Conservative District Attorney slams progressive DAs—even as her own city drowns in crime

Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert pledges to stop the "chaos" in California. What about her own city?

In this series we’re tracking the safety records of “tough-on-crime” DAs.

District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert is running as the “tough-on-crime” candidate in California’s attorney general race. Schubert has served as Sacramento’s DA since 2015. Yet, her campaign seems more concerned with what’s going on in San Francisco and Los Angeles than her own city.

In a campaign ad, she blasts San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin and George Gascon in Los Angeles. “You have a district attorney who is not using our guns laws to protect the public and hold violent criminals accountable,” she somberly says over footage of shoplifters in San Francisco. “That Is Chaos,” she concludes.

Los Angeles, too, is awash in chaos, according to Schubert. In March the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA) released footage that showed a prisoner cheering George Gascon’s win. “When convicted murderers are celebrating in their jail cells that they’re going get out of prison on this policies? That Is Chaos.” Chaos is one guy prison drinking a celebratory glass with his cellmate?

The message seems to be resonating. The 57-year-old former Republican raised 1 million dollars two months after announcing her campaign, much of it from law enforcement groups as well as real estate interests. Her popularity with law enforcement is not new. She was the top third recipient of law enforcement dollars in the country when she successfully ran for Sacramento DA in 2014.

It’s no surprise she’s law enforcement’s candidate. According to the Sacramento Bee, Schubert refused to pursue charges in 33 police shootings between 2014 and 2019. She declined to press charges in the fatal shooting of 22 year old Stephon Clark by police, concluding that officers’ justifiably thought he had a gun. It was his cell phone. Schubert received campaign contributions from police unions days after Clark’s death.

In her announcement speech on April 26, 2021, she cited Nelson Mandela as an inspiration.

“In the words of Nelson Mandela,” Schubert said. “Safety and security just don’t happen. They are the result of a collective consensus and a public investment. We owe our children. The most vulnerable citizens in our society a life free of violence and fear.” She knocked Bonta for compromising public safety. “Here is the truth. California’s criminal justice system is in chaos.”

So, how’s everything going in Sacramento, where Schubert has been top cop since 2015?

“I was in my room just relaxing watching TV and things, and all I heard was a ‘pow!’” Danny Partridge told KTXL last November. That “pow” was a gun shot that killed a 7-year-old girl.

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Last October, journalist Katy Grimes was awakened by gun shots at 2:25 am, followed by automatic gunfire. The day before, Grimes had published an article in the California Globe about the spike in violent crime in Sacramento. Just the previous Friday, there had been, “multiple shootings, multiple stabbings, two machete attacks and a bank robbery,” in Sacramento she wrote. “That is not all of it either. But it was enough to get our attention,” she wrote. The Globe looked at police data and found in the span of one week that fall there were two homicides, seven shooting investigations, six gun arrests. The number of shooting victims increased by 333.33 percent between March 2020 to 2021. By November 2021, there’d been 39 homicides in Sacramento, compared to 23 the year before.

In San Francisco, meanwhile, property crimes dropped in 2020 while violent crimes remained virtually the same, with a slight drop in 2020.

Criminal justice experts caution that it’s too early to know why some crimes rose during the pandemic. So let’s take a look at Sacramento’s crime rates before the pandemic. In 2015, the year Schubert was sworn into office, crime jumped from 2,968 to 3,611, a 22% increase, according to FBI data. After that year, crime rates slowly declined, although not to the levels in 2014 and 2013. And of course, there was a jump in 2020 as there was across the country.

In San Francisco, crime has fallen steadily since 2013. The sharpest drop occurred in 2020, Boudin’s first year in office. According to the San Francisco Police Department, major crimes dropped 23 percent in 2020. Yet Boudin now faces his second recall in June 2022, after the first failed to gather enough signatures. His statement of defense neatly outlined his philosophy: "The old approaches did not make us safer; they ignored root causes of crime and perpetuated mass incarceration."

In her campaign announcement, Schubert lamented the decline of a once great city.

“Major conventions are pulling out of San Francisco because their executives are worried that their guests’ safety is at risk,” she added. “Tourists think it’s too dangerous to visit that beautiful city. ... It is true and it is tragic that San Francisco is suffering.”

If only Schubert’s brand of policing had made Sacramento a safer alternative.