Mary Jung, the former chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and the current director of government affairs for the San Francisco Association of Realtors, as well as the head of a realtor foundation assisting homeless people, is leading an effort to recall San Francisco’s district attorney Chesa Boudin due to a growing public fear over violent and petty crime in the city.
Between January and July of last year at least seven elderly Asian American residents of San Francisco were brutally assaulted or even killed in broad daylight.
“It’s a horrible feeling to be afraid in your own community,” said John Hamasaki, who is a member of San Francisco’s Police Commission and who is ethnically Japanese. “People are genuinely afraid to go outside, to walk down the street alone.”
In the summer of last year following those seven brutal attacks, Chinese activities pleaded with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for more police on the streets. Those same activists have openly denounced Boudin for not being tough enough on crime.
Racist attacks against Asian Americans in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement. The call from Asian Americans for more police protection against violence, coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement pushing for a reduced police presence. The issue has put liberal city officials in a bind.
In 2019 at least 43 hate crimes were committed against Asian Americans in the state of California. In 2020 that number more than doubled to 89. However, in 2020 there were 456 hate crimes perpetrated against Black Americans in California as opposed to 243 in 2019.
Boudin has been the district attorney of San Francisco since January 8, 2020. His policies aimed to make the city safer with judicious policies rather than punitive ones. Those policies included eliminating cash bail, reducing the jail population, and a “first offender” program.
Were the liberal district attorney to be recalled that decision could create a ripple-effect across the nation regarding justice reform in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement which was heightened by the murder of George Floyd by police. Cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago could also face strengthened backlash for progressive police reform policies if Boudin is recalled.
The effort to recall Boudin has garnered support from moderate democrats as well as republicans. William Oberndorf, a Republican investor, has donated more than $650,000 towards the campaign to recall Boudin.
“This recall here is not about us having a difference in ideology,” said Brooke Jenkins, who worked in Boudin’s office before leaving to recall him. “Many people subscribe to the same sort of overarching goals that Chesa has. People have said, ‘Wait a minute. What we didn’t sign up for is rampant crime.’”
But even as homicides have increased in San Francisco, overall reported crime has actually fallen during Boudin’s time as the city’s district attorney.
According to the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report” for 2020, while property crime dropped by 7.8% in 2020, violent crime was up 5.6% compared to 2019. Murder and aggravated assault both increased during this time period. So while overall crime really hasn’t changed (and hasn’t been as bad as it was in the 1990s), violence spiked following the COVID-19 pandemic.
In San Francisco, the number of murders increased from 2019 to 2021 with the homicide rate spiking by a whopping 37%--- though the city has a high statistic of murder rates already— with 40 to 60 murders a year on average for the past decade. Overall violent crime rates have decreased since Boudin took office. What has created this public perception of an “increase in crime” is that the pandemic has relocated crime. For example: rapes and assaults have fallen compared to pre-pandemic levels, but criminals have started targeting residential homes as opposed to tourist areas.
Boudin, 41, saw his parents go to jail for taking part in the 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored car in New York. He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School and proceeded to become a public defender. He has accused the recall campaign of using individual, tragic stories, as motivation to pull him out of office. He says the public’s perception of crime is also skewed by media coverage.
“People read the story, they see the video, and they perceive crime as being out of control,” Boudin said. “When in fact things like shoplifting are down dramatically. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a real problem with auto burglaries, but the notion that it’s out of control today and it wasn’t in 2019 is just demonstrably false.”
But one case has bogged down Boudin’s reputation and is being used as a major talking point to recall him. Troy McAlister, a repeat offender, killed two women in a hit-and-run with a stolen vehicle on New Year’s Eve of 2020.
"This just highlights the current climate of the District Attorney's Office, where Mr. Boudin and his staff are having their criminals-first agenda with a victim being an afterthought," said San Francisco Police Officers Association President Tony Montoya in 2021, days following the hit-and-run.
Boudin’s office had negotiated a plea deal with McAlister. McAlister was a man who had a series of robbery charges since his first charge in 1995 at the age of 19. McAlister was waiting in the San Francisco County Jail for almost five years for a trial regarding an armed robbery charge in which he used a toy gun to rob two women.
Because McAlister pleaded guilty (which is not uncommon in the American judicial system) his charges were reduced to a second-degree felony robbery. However, McAlister was then arrested five more times since his release, but Boudin’s office refused to file charges citing cases brought by police as too weak to file a conviction. McAlister then allegedly killed two women in an intoxicated hit-and-run while driving a stolen vehicle. The case of McAlister has been following Boudin over the course of his career and has been used as a rallying point by those who wish to recall him.
“As a result of that— of striking all those other charges and prior convictions— he put Troy McAlister back on the street with no treatment, no counseling, nothing, just back on the street in a position where he was able to kill those two women,” said Don du Bain, a prosecutor who worked in Boudin’s office alongside Jenkins before quitting to join the recall campaign against Boudin. “I don't see what's reformist about simply releasing a defendant back on the street without any conditions other than he's placed on parole.”
Boudin blames the decision on old policies such as respecting parole requests regarding cases like McAlister. He says he has since changed those policies.
“I really regret not questioning it before his case,” said Boudin of McAlister. “I lay awake at night thinking, ‘What could we have done differently?’”