Why Did San Franciscans Recall Their D.A.?

MELISSA CAEN: San Francisco has long been on the forefront of the whole idea of a recall. We were one of the first cities in the nation to actually implement it. In 1907, voters in San Francisco added the option to our charter just a few months after our mayor was found guilty of bribery and embezzlement. So you can see maybe what they were thinking about when they put that in our city charter.

One of the district attorneys who worked on the case was a young man named Hiram Johnson, who went on to become the governor of California, where he continued

to advocate for the recall mechanism. In 1911, California voters elected to add the recall to the state constitution. They also gave women the right to vote on the same basis as men. In San Francisco, women pretty quickly organized and got together the first recall of a judge who they regarded as being too soft on crime against women. Because judges are employed by the state and not local governments, it was actually the first ever exercise of the statewide recall mechanism right here in San Francisco.

So we’ve always been at the center of all of this. A few decades later, there was a thwarted attempt to unseat another mayor. Then in 1983, there was another thwarted attempt to unseat then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Earlier this year, in 2022, . . . three members of the Board of Education were recalled. And then that brings us to tonight—Proposition H.

Arguing in favor of the proposition that Chesa Boudin should be recalled is a former district attorney who worked in the office for seven years, two under District Attorney Boudin before she quit the office in October of 2021, citing that in her estimation, his actions have been making the city less safe. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brooke Jenkins.

On my right is a professor of law and the director of criminal juvenile justice and racial justice clinical programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She’s been a vocal supporter of the D.A. and is going to be arguing against the proposition for the recall. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Professor Laura Bazelon. Ms. Jenkins will give her opening statement first, please. BROOKE JENKINS: I spent seven years of my career at the San Francisco district attorney’s office up until this past October of 2021. When I joined the D.A.’s office, that was in large part because I wanted to bring a diverse representation into the role of a prosecutor, which historically had not really been seen as a job for somebody that looked like me. I wanted to ensure that the person making the decisions about the fate of somebody’s life shared maybe a similar background, or just would view them as a true person.

I knew Chesa Boudin as a defense lawyer. He was the only one that reached out to me during his campaign and asked me to sit down with him and discuss my thoughts about how he should run the office, what advice I had about changes that needed to be made, and how he could build trust with the attorneys. I spent an hour at a coffee shop talking to Chesa about my thoughts. When Chesa won the election and took office, he promoted me to the homicide unit.

At the point at which he began, never did I think we were headed down this road. Never did I intend to be somebody who was publicly opposing his work in the office. To the contrary, I wanted to support whoever won that race because this wasn’t about politics. This was about the office and even moreso about the city and our victims.

But what I have seen over the last two years is a man who is unwilling to embrace his obligation as the district attorney. He has refused to take off his hat as a public defender whose primary obligation is to his client and put on the hat where your primary obligation is to public safety and to be an advocate for the victim while balancing the interests of justice for a defendant. That is our primary function as the district attorney’s office. We

AS SAN FRANCISCANS

decided whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin on June 7, we invited experts with opposing views to discuss the election. From the May 17, 2022, program “San Francisco Decides: The District Attorney Recall Election.” LARA BAZELON, Professor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San Francisco BROOKE JENKINS, Former Assistant District Attorney of San Francisco MELISSA CAEN, Attorney; Political Analyst—Moderator

WHY DID SAN FRANCISCO VOTERS RECALL THEIR D.A.?

Left to right: Lara Bazelon, Melissa Caen, and Brooke Jenkins.

have to be able to look at each individual case and assess what is best for public safety. How can we advocate for the rights and interests of a victim to make sure that there is a just outcome for them? And how can we be fair and proportional in whatever consequence we deem is appropriate for a defendant?

That has been lost. Everything about the way the D.A.’s office functions at this point is solely what is best for the person charged with the crime, or the person who’s been arrested. We cannot function that way. What’s being lost is that voice of reason and of justice for our victims and for our potential victims. Every day that we don’t put public safety first is a day that we potentially create yet another victim.

