There are at least 7 lies in this Washington Post editorial on criminal justice and Boudin
"Democracy dies in darkness," my ass.
Everyone can go home, the adults in the room have concluded that criminal justice reform has gone too far.
“Prestige” places, like the Atlantic, string along freelancers by asking for pitch after pitch, all requiring huge amounts of reporting, then go, “Hmmm, but what’s really new here?” before ghosting (this happened to me twice with two different editors there). Then you see, like, some salaried, bloated old pundit pen the 300th article about cancel culture or MeToo having gone too far, and you’re like, wow, really committed to only the most original stuff!
The latest thing that’s “gone too far” is criminal justice reform, as evidenced by the recall of a single DA who had a target on his back before he even took office. To no avail, criminal justice reporters keep reminding prestige pundits and prestige-r publications that, once all of the election results came in, it was obvious that progressives, especially those focused on reforms of the criminal system, largely did great in California.
I don’t expect slimeball Jonathan Chait to admit he was wrong. Nellie Bowles lives in her own reality, where she’s put on the goggles from They Live, but instead of seeing lizard people she sees zombies staggering around defiling “her” beautiful city.
But you’d think a sober editorial written by people aren’t just on Twitter 24/7 would be based on …. truth?
There are at least 7 lies that I count in the Washington Post post-mortem of the recall.
Mr. Boudin failed to address the fentanyl trade in his city, even as addiction deaths surged and people died on sidewalks.
OK, and who’s to blame for the nationwide overdose deaths topping 100,000 during the pandemic? This mischaracterization is based on a hit job from the conservative San Francisco Standard that claimed in the headline he’d only prosecuted 3 people for dealing fentanyl, before admitting in the body of the story that he’d charged people dealing fentanyl with different charges than “dealing fentanyl.” But in our Idiocracy media culture, the headline’s point stuck.
Businesses closed rather than face petty crime, incentivized by the fact that the city nearly stopped arresting people for offenses such as shoplifting.
No, they didn’t. Walgreens used shoplifting as a convenient excuse to shut down locations, when really, there were so many in the city different branches were cannibalizing profits and also more people than ever started shopping online during the pandemic.
Mr. Boudin oversaw an exodus of prosecutors from his office, some of whom left because they say they were pressured to relax charges on major crimes.
Link to Nellie Bowels idiotic grave-dancing in the Atlantic, enuf said. Prosecutorial turnover is normal and while his numbers were more than average, why is the onus on the DA, elected on a reform agenda, to mollify his prosecutors when their power is restricted?
Mr. Boudin argues that San Francisco police, not his district attorney’s office, are the real culprits, failing to make arrests. Yet, responded San Francisco writer Nellie Bowles in a Wednesday article in the Atlantic, “the D.A. said from the beginning that he would not prioritize the prosecution of lower-level offenses. Police officers generally don’t arrest people they know the D.A. won’t charge.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Substance to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.