San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin recently made a video explaining his prosecution record by asking you to imagine going into a restaurant and ordering an omelet from a waiter by calling 911. The waiter heads back to the kitchen where the cook, who is a police officer, says, “I don’t think that customer is going to eat the whole omelet. I’m not going to give them an omelet.” If you are confused by Boudin’s analogy, don’t worry, we all are.
There definitely seems to be a disconnect between reality and Boudin’s claims of prosecuting cases and even more egregious, it appears he is misrepresenting the cases he is prosecuting.
Boudin’s office reports cases on the DataSF platform. There you will find San Francisco Police Department case #200 010 742 involving a suspect who was arrested for homicide (coded as a 187) on January 10, 2020. Boudin reports that he filed the case, which translates to “pursuing felony prosecution.” Per SanFranciscopolice.org’s Dashboard platform, there was only one homicide in San Francisco during that period, and local media described a homicide involving the shooting death of an unarmed person who was also the mother of two children.
Based on that single homicide within the first 15 days of January and newspaper accounts that match the facts, we can connect the dots — the incident Boudin claims he filed has to be the same case. But there is a serious conflict with the SFData entry stating that Boudin was prosecuting this homicide and a January 15 San Francisco Chronicle headline which reads, “SF district attorney declines to file murder charges in Tenderloin shooting of mother.”
In the article, Boudin’s spokesperson Alex Bastian said, “The people have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant did not act in lawful self-defense.”
Boudin’s lack of prosecution raises several issues:
- How can Boudin drop a murder case that was captured on video?
- Two weeks before, the alleged killer rode up on a scooter and sold narcotics to an undercover SFPD officer — so why was he allowed back on the streets?
- Because Boudin did not prosecute this homicide, sources tell me the alleged murderer is still selling narcotics on Larkin Street between Golden Gate Avenue and O’Farrell Street.
- Did Boudin prosecute this case as a misdemeanor instead of a homicide because a felony would have triggered deportation of the noncitizen defendant?
- Is Boudin lying about his prosecution performance on the SFData platform?
In a nutshell, Boudin’s manipulation of his prosecution prowess centers on telling the public that he is prosecuting felonies, but then charging the felons with misdemeanors under Section 32 of the California Penal Code. The SFPD command staff has to be aware of Boudin’s manipulation of Section 32. The question is, why isn’t SFPD command staff tracking the felony cases Boudin reduces to misdemeanors and calling him out for sabotaging the hard work of SFPD street cops who are making the arrests — and in the case of drug dealers, making those arrests over and over again. In case #200 010 742, a dealer who was set free apparently murdered a mother of two — and was set free yet again.
Mr. Boudin, here is a more accurate analogy: A customer walks into a restaurant to order dinner. The waiter (a policeman) tells the customer, “Be careful with this cook (Boudin) as he will exaggerate his cooking skills, serve you a single pea, and call it a full meal. The best thing you can do is flee the restaurant (San Francisco) until we can vote in someone who can actually cook.”