I have heard Chesa give a number of talks, conversations, interviews where he has given misleading and false statements. It is for that reason that I felt it was necessary to continue to explain just how this system works and just how the things that he is saying are false, and how we don’t have to make a choice between reform and public safety. We can have both.

Reform is absolutely necessary. Trust me, I’m half Black and half Latina. It is something that is truly meaningful to me, not from an academic sense, not because I’ve watched TV, but because I’ve lived my life in this body. Because I’ve had a family member charged with a crime in San Francisco. I’ve known people from my neighborhood charged with a crime in San Francisco. But I’ve also seen the other side of things where a family member has been gunned down and killed in this city. We have to balance the interests of both sides in order to achieve true reform and true justice. That is where Chesa is failing. And that is why I have been pushing for this recall. LAURA BAZELON: I am here tonight in a variety of capacities: a supporter of Mr. Boudin; I am here as someone with experience working and advocating and litigating in the criminal legal system to make it less racist and more fair in a variety of respects, including through the work I do with my students in the USF Racial Justice Clinic. I want to talk to you about Chesa Boudin and his platform and highlight a couple of things that he ran and won on and why this makes him different, why it makes him progressive, and why this movement is about more than just him. It’s about pushing forward an agenda that’s going to be fairer for everyone.

What do I mean by that? When Chesa was running for district attorney, it was clear to him that we had a problem with people who had been wrongfully convicted, which was that they had no means of getting out. There was technically a conviction review unit in the D.A.’s office, and it had exonerated no one. When he was elected, he created an Innocence Commission that’s my honor to chair pro bono. The five of us [on the commission] are independent experts. We labor pro bono to investigate these cases from the ground up, to try to do justice, which is forward thinking and backward looking. On April the 15th, 2022, a man named Joaquin Syria walked free after 31 years in prison, and that is entirely due to the work of this D.A. Had it been anyone else, he would still be there, because the standard response from days when an innocent person is trying to present their claim is to reflexively deny it. Rather than do that, he allowed us the responsibility to look into it. And then he followed our recommendation. A judge concluded that, yes, indeed, newly discovered evidence was of such persuasive force and value that this conviction could not stand. Two days later, Mr. Syria walked free into the arms of his son, who was an infant when he had been taken away. And the first words that he said were “This is a great country.” The second thing he said was “And I am grateful to the district attorney, Chesa Boudin.” It was a historic moment in San Francisco history. It’s the first time there was ever a collaboration of this kind, where someone didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to prove the basic fact that they didn’t do something and someone else did.

These are the kinds of reforms that Chesa Boudin ran and won on. Are people in the city angry and upset? Are there a lot of auto burglaries, property crimes? Is there a sense, a feeling that people are less safe? Yes. And I think denying that is ridiculous. I think telling people that their feelings don’t matter is not appropriate. And I don’t think the city is doing that. I think he is showing through his reforms that change is hard, it zigzags, but ultimately we are moving in the right direction. What do I mean by that?

This D.A. has actually filed more cases in his two years than the past two administrations. He’s filed 10,000 of them. He has gone after police who beat and shoot unarmed people. He has, in fact, locked up serious offenders. He has secured felony convictions in all kinds of cases, including narcotics cases, contrary to what you have been hearing.

What are some of the issues that are plaguing the city? Well, one of them is the

“The concept of diversion is to get at root causes. . . . Why do people commit crimes? Because if we don’t get to those root causes and ask those questions and actually provide solutions that aren’t just jail, what we’re going to have is the same endless cycle.”

—LARA BAZELON

clearance rate. The San Francisco Police Department clears less than 9 percent of all reported crimes. And when it comes to the crime that makes people the angriest, which is auto burglary, they clear less than 1 percent. He files 86 percent of the time in that 1 percent. But here’s the thing. Chesa is not a cop standing on the corner with handcuffs, ready to tackle a miscreant and take them into custody. That is not his job. District attorneys, prosecutors—they cannot prosecute people unless the police arrest them and bring them in. That is not happening.

