Safety In Numbers

Public safety and social justice are District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’s priorities—and she needs our help to clean up the city.

Written by PAM MCELROY

Pam McElroy: First, congratulations on winning the election! How have your priorities changed since you were appointed by Mayor Breed to going into your first term?

DA Jenkins: Thank you! One of the first things I had to do after being appointed was rebuild this office. If the office is not functioning at its highest level, we cannot improve public safety.

When I walked back into this office, it was a shell of itself. I had been a prosecutor here for more than seven years prior to that brief resignation, before being appointed, and most of our senior attorneys had gone. We’d lost sixty-plus attorneys. We’d lost half of our advocates in the Victims Services Unit. Our management staff had only one experienced prosecutor left.

I had to make sure the people managing this office, handling cases, and working with victims, had the experience to handle the cases correctly. That was number one. I brought in my own executive team—some were people I promoted from within—but mainly I brought back people who had previously worked in this office, most of them having left during the Chesa Boudin era.

I hired experienced attorneys. When you’re talking about homicide, sexual assault, domestic violence—those units must have experienced prosecutors who know what it’s like to work with victims; victims reluctant to participate in the system. They have to know how to introduce complex evidence in court, how to prove our cases to a jury.

Another thing we had to fix was the fact that we were a house divided. It was people Chesa had hired versus people I had hired. We can’t work like that; we have to work as one team. People have to feel safe and comfortable.

We’ve done a lot to make sure that everyone who is here, is here. That they understand we’re on the same team, working toward the same mission, which is promoting public safety in this city, advocating for victims, and making sure our cases are handled fairly and appropriately.

Now, we’re pretty much there; things have stabilized inside.

McElroy: And how have your priorities shifted since then?

DA Jenkins: My next priority was to work on drug dealing. I see it as an ecosystem. Drug dealing fuels addiction; addiction begets theft crimes; it exacerbates mental health issues in those already struggling; it breeds violence. I knew that if we started to deal with that issue, it would assist in decreasing some of the collateral consequences. We had to decide how we were going to responsibly handle drug dealing cases.

We can’t effectively decriminalize drug dealing—which is what had happened under the previous administration. I had to set guidelines. We had to start seeking detention in cases with egregious sellers. We began admonishing sellers who were found to have sold fentanyl to someone who died that they could be charged with murder. We did a number of things to make sure these cases moved through the system more responsibly.

And so, we started working more closely with the police. We’ve been along this path for the last eight months, talking about what policing of drug dealing looks like, what we need to prove cases. We’re investing in a partnership with the Public Defender’s Office, which hasn’t happened in a long time.

The next focus for me was retail theft crime. What’s clear to me—and I think most people—is that theft is completely out of control. Nobody can go into a store anymore and just get detergent, or toothpaste, or deodorant, because it is locked behind glass.

It’s exhausting for us as residents and consumers. It’s exhausting for store employees who can’t just do their job the normal way. They’re tired of having to chase people out of the store who are stealing, being assaulted by people when they try to stop them. And these companies cannot withstand the amount of theft that’s happening—both big-box retailers and our small businesses.

It is our job to protect our economy, to protect these massive employers, to protect San Francisco residents, and to keep products available in our city. Otherwise, the small businesses will close, and retailers will leave our city.

I’ve been working with retailers directly on what we can do for them, while also communicating what we need them to do for us. We need store associates to testify. Over the years, I’ve experienced not being able to contact them, or people not being able to take a day off to testify. We are working with retailers to improve those situations and ensure we have the tools necessary to prosecute. We need to be at the table, looking at what policing looks like to assist in preventing these thefts and catching the people who commit them.

We’ve got more robberies than anyone should ever see in this city, and a lot of violent street crime, such as the assaults against the Asian community that were occurring when I took over. We had to restructure our office so that these serious cases get the attention they need.

