SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 3.22.2024
San Francisco is on the knife’s edge of unruly civil discourse and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins continues to sharpen terms of the debate.
As San Francisco’s chief law enforcement officer political creature Jenkins was hoisted into office over the political corpse of the man she worked for, Chesa Boudin. Since being named DA by her fellow collaborator Mayor London Breed in the ouster of Chesa Boudin, the current DA has played to the law and order mob in San Francisco.
It may be good for her political future. But it lays waste to any credibility Brooke Jenkins may have as an upholder of justice under the law. Her overheated rhetoric on the steps of the Hall of Justice was nothing more than Red meat for the mob.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 3.2.2024
“Get the fuck out of here. This is our protest.”
“She (DA Brooke Jenkins) is rousing up this bloodlust because she’s sucking up every Asian vote that she needs,” said private attorney Rebecca Young, who organized the counter protest. “Every decision that Brooke Jenkins makes about any high profile case is a political decision.”
Young, who worked in both the District Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office before she was fired by Jenkins, accused Jenkins of politicizing criminal justice issues as she is running for reelection. At one point during the protests, Young asked a sheriff to arrest someone who she felt was threatening her.
“We want to make sure that our Asian seniors have the ability to walk down the street safely in our city,” said Jenkins, who is running for reelection this year. “If there is no accountability for the people who attack them, if we don’t have adequate consequences for that behavior, it will continue.”
A Chinese American activist faced off against a white defense attorney in one of the tensest exchanges during a protest Friday outside the San Francisco Superior Court.
“Do you care about Asian people?” shouted Jade Tu, who is also the campaign manager for mayoral candidate Mark Farrell. Holding a megaphone to the face of Marc Zilversmit, a San Francisco criminal defense attorney, she continued, “How would you feel if you got stabbed multiple times? Get the fuck out of here. This is our protest.”
Zilversmit yelled back. He’d shown up, he told the Chronicle earlier, to defend the independence of the judiciary.
About 60 mostly Asian American activists and community members, joined by District Attorney Jenkins, were outside the Hall of Justice to protest what they saw as an injustice — a San Francisco judge granting probation and mental health treatment to Daniel Cauich, who pled guilty in November to charges related to the 2021 nonfatal stabbing of Ahn “Peng” Taylor, a Chinese Vietnamese woman in her 90s.
A small counter protest of about a half-dozen defense attorneys stood to the side, interrupting with chants of their own, shaming Jenkins, making this yet another flash point in the politicized debate about how to best treat mentally ill defendants in violent crimes against Asian American residents, particularly older adults.
Lily Ho, one of the protest’s organizers and a newly elected member of the Democratic County Central Committee, said that none of the protesters thought the judge’s decision was right.
“Shame on you,” she said. “This case is exactly the reason why I personally supported new judges,” referring to a largely unsuccessful push by political moderates to elect new tough-on-crime judges in the recent March election.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/stabbing-probation-protest-19362275.php
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