What the recall gets to do is make misrepresentations about this D.A.—and we’ll get into them, because the entire recall campaign is built on them—but the most dangerous lie of all is the idea that if you just get rid of this one person, everything else is going to be fine. And he’s the problem. We all know it’s much, much more complicated than that. CAEN: What role in terms of crime rates in the city is really attributable to the D.A.’s office versus the police force and their ability to arrest people? JENKINS: Ninety percent of the time or more, police are not present at the time that a crime is committed. Auto burglary has become so popular in large part because you can do it in 30 seconds; get in, get out. And most of the time, there are no police officers present. By the time someone calls [for police], the perpetrators are long gone.

The D.A.’s office does have control over the cases that are filed and the arrests that are made. And what we are seeing is Chesa’s failure to address the perpetrators that are caught. You can file cases, you can even charge them with felonies all day long. But if you are resolving them for dismissals or for misdemeanors, then the fact that you are charging them does not equate to accountability. When you set a tone as the D.A., that it doesn’t matter whether the police solve the case because there still won’t be accountability, it’s still not a deterrent at all. CAEN: Now, on this issue of charging versus dismissals, you said 10,000 cases filed. Are those charging cases or those convictions? BAZELON: Those are cases that have been filed. The way that the system works is that charges are filed and very, very often, in fact, in most cases, 90 to 95 percent, they result in pleas. Justice Kennedy said we don’t have a system of trials, we have a system of pleas. A plea is a negotiation between the two sides to get to an end result that is going to resolve that case. That is true under every single administration, going back from Terence Hallinan to Kamala Harris to George Gascón to Chesa Boudin.

There is nothing new under the sun going on here. What is different is that what Chesa Boudin has said, what he campaigned on, and what the voters elected him to do was divert more cases. Diversion means you have the charge hanging over your head and then you are held to a very rigorous standard. Depending on the case, you have to go get a job. You have to go get substance abuse treatment if you are addicted. You need to get mental health help if you are mentally ill. There are standards you have to meet. If you fail to meet those standards, the charges are reinstated and in all likelihood, you will be convicted.

The concept of diversion is to get at root causes. Why do people do what they do? Why do people commit crimes? Because if we don’t get to those root causes and ask those questions and actually provide solutions that aren’t just jail, what we’re going to have is the same endless cycle. We’ve been hearing the same story about tough on crime since the 1950s. We lock up more people in the United States than any industrialized country by an exponential margin. The evidence has come in, and it’s overwhelming that it doesn’t make us safer. JENKINS: San Francisco has not locked more people up. That’s the difference here. We are not talking about a county that has overwhelmingly used prison as a tool for accountability. It has been reserved in San Francisco for a long time now, certainly under my five-and-a-half years working for George Gascón, primarily for violent offenders. We are not talking about the ’80s—war on drugs, locking up Black people for selling crack versus cocaine. That’s not the universe we have been in for the last decade.

What we are talking about, though, is diversion versus actual rehabilitation. A diversion program in the San Francisco Superior Court system is a watered down version of rehabilitation. It often simply requires that you take a number of classes. It could be parenting classes if you’re in parental diversion, it could be mental health classes, not residential treatment. We’re talking just some classes that you have to go to, usually about 15 over the course of a year or two. Those were designed for low-level offenders; those were not designed for violent offenders. If you want to address the root causes of their crimes, violent offenders oftentimes need something much more demanding. They need residential drug treatment programs. They need residential mental health treatment programs. Those are not covered under the diversion statutes that Chesa is abusing.

We have cases of armed carjackings sent to diversion, violent assaults sent to diversion, which again just requires somebody to undergo classes. What he has said is misleading, which is this notion that the charge is still hanging over your head and a year or two later we can proceed if you fail out.

