The San Francisco district attorney who replaced ousted woke DA Chesa Boudin revoked dozens of plea deals given by Boudin.
In a news release Wednesday, San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins announced she had revoked more than 30 plea bargains that Boudin, her far-left predecessor, had offered to drug offenders during his administration. The reversals were part of a broader policy unveiled by Jenkins, which would prohibit drug dealers arrested with more than five grams of drugs from being referred to the city’s so-called “community justice court.” It would also impose enhanced charges for dealers arrested within 1,000 feet of a school, and potentially seek pre-trial detention for fentanyl dealers, “in extreme cases.”
“Since 2020, nearly 1,500 people have died of drug overdose in part because dealers have been allowed to operate with impunity,” Jenkins said in the news release. “The lethality of fentanyl presents a different challenge, and we must immediately change course, so we can save lives and hold people accountable for the havoc they are wreaking in our communities like the Tenderloin and South of Market. Going forward defendants holding lethal doses of fentanyl will face felony charges.”
In one case in which a plea deal was revoked, described by Jenkins in the release, a fentanyl dealer in the city’s Tenderloin district was arrested with more than 100 grams of fentanyl. That drug dealer already had six open cases for dealing fentanyl in the Tenderloin. The dealer was previously referred to the community justice court at least five times by Boudin’s administration, despite not complying with the court’s mandated requirements and violating the terms of a stay away order from the Tenderloin district, each time he was arrested. That dealer was offered a single misdemeanor charge in order to close all six outstanding cases.
The release also pointed out Boudin’s failure to prosecute drug crimes during his tenure.
A review of outstanding drug cases published by the DA’s office found that as of July 2022, there are 157 cases involving narcotics sales currently in collaborative courts like the San Francisco community justice court; more than half of those cases, 88 in total, involve fentanyl, and 40 defendants in those cases have multiple open drug cases. On top of that, data from the San Francisco Superior Court, cited in the release, showed that Boudin’s administration did not obtain a single conviction for dealing fentanyl in the entire year 2021.
Even far-left Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon’s office obtained convictions in 90 drug cases in 2021, Jenkins’s office reported.
The new policy is Jenkins’ latest move to reverse course from Boudin’s administration. Shortly after assuming office in July, Jenkins fired 15 of Boudin’s staffers, including Boudin’s chief of staff, managing attorney, assistant chief of general crimes, communications director and policy advisor, director of data, analytics, and research, and managing attorney of the independent investigations bureau.
“Today, I made difficult but important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms,” Jenkins said in a statement to SFGATE at the time.
Boudin was overwhelmingly recalled in June. Fully 60% of San Francisco residents voted to recall the far-left DA, who had received support from left-wing billionaire George Soros.