Chesa Boudin changes his tune

With recall looming, DA is ready to talk crime, not philosophy

A funny thing happened to District Attorney Chesa Boudin on his way to a possible recall election.

Now it will be interesting to see if anyone notices.

Back in October of 2019, just weeks before the election that made him DA, Boudin appeared on Democracy Now!, a New York city-based independent TV show.

Boudin’s interview was basically red meat for progressives. He was introduced as someone who was going to fix the “broken criminal justice system,” who would “end cash bail and dismantle the war on drugs.”

Boudin talked about “prosecuting corporate landlords,” refusing to accept testimony from racist police officers and going after polluters. He said he wanted to replace “incarceration” with “de-carceration,” putting fewer people in jail.

If you are not a part of progressive wing, it would be easy to draw some unfavorable conclusions:

Soft on crime. Dislikes the police. Won’t put the bad guys in jail.

Now, fast forward to Monday night. Boudin appeared with Police Chief Bill Scott in a virtual discussion sponsored by the North Beach group, the Telegraph Hill Dwellers.

And Boudin came prepared with numbers on crime.

He said his office “filed over 7,000 new criminal cases since I took office. That’s as high, or higher, than the previous administration.” He praised Scott, and the work of the SFPD. He said this year his office has filed charges in “over 80 percent of burglary cases.”

To the uniformed observer, the message seemed clear. We will get to reforming the criminal justice system in a minute. But right now we have to convince people that the streets of San Francisco aren’t the wild west.

And that the DA’s office isn’t making things worse.

“We know,” Boudin said of he and Scott, “many people are feeling less safe than ever. What we do agree on is both of us are working to make San Francisco safer.”

That’s quite a change in tone. What happened?

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Well, some of it was bad luck. Boudin was barely in office before the pandemic took off. The shut-down city was hit with a wave of burglaries. There were shocking, horrific attacks on Asian Americans, caught on video. Gun violence was up “almost triple digits,” according to Scott.

And for the six million people who saw the video of the infamous bike-riding shoplifter, San Francisco looked like a city out of control.

The search for someone to blame landed on Boudin. He’s just a public defender who is pretending to be district attorney, people said.

And Boudin definitely did not help himself. He blamed others, including the police and the crime lab, for inefficiency. His comments after an elderly Asian man was assaulted and killed were tone deaf. He was defensive in public appearances.

Hence the recall. The anger is real, but if you had to name a motivation it would probably just be “general exasperation.”

Boudin may still be recalled, but in classic San Francisco tradition, two groups who are on the same side — recalling Boudin — got into a bickerfest and split into two separate recall groups, confusing everyone. Sigh.

One drive has already failed and the second is still working on signature collecting.

But the point is, all this seems to have registered with Boudin.

He even said it Monday night: “We learn lessons. We change policy.”

He and Scott, San Francisco’s odd couple, have made several appearances together. Boudin always stresses that he talks to Scott “weekly, if not every day.” He praises the work of the police and stresses his office’s willingness to prosecute.

Scott, for his part, plays his role as middleman perfectly. He’s poised, doesn’t get defensive and finds a way to make his points.

He voices the frustration of officers who see “a guy who has been arrested three or four times in the last week.” And he stresses the importance of “impact arrests,” where they nail someone who is a prolific criminal.

Those are the people, Scott says, who are “serial burglars, they do that for a living.” Catching and jailing them, Scott said, has a real effect on the crime rate.

And, lo and behold, Boudin says his office now has a list of “12 prolific burglars and my charging team is focussed on them.”

Huh. Sounds like the kind of thing a district attorney should be doing.

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Boudin also said changes have been made after the horrific case of Troy McAllister, a wanted parolee who went on a crime spree that concluded with a stolen car crash that killed two women. Boudin said state parole officials didn’t want his office to issue parole revocations. They wanted to handle it themselves.

“Well, that didn’t work, obviously,” Boudin said. “So going forward we file parole revocations ourselves, even if they don’t want us to. We clearly need to take responsibility for parolees who are arrested in San Francisco.”

All good moves, although Boudin couldn’t resist complaining that none of those have gotten media attention.

That’s your job, Chesa. Schedule a press conference and say here are some updates on some cases that have gotten lots of publicity. Stress the changes and the criminals that were held to account.

It’s been quite the journey. Back at the election Boudin was routinely mentioned as part of a new wave of district attorneys that were going to reimagine criminal justice in the United States.

Instead, reality intruded. Defund the police was catchy, but when the country sees videos of violence and brazen theft, people want to know they are safe and protected. The lofty concepts have given way to the basics — catching criminals and holding them accountable.

At this late hour, it seems Boudin has reached that conclusion. His office’s job is what it has always been — to prosecute crime. It seems he’s making an effort to do that.

Now, will anyone notice?

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Suggestions and compliments gladly accepted. Criticism, not so much. Twitter: @cwnevius