“Everything about the way the D.A.’s office functions at this point is solely what is best for the person charged with the crime, or the person who’s been arrested. . . . What’s being lost is that voice of reason and of justice for our victims and for our potential victims.”

—BROOKE JENKINS

As a prosecutor, if you have not kept in touch with your victim and/or witnesses for over a year, it is not that simple to just magically snap your fingers and make that case two years later fall into place. It’s nearly impossible.

What used to happen under George Gascón is that we would require—in order for somebody to go to a true rehabilitation program through our collaborative court system—that they’d have to take a plea at the outset. They’d have to admit guilt, take a plea to a charge that was agreed upon by the parties, then they could proceed into the program; and should they fail out, there was already a mechanism of accountability there in place. We didn’t have to worry about compiling a case two years later.

But now that’s not happening. No longer does Chesa Boudin require anybody to take a plea. The benefit of their completion of the program is that we would then withdraw the plea to a lower charge or sometimes get a dismissal. But you had to complete the program first. Now, there’s no plea that’s allowing us as prosecutors to have that safety net. BAZELON: I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the full diversion program in all of the different tools that are available to prosecutors. There are other diversion that requires that you plead guilty first. There’s situations where you plead guilty, you complete a program and then the charge can be dismissed, there are situations where you plead guilty and that plea sticks and you are stuck with a felony conviction, which is very problematic. CAEN: Chesa Boudin ran on a platform of using more diversion, of being a progressive district attorney. To what degree is what he’s doing a deviation from what you feel like voters were promised? JENKINS: He never explained to voters what he was going to actually do to achieve these end goals, so I don’t truly believe that people understood what that was going to look like. Everybody thinks diversion—because Chesa says this—is this onerous process. Diversion is separate from our collaborative courts, which are our mental health court, our drug court, young adult court.

We have specialized courts that are designed to get at the root cause of crime, that have an oversight process with a particular judge and oftentimes require residential treatment. That is not diversion. And so people, when they hear it, it sounds fabulous. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside to say, “Yes, I support diversion. I support not incarcerating Black and brown people, of course.” But no one asked him to explain what that was going to look like, because you couldn’t have paid anybody to think that meant we are not going to lock up anyone, right? It doesn’t matter. Our rate of Asian hate crime can shoot through the roof by 567 percent, but that person will get diversion. They will be out of custody, taking classes. Nobody envisioned that it was going to look that way. And so that’s where you’ve seen this pushback. CAEN: I do want to come back to the issue of race in this recall. The idea that this is white people freaking out about crime, basically, that maybe Chesa Boudin is the only person looking out for minority folks in the criminal justice system. To what degree do you feel like the recall itself is sort of race-based. BAZELON: The recall has been telling [voters] that Chesa Boudin doesn’t care about them, only cares about defendants, is secretly a public defender, and that is 100 percent false. He cares deeply about crime and deeply about public safety. Trying to say that he somehow hoodwinked the voters by not fully explaining his position is belied by the fact that this was an incredibly hard-fought four-way race.

Chesa’s policies were set forth in granular detail and gone over, raked over the coals at every single debate. The voters, when they went to the polls, were extremely well educated. They got the person that they wanted. They got the person who was going to be reform-minded.

Issues of race have been used to divide all of us in a way that’s extremely unfortunate. And I think the hate crimes against AsianAmericans is one of those. He has filed hate crimes in many of those cases. Others have been completely distorted in the media. I just heard him having to correct Scott Shafer on KQED about one of those very cases. And is it racist or race-baiting? I don’t think it’s about that. I think it’s about going to people’s worst gut visceral instincts and preying upon their fears to sell them something that isn’t true. JENKINS: I’ve been left for the last two years to wonder, what about the victims who are Black? What about the victims who are Latino? What about the victims that are Asian? I see Jason Young here, father of sixyear-old Jace Young, who was gunned down on the 4th of July while doing fireworks outside. I see my husband sitting here, whose 18-year-old cousin was gunned down on the street just walking to go meet a girl the day after Jace was killed. Who is their voice?