I’ve already mentioned the importance of having adequate, experienced staff. The General Felonies Unit handled every type of felony crime, with the exception of murder, sexual assault, and domestic violence. That’s a lot of crimes—drug dealing, gun possession, assault, attempted murder, burglary, robbery, you name it. It spans a massive spectrum, and most of those lawyers have 150 cases. I had over 150 of those cases when I was in that unit. It is impossible for people who lack significant experience to give all those cases the attention that they require.

To fix this, I established a Vulnerable Victims unit, which took over assaults and violent crimes against the elderly, hate crimes, and non-family-related assaults. I staffed this unit with attorneys experienced working with victims and people who might be struggling to understand the system, who might be from another country and monolingual.

The Vulnerable Victims unit has made huge strides, holding the hands of these victims and ushering them through the process. We no longer have issues with people saying they were not informed of court dates or they didn’t receive the support they needed.

I also established a Major Crimes unit, which focuses on serious robbery cases and attempted murders. We now have three experienced attorneys handling these violent crimes, where before, they would have been housed with more junior attorneys in the General Felonies Unit.

Pam McElroy: Can you expand on that? How are you planning on working with the community to provide victim services and ensure accountability?

DA Jenkins: I hired a new Chief of Victim Services, Monifa Willis. She’s a nurse practitioner in psychiatry who has worked in juvenile mental health and trauma-informed care throughout her twenty-plus-year career.

We needed somebody who knows what to do for people who have experienced significant trauma. I wanted someone who could help us work within our juvenile system, to be more understanding of the mental health of our juvenile population. To help us be more informed in how we deal with our kids. She is making tremendous strides in training that unit. She’s hiring to ensure culturally competent care. We are doing far more community outreach, not just waiting for a victim to come to us but going to them in the community.

Pam McElroy: What is your plan for open-air drug use and open-air drug dealing?

DA Jenkins: I have a six-year-old and a three-year-old, and I don’t want them growing up in a city where that is portrayed as something normal. I can’t, as a mother, tell my children to stay away from drugs but have everything else appear as though that is normal behavior that people just engage in, openly. I took this issue personally.

I also understood that people were ready for law enforcement to step up. The police had decided it was time to start citing individuals who were publicly using drugs. I sat down with the police to talk about their approach. Then we mapped out what we were going to do on the prosecution side.

We decided we would give a warning and not criminalize after a first citation. But what is fair? What is the best way to deal with somebody who’s struggling with addiction and can’t necessarily control that impulse? We came to a threshold of five citations, after which, we would pull that person into the criminal justice system.

I thought I would receive a lot of backlash, but the opposite happened. Even in the most progressive circles, people thought that threshold was too high. So, we tracked the data for a few months, knowing we might have to course correct. When it came time to analyze the data, we realized five citations was too many and reduced the number to three citations. A complaint is filed with all three citations noted, and the offender is sent to treatment court.

When more than thirty people had been cited three times, we went back to the table with the police. I wanted them to understand that even if we didn’t prosecute on the first or second citation, that didn’t mean we didn’t value the policework. We do value the policework, but this is how we’re combatting the problem.

Pam McElroy: How do you balance that need for social justice and working with police reform while, at the same time, keeping residents safe?

DA Jenkins: This is a very complex job. There’s nothing simple about it. I expect the police to do their jobs well and fairly. I’ve gone around to the stations and have said, ‘The public wants you to do your job. I want you to do your job. But the expectation is that you do it correctly.’

They understand that when they step outside of those bounds, it’s my job to hold them accountable—and I think everyone respects that line. I don’t want cases involving bad police work, unethical police work. Those cases will be rejected from this office. And if the police behavior is criminal, we’ll address it.

It requires dialogue. My staff knows that when they read a police report, they should assess whether the person was treated fairly. Was there a proper search under the 4th Amendment, for example. If not, we shouldn’t proceed on that case.

With respect to social justice, I have tried, throughout my career, to be very balanced in terms of what justice looks like. Justice doesn’t look like one thing in all our cases, but most people we deal with need help in changing the trajectory of their lives.