoted about his alleged anguish over this tragedy. What Boudin failed to mention is that he and McAlister have a history that goes back a few years. Before becoming district attorney in 2020, Boudin had served as McAlister’s defense attorney in 2018. And McAlister was out on parole thanks to D.A. Boudin.

Boudin’s theatrical grievance ritual for the victims of criminals he has released — or his policies have encouraged — has been repeated over and over, along with his refusal to accept responsibility and his boilerplate shifting of blame to the police. “Our hearts go out to the family of the victim, who tragically lost his life today,” Boudin said in a statement following the death of 26-year-old African immigrant Sheria Musyoka, a recent Dartmouth College graduate, who leaves behind a widow and a three-year-old son. Musyoka was killed by multiple offender Jerry Lyons of San Francisco, whom Boudin’s office had released shortly before he ran over Musyoka and hospitalized several other victims in an eight-car smashup, while reportedly driving drunk in a stolen vehicle.

It was the same replay when two elderly San Franciscans — Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, and Jack Paladino, 76 — were murdered in two separate attacks on the same day.

“My heart goes out to the families of both victims for these senseless, violent attacks. These horrific crimes cause seniors and all of us to feel unsafe,” Boudin said in a statement. “Violent crimes are my top priority. We will hold the people who committed these crimes accountable: We will prosecute them for murder.”

How many other San Franciscans have been victimized by criminals released (or not prosecuted) by Boudin? We have not seen any study attempting to arrive at totals since Boudin took office in 2020, but the San Francisco Chronicle reported on July 13 that “Roughly half of people charged with crimes and released from jail before their trials in San Francisco in recent years failed to show up for court, and a similar share were accused of committing a new crime while free, a new study found.”

The study cited was published by the California Policy Lab, based at UC-Berkeley and UCLA, and covered four years — from May 2016 to December 2019. That period was before Boudin took office in January of 2020, but it still has great relevance to the current crime crisis under Boudin’s watch. That crisis was launched under Boudin’s predecessor, George Gascon, the leftist San Francisco D.A. who has since moved south to inflict the same devastation on Los Angeles County. But before leaving San Francisco, he hand-picked Boudin as his successor to carry on the revolution in the Bay Area. As we have reported, the Soros-funded Gascon is now also facing a serious recall campaign organized by outraged citizens and the mayors and officials of more than 20 cities in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, the criminal chaos he unleashed in San Francisco continues under his protégé, Chesa Boudin.

No Surprise Here: Red Diaper Baby, Terrorists’ Son, Comrade of Communist Dictators

None of the actions of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, nor their predictable results, should have surprised anyone. The New American was the first to expose Boudin’s ultra-left, communist background when he announced his candidacy for district attorney in 2019.

We noted:

The Boudin name has a long pedigree in communist and terrorist circles. His maternal grandfather, attorney Leonard Boudin, in addition to being a member of the Communist Party USA, was the longtime legal counsel for Fidel Castro’s communist dictatorship, and was infamous for defending communists, terrorists, and leftists of every stripe. Chesa Boudin’s parents were members of the terrorist Weather Underground. What’s more, they helped build a bomb factory in San Francisco to aid in their war against “Amerika.” Chesa Boudin says he is committed to the same goals to which his parents were, and are, committed. They have not repudiated their past violence — which included bombings, rioting, mayhem, and murder.

We also detailed his upbringing by his foster parents, unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and his working for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez.

Chesa Boudin repeatedly claims that his “heart goes out” to the families of victims, but the bodies of those victims continue to pile up because his heart is truly with the perpetrators of the crimes, whom he views as real victims of an unjust capitalist society he seeks to overthrow.