I’ve talked to countless mothers and fathers of murder victims in this city who say “We don’t have a voice in the D.A.’s office anymore. What about us?” You want to talk about helping Black people? You want to talk about helping Latino people? What about the ones who are getting murdered in this city?

The D.A.’s office has an obligation, and it is to be an advocate for those victims in that courtroom. And that’s what’s been left

behind in this discussion. You want to only talk about defendants? No, no. That does a disservice to the role of the district attorney’s office. We are to also, and most especially, be a voice for those who do not have a voice in this system. We’ve been disadvantaged, you are absolutely right, when we are the ones in orange. But the D.A.’s office dang well better stand up for those who are in that courtroom audience chair as a victim.

And right now, Nothing is being done. You’re not helping any Black man or Latino man by saying, “Here’s your slap on the wrist.” We’re not dealing with the root causes of crime. We’re allowing them to go back out with no assistance, no training, in the same position that brought them in to us at 850 Bryant Street. And what’s happening? The crimes they go out and commit next are worse. And then people have less sympathy and rehabilitation is off the table.

So if we’re going to talk about race, let’s talk about it in its truest form. Who is actually being the most impacted by what’s going on in this city, and are they truly being helped by what he’s doing? BAZELON: It’s unfair and false to say that Chesa Boudin does not care about victims. Victims and the people who offend are often part of the same community. They are intimately intertwined and related to each other. I have done a great deal of work talking to victims in the course of the work that we do in the Racial Justice Clinic, and I’ve also studied it extensively. Not all victims want the same thing. Some victims want jail. Some victims want an apology. Some victims want services. What all victims want is to know that it won’t happen again.

What we had before Chesa Boudin took office were skyrocketing rates of recidivism and a revolving door of people going in and out of jail. The easiest thing to do is someone just to sit in jail for a few weeks and then go right back out. It is not true to say that the programs that have been put in place don’t have rehabilitative services, or that these treatment courts, behavioral courts, young adult court, those courts are up and running and thriving and actually more full than they used to be, because more people are going to get those services . . . rather than simply going to jail and going to prison.

Not all victims want a million years in prison. Some do. Not all victims are the final voice in what should happen. A prosecutor is there to represent the entire community. All of us here, everyone. It’s not simply about one side having a greater stake than the other. It’s about this very complicated task of doing justice. And doing justice requires balancing competing interests. It requires having complicated decisions and conversations. Inevitably, there are horrific crimes and tragedies, and there is also accountability. JENKINS: This is an adversarial system, and you have to have two sides in it. You have the public defender’s office and the defense bar who are solely tasked with representing the interests of defendants to the disregard of public safety, because that person needs a voice in that courtroom that is only looking out for them.

But we have to have a D.A.’s office who comes in and says, “We are the advocate for the people. We represent the interests of the victims.” Of course, we should always be seeking a just and proportional outcome for the defendant. Nobody is necessarily saying that means life in prison. Nobody is saying that victims determine outcomes; but they have a right to be heard. Legally, they have a right to be acknowledged and to be heard.

When there’s no true accountability, when there’s no justice and fairness, and you’re talking about six years later [after committing a murder], somebody’s getting out. What happens in communities like Hunters Point in the Bayview, in Sunnydale and the Mission is that what we call the OGs on the block, right? The old time gangsters. They say, “Well, look, young man who’s 16 or 17, you go do the shooting because guess what? You’ll be out by the time you’re 24 or 25.” There’s a ripple effect when you take a certain position unequivocally. There’s no balance. CAEN: Laura, do you want to respond to this issue of of the adversarial system and the sense that some people have that the public defender is the one looking out for the accused, and . . . what you need is a counterweight [to] really focus on the victim and keeping the community safe? BAZELON: The prosecutor is a servant of the law. He has a twofold obligation, which is that the guilty not escape nor the innocent suffer. He is supposed to do justice. This idea that prosecutors and defense attorneys are flip sides of the same coin isn’t true. Defense attorneys have a very specific job, which is, of course, to advocate within all reasonable and zealous bounds for the best interests of their client. Prosecutors have a much more complicated job because, as I said before, they represent everyone in the system, every single person, and they are meant to uphold and safeguard the Constitution, which is why they are called ministers of justice. And in that role, they have an obligation to hold people accountable in meaningful ways so that there isn’t recidivism, so that there isn’t spikes in crime. They have a duty to keep us safe.

