PHOTO BY SFGOV.TV / WIKIPEDIA
MELISSA CAEN: San Francisco has long been on the forefront of the whole idea of a recall. We were one of the first cities in the nation to actually implement it. In 1907, voters in San Francisco added the option to our charter just a few months after our mayor was found guilty of bribery and embezzlement. So you can see maybe what they were thinking about when they put that in our city charter. One of the district attorneys who worked on the case was a young man named Hiram Johnson, who went on to become the governor of California, where he continued
On my right is a professor of law and the director of criminal juvenile justice and racial justice clinical programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She’s been a vocal supporter of the D.A. and is going to be arguing against the proposition for the recall. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Professor Laura Bazelon. Ms. Jenkins will give her opening statement first, please. BROOKE JENKINS: I spent seven years of my career at the San Francisco district attorney’s office up until this past October of 2021. When I joined the D.A.’s office, that was in large part because I wanted to bring a diverse representation into the role of a prosecutor, which historically had not really been seen as a job for somebody that looked like me. I wanted to ensure that the person making the decisions about the fate of somebody’s life shared maybe a similar back grou nd, or ju st would view them as a true person. I knew Chesa Boudin as a defense lawyer. He was the only one that reached out to me during his campaign and asked me to sit down with him and discuss my thoughts about how he should run the office, what advice I had about changes that needed to be made, and how he could build trust with the attorneys. I spent an hour at a coffee shop talking to Chesa about my thoughts. When Chesa won the election and took office, he promoted me to the homicide unit. At the point at which he began, never did I think we were headed down this road. Never did I intend to be somebody who was publicly opposing his work in the office. To the contrary, I wanted to support whoever won that race because this wasn’t about politics. This was about the office and even moreso about the city and our victims. But what I have seen over the last two years is a man who is unwilling to embrace his obligation as the district attorney. He has refused to take off his hat as a public defender whose primary obligation is to his client and put on the hat where your primary obligation is to public safety and to be an advocate for the victim while balancing the interests of justice for a defendant. That is our primary function as the district attorney’s office. We
WHY DID SAN FRANCISCO VOTERS RECALL THEIR D.A.?
AS SAN FRANCISCANS
decided whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin on June 7, we invited experts with opposing views to discuss the election. From the May 17, 2022, program “San Francisco Decides: The District Attorney Recall Election.” LARA BAZELON, Professor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San Francisco BROOKE JENKINS, Former Assistant District Attorney of San Francisco MELISSA CAEN, Attorney; Political Analyst—Moderator
to advocate for the recall mechanism. In 1911, California voters elected to add the recall to the state constitution. They also gave women the right to vote on the same basis as men. In San Francisco, women pretty quickly organized and got together the first recall of a judge who they regarded as being too soft on crime against women. Because judges are employed by the state and not local governments, it was actually the first ever exercise of the statewide recall mechanism right here in San Francisco. So we’ve always been at the center of all of this. A few decades later, there was a thwarted attempt to unseat another mayor. Then in 1983, there was another thwarted attempt to unseat then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Earlier this year, in 2022, . . . three members of the Board of Education were recalled. And then that brings us to tonight—Proposition H. Arguing in favor of the proposition that Chesa Boudin should be recalled is a former district attorney who worked in the office for seven years, two under District Attorney Boudin before she quit the office in October of 2021, citing that in her estimation, his actions have been making the city less safe. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brooke Jenkins.
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