Embattled DA Brooke Jenkins fails to prosecute drugged up, window-smashing vagrants
*Not satire
Interim DA Brooke Jenkins has been very busy enforcing the law and holding criminals accountable, unlike her predecessor Chesa Boudin. At least according to her Twitter feed.
“Cash bail unfairly penalizes those with less financial means & disproportionately affects defendants of color. Our new policy holds offenders accountable & protects victims & public safety, but will not perpetuate further injustice or inequities.'“
And
“San Francisco has to help itself to some degree..If you’re a Honduran drug distributor & you (know) you'll be out in one or two hours at the most, there's not a lot of consequence, right?”
“This is why on day one, I changed course to help save lives.”
First off, nice job with the racial profiling. Do white dealers get a pass?
Anyway, day 1 was July 8th, when she was sworn in. The first thing she did was fire a bunch of people. But presumably, on Day 2, she began to enforce her public safety agenda by holding dealers and street criminals accountable. It might seem unfair to expect instant results, but, paired with Mayor London Breed’s crack down on the Tenderloin, it seems like her law-and-order approach should have yielded some kind of visible successes.
It doesn’t take that long to arrest somebody and make your case to a judge that they present a danger to the community and should be remanded until they take a plea deal or choose to go to trial. It’s just common sense. Right?
Actually, things are so bad apparently that a group of merchants in the Castro have threatened to stop paying their taxes in an act of civil disobedience. Apparently—shockingly!—the people rousted from the Tenderloin by police just went to the neighboring Castro.
For years, business owners in San Francisco’s Castro district have complained to city officials that homeless people struggling with mental illness and drug addiction have wreaked havoc on the neighborhood. Now, merchants say the situation has gotten so bad that they’re threatening to possibly stop paying city taxes and fees.
The Castro Merchants Association sent a letter to city officials on Aug. 8, urging them to “take action” because the neighborhood is “struggling.” In the letter, they said people living on the streets “regularly experience psychotic episodes” and have vandalized storefronts and harassed business owners, employees, residents and tourists.
“They need shelter and/or services and they need them immediately,” the merchants said. “Our community is struggling to recover from lost business revenue, from burglaries and never-ending vandalism/graffiti (often committed by unhoused persons) and we implore you to take action.”
Why hasn’t the SFPD arrested these people engaging in violent, threatening behavior? Why haven’t they been detained for property destruction? Is it because people aren’t reporting crimes because they know DA Brooke Jenkin’s office is just a revolving door? Or are the police engaging in a slowdown because they don’t have faith in Brooke Jenkins?
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