We have heard a lot of stories. We could talk about various horrific things that have happened under this D.A., and I can turn around and tell you that they have happened under every single D.A., including the most tough-on-crime D.A.s in this state. Let’s take the mass shooting in Sacramento. It’s interesting to me that one of the alleged perpetrators, Smiley Martin, was let out of jail after, I think, a period of six years because of a plea bargain struck by that office under Anne Marie Schubert, who brands herself a tough-on-crime person and who is running for attorney general to the right of our current attorney general. But did anybody turn around after that mass shooting and talk about the underlying plea that was responsible for Smiley Martin being out on the street and then allegedly carrying out this mass shooting? No. And why is that? Because even as one of the proponents of this recall admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle, the D.A. does not control crime rates and the idea that there is a direct correlation, and that every horrific tragedy lies squarely at the feet of one person and could have been prevented if we had just elected someone else? It’s false.

The San Francisco Examiner made the point that if the case against Chesa Boudin was so strong, in their words, why, “was the recall relying on so many falsehoods?” We need to think about who is behind this recall. Billionaires; $5 million has been dumped into this race—$5 million. The major donor behind this recall is a man who donated seven figures to elect the Senate Republican majority, who got us the three justices that were rammed through to confirmation under President Trump. There is no separation between the funders of this recall and the money that they are dumping in and those policies and they are going to take us backward. They are dumping half a million dollars every week into advertisements that are demonstrably false. And you don’t have to believe me. You can just read what is reported debunking all of these lies. CAEN: Would you like to address the issue of the backers of the campaign? JENKINS: It’s conveniently left out that Brandon Shorenstein, from a well-known Democratic family who’s a well-known Democrat, is actually the largest donor to this recall. It’s conveniently left out that Chris Larson, who is one of Chesa’s largest donors, has a laundry list of Republicans that he’s donated to.

Again, this is not about politics. One thing

we know about San Francisco is that it’s about 90 percent, if not more, Democrat. It may vary in shades of blue, but this is a blue city and will always be a blue city. And crime affects everybody, right? That’s something that we cannot deny. We are not.

This is also one of the most educated, affluent areas of this country. We’re not all being bamboozled by one donor. We know that somebody else can do this job more competently and more effectively and can actually be that minister of justice in San Francisco, because that’s what he’s failing at. And across the board if there’s anything that’s united San Francisco, it’s this recall. It has united what at some times is a polarized city because of those shades of blue. But across the color span, we have united. CAEN: One of the audience questions is, “Why can’t we get accurate and transparent data about the performance of the D.A.’s office? We should talk about some statistics when it comes to things like diversion and dismissals and conviction rates and the like.” So I want to give our experts here the opportunity to talk about some some of the statistics. Hopefully we can try to flesh them out if they’re confusing. But in addition to diversion, there are dismissal rates, that I saw numbers that they were higher than than during Gascón’s administration. JENKINS: Yes. Those were actually figures that Chesa provided to the San Francisco Chronicle, I believe, that said that his diversion rate had gone up 20 percent, conviction rate down 20 percent. That’s a little bit less of the issue here. Much of it is he again touts this prosecution rate, which is a very vague term, but never releases the data about what actually those cases are resolving for.

