After gruesome beheading, critics wonder if the tough-on-crime DA movement undermines public safety.
For the 100,000th time, a tough-on-crime district attorney has allowed violent crime to explode. Where's the recall?
“A California man was arrested for murder Thursday after he allegedly cut off a woman’s head with a sword, authorities said,” reports the New York Post.
What the Post doesn’t report is that the incident occurred in San Mateo, whose district attorney, Steven Wagstaffe, is so tough-on-crime he’s joined two other right-wing DAs to lobby Gov. Gavin Newsome to lift a moratorium on the death penalty.
“In San Francisco or Alameda, they’ve got so much murder, rape, and robbery, that they honestly don’t have the resources to pay attention to the quality-of-life crimes,” Wagstaffe said in a 2022 profile. “Here we do.”
How is that going?
Well, in 2018, Chinedu Valentine Okobi was detained for jaywalking—jaywalking!—and then tasered to death by police. Wagstaffe echoed police officers’ claim that they were trying to save Okobi from getting hit by a car. Great job team.
“You can see on it that the officers were beating Chinedu, tasing him. We can see that he’s on the ground … he’s shouting ‘What have I done?’ and he finally breaks loose and he starts to run and they catch him,” a lawyer for his family said.
Wagstaffe provided reporters with the *useful* information that Okobi “was 6ft 3in tall, and he weighed 330 pounds.” After an “investigation” he called the incident “tragic but not criminal” in March and declined to charge the officers.
Okobi’s family is suing the Sherriff’s department in federal court.
“My brother, Chinedu Okobi, was electrocuted to death,” Ebele Okobi wrote in a Facebook post. “District Attorney (Steve) Wagstaffe’s refusal to charge any of the officers, and Sheriff (Carlos) Bolanos’ refusal to properly investigate the killing or to impose any sanctions at all, shock the conscience.”
Think about how unimaginable it would be to lose your child in this way," Ebele said, as her mother sobbed, "and not only to lose your child but to be told that the death of your child doesn't matter."
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