Lee Heidhues 7.8.2023
“In a statement, Jenkins also blamed defense attorneys for her office not having more to show for her prosecutions against drug dealers.”
– San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins quoted in San Francisco Standard 7.6.2023
Carefully reading The Standard it’s evident the State of Crime has not changed appreciably since Brooke Jenkins was anointed DA a year ago today.
It’s no surprise that the San Francisco Police Department and their cheerleader DA are unhappy with The San Francisco Standard for calling out their ineptitude.
It is demonstrably pathetic that Brooke Jenkins lashes out at defense attorneys, most of whom are public defenders, for doing their job. Represent their clients.
Brooke Jenkins continues to blame “progressive ideology” embedded in her own office rather than take responsibility for her abject failure.
Now that Chesa Boudin has been gone a year, Brooke Jenkins no longer has her scapegoat to blame. The target of her incompetence are defense attorneys Brooke Jenkins must battle in the court of law. Where bloviating rhetoric is not the coin of the realm.
And the cops. What can I say? The SFPD is still in full Chesa scapegoat mode and refuses to acknowledge their role in the ouster of Chesa Boudin. Having spent over 700K to try and defeat Chesa in 2019, the cops went full throttle to bring him down through proactive sloth and incompetence on the job.
It was common knowledge on the street that the SFPD, egged on by its reactionary Police Officers Association, engaged in the most obvious dereliction of duty. They refused to make arrests because Chesa Boudin was their sworn foe. The job objective was to take him down by ignoring criminal acts. They succeeded.
Even law and order loving Chronicle columnist Heather Knight. Who contributed regularly in her columns to Chesa’s ouster. Felt compelled in a brief moment of journalistic integrity to call out the cops for their dereliction and incompetence while Chesa was DA.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 7.6.2023
DA Brooke Jenkins quickly adopted a more punitive approach to crime than her progressive predecessor both in tone and substance, homing in on repeat narcotics offenders and drug dealers, whom she targeted with more stringent policies and harsher rhetoric.
She threatened to charge dealers with murder if their drugs lead to overdoses, said she’d add years to sentences for those who deal near schools and revoked what she termed “lenient” plea offers made by Boudin.
But there is little evidence on the streets that these tactics are working, and many say they are merely a return to a failed “war on drugs.” Instead of focusing on diversion and treatment, which were part of Boudin’s approach, Jenkins has put more of her tools toward jailing drug dealers and punishing users.
Jenkins blamed defense attorneys for her office not having more to show for her prosecutions against drug dealers.
Jenkins said her approach to running the District Attorney’s Office will simply take more time to bear fruit.
Reports of drug offenses have increased 41% since she took office.
Overdose deaths driven by the fentanyl epidemic are on pace to hit a record high, having hit 268 as of the end of April. Things have become so dire that Gov. Gavin Newsom sent in state law enforcement to help patrol the epicenter of the drug crisis in the Tenderloin as numerous local operations have sprouted to tackle the issue.
While data provided by the DA’s Office shows that Jenkins is beginning to differentiate herself from Boudin—she is charging more drug cases and sending far fewer people to diversion programs, which offer alternatives to conviction—her increased caseload has yet to lead to a sizable change in drug convictions.
In fact, in her first 11 months in office, she convicted fewer drug dealers than Boudin over the last 11 months of his time as district attorney.
Cases can take years to yield convictions, and righting an office that was driven more by a progressive ideology than the law cannot happen overnight, she said in emailed statements.
https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/brooke-jenkins-promise-end-drug-dealing/
Lee's Perspective 