So people have said, “Look, we can listen to you tell us how many cases you’ve charged, but what are the outcomes of these cases?” That’s despite a number of public records requests. He’s refused in a lot of instances to turn over that information, or there’s been significant delays. I don’t know how many people saw the [San Francisco] Standard put out an article this afternoon; that reporter was able to get data from the court management system, she was able to compile data on narcotics cases; and what her article demonstrated from compiling that data—not from Chesa’s office but from the court management system—was that in the year of 2021, 80 percent of the narcotics cases were resolved for an accessory after the fact. Only three cases were resolved for actual drug sales charges. None of those cases involved the sale of fentanyl. None of the cases where possession with intent to sell fentanyl, which was charged, resulted in anyone having to plea to actually selling fentanyl. That’s the dilemma with the transparency, is most of the time you’re relying upon the D.A.’s office to provide that data. This just so happened [to be] a situation where this reporter was able to get the data from a neutral place, which was the Superior Court. BAZELON: This is the most transparent D.A.’s office in San Francisco history. You can go to the website and look at the statistics for yourself. This D.A. posts them. The idea that cases settling out for an accessory after the fact is somehow letting people off the hook is false. They have the exact same consequences as someone pleading to the actual drug dealing.

The law requires the D.A. to take into account immigration consequences. This isn’t Chesa Boudin, this is the law of the state of California. It requires the top elected official to take into account someone’s immigration status when resolving a case. And that is a plea. That means that some of these folks are not going to be deported back to Honduras, where they will be killed.

If you think that it’s appropriate to have people plead to a charge that’s going to give them the same accountability, but get them deported so they can go to a country where harm is going to come to them, then by all means. But that is not what [accessory after the fact charges] are. They are not a dodge. This idea that people aren’t getting convicted of narcotics felonies is not true. The article starts out with this very showy claim, and then if you keep reading, it tells you the truth, which is that there are hundreds of felony convictions, often for other drug charges and often for 32s. And in fact, Miss Jenkins herself has pled cases to 32s. This is not a Chesa Boudin situation, this long predates him, and it is because in this city we are required to take other considerations into account, including the immigration of status of some of these people who are being trafficked here, being trafficked here and forced to sell drugs. So let’s just take a step back, because it is far more complicated than the clickbait headline and the first paragraph of the article. JENKINS: The way that it worked before was that when it was someone’s first offense that they were caught selling drugs, that was what was afforded to them a 32 felony. At the point at which they were released and they come back with another case, a third case, a fourth case, a fifth case, that’s off the table. Because if you’re not going to take responsibility for your status, then you cannot ask the D.A.’s office to continue to overlook your conduct.

The second issue was that there was a particular problem with public defenders only seeking that plea for Latino defendants, but accepting more serious charges in large part for Black defendants. And that was something that I took great issue with because I wanted to see fairness across the board.

What didn’t happen under George Gascón’s administration was us giving 32 misdemeanors—that didn’t happen. And if it did, it was far and few between. And the data supported that. But what is happening now is you’re seeing people with five cases out of custody and getting a 32. CAEN: Brooke, are you supporting this recall because you want to run for D.A.? JENKINS: This is not about any intent to run. This is about me taking an oath and pledging my career to being a voice for the people and for the victims. And I have felt that it is necessary that victims continue to have a voice, whether or not Chesa is going to choose to be that voice for them. BAZELON: So does that mean that if the recall is successful and London Breed asked you to be the interim [D.A.], you would say no or you would not run in November? JENKINS: It doesn’t mean anything. I can’t speak to what London Breed is going to do. I don’t know her. What I will say is that I’m a career prosecutor. I’ve dedicated the last seven years of my life to doing this job. I hope to return to do it. If somebody deems me capable of doing it in another capacity than what I was doing it before, I’d be honored to consider that. But right now, and for the last seven years, I have been completely content being in the courtroom. BAZELON: I think it is significant that you wouldn’t rule out either thing, and that the only Democratic elected official who has come out in support of the recall is a supervisor [District 2’s Catherine Stefani], who also wants Chesa Boudin’s job. JENKINS: We also have two other D.A.s who have spoken out. So perhaps they all want to be the D.A. as well. But for some reason, I’m the only one that gets attacked with that statement.