WHY SAN FRANCISCO IS NEARLY THE MOST CRIME-RIDDEN CITY IN THE US:

San Francisco’s unacceptable crime track record is implicitly a choice that the city has made, which is all the more surprising when the city spends about $14,000 per San Franciscan per year on government services, about 40 percent higher than New York city’s profligate budget.

One important deficiency is too small of a police force. New York’s police force per resident is nearly twice that of San Francisco, and New York is a much safer city. Another important deficiency is a less-than-productive relationship between the police and the city’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, an extremely progressive prosecutor, who some consider to still have the mindset of his days as an SF public defender. Boudin is notable in that he is the child of a mom and dad convicted for first-degree murder in the killing of two police officers during the robbery of a Brinks truck about 40 years ago.

This didn’t get Boudin and the police off to the best start, and their relationship has gone further south, with Boudin criticizing police for not clearing more crimes. Boudin himself has been widely criticized for failing to prosecute obvious cases, including a person who had been arrested multiple times over the previous year, who had a history of felony convictions, and who ultimately killed two women while driving a stolen car after drinking and using methamphetamine.

Boudin chose not to prosecute, and forwarded the case to the parole department. The charges? Two counts of voluntary manslaughter, possession of a stolen vehicle, leaving the scene of an accident, burglary, driving while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, driving while addicted to drugs, possessing a gun and a large-capacity ammunition magazine, and violating the terms of parole. He had also been arrested just prior to the crash on charges including possession of methamphetamine and car theft.

Boudin defended his decision by indicating that the parole department would have a much better chance at stopping the cycle of crime for these types of individuals: “We evaluated the facts, the strength of the case and the charges, and decided it was more likely that he would be held accountable through parole.”

But even after the killing of the two women, Boudin did not indicate that he made a mistake in not prosecuting the driver. Rather he focused on changing the parole system to ensure that criminals received the “supervision and structure that are needed.” Really? I wonder how this made the families of the two victims killed feel.

Perhaps that explains this headline: Enough signatures verified to vote on recall of SF DA Chesa Boudin, election officials say.

San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.