The murder case that shows the shocking cynicism of Chesa Boudin's successor Brooke Jenkins—and our gullible media.
During the recall campaign against Chesa Boudin, the 3,000 national stories that collectively asked if the progressive DA had “gone too far” often referenced Brooke Jenkins, a prosecutor that quit during Boudin’s tenure.
The New York Times:
Brooke Jenkins, a former prosecutor, left the office to join the recall effort in part, she says, because she clashed with Mr. Boudin about how to prosecute a murder case.
“I don’t believe Chesa is living up to his obligation as the district attorney,” Ms. Jenkins said. “He of course ran on a platform of reform, and reform is necessary in the criminal justice system. But you have to be able to balance that with your primary obligation of maintaining public safety.”
The Atlantic:
Boudin’s struck me as an awkward position to take, in some way. There’s plenty of big money in the recall race, to be sure, and some of that money is Republican. But a large share of San Franciscans have expressed their dissatisfaction with the district attorney and their concerns about public safety. Many are liberals, and a lot of them are progressives. Indeed, perhaps the most compelling voice challenging Boudin is not Greenberg, who used to be a registered Republican (he’s an independent now, he told me); it is Brooke Jenkins, a progressive prosecutor herself.
(Actually Open Secrets published a report today confirming the recall would never have happened without funding from millionaire and billionaire tycoons).
New York Times again, today, in a fluff QA with the newly appointed DA Brooke Jenkins, that, like most coverage, describes her as a “progressive prosecutor.”
When it came to district attorney, [London Breed] said she chose Jenkins because of her experience as a prosecutor (Boudin had worked a public defender) and her determination to hold perpetrators accountable while sticking to progressive reforms. “We can and should have both in a city like San Francisco,” Breed said on Thursday.
What all these stories have in common is they describe Jenkins as a progressive prosecutor because she says so, and offer exactly zero details about the “murder case” Jenkins and Boudin appear to have sparred over. Instead, they follow up the vague reference with her equally vague critique that that he failed to maintain public safety.
Juxtaposed next to “murder case” the natural presumption is that Boudin let a murderer go free with a slap on the wrist, thereby risking that this murderer would murder again as well as inspire future murderers.
The real story is so far away from that scenario one is awestruck at Jenkins’ cynicism and the media’s gullible idiocy. It also reveals that Jenkins is far from a “progressive prosecutor.”
On April 12, 2020, police responded to a call to find a naked man splattered with blood, reports the Davis Vanguard. He told them his sister had put a spell on their mother. The mother, 56-year-old Beatriz Gudino, had been beaten to death with a baseball bat, mutilated with a drill, and set on fire. “What did I do to my f—— mom? Oh my god,” he reportedly said.
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