A year after the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and 11 months into the tenure of his former-colleague-turned-bitter-opponent Brooke Jenkins as DA, reports of violent crime are up 5.5 percent across San Francisco.
From July 8, 2022, when Jenkins was sworn in as district attorney, until June 4 of this year, San Francisco police recorded 4,870 violent incidents. During the same period the year before, when Boudin was DA, police recorded 4,616 violent incidents.
The trend is largely driven by increases in robberies and assaults, which were higher in the past 11 months, by 12 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively, according to the San Francisco Police Department’s crime dashboard, which tracks reports of crime. The two categories make up the vast majority of violent incidents in the city.
Reported violent crimes, July 8 to June 4
6,000
+5.5%
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
’17-18
’21-22
’18-19
’19-20
’20-21
’22-23
Reported violent crimes
(July 8 to June 4)
6,000
+5.5%
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
’17-18
’21-22
’19-20
’22-23
’18-19
’20-21
Chart by Will Jarrett. Data from the San Francisco Police Department.
The homicide tally is basically flat: 52 in the first 11 months of Jenkins’ tenure, and 50 across the same period for Boudin. Reported rapes have decreased 9.8 percent, sex-based human trafficking has gone down by 56.5 percent, and “involuntary servitude” has gone from two incidents under Boudin to one under Jenkins.
The upward trend has held true more recently, too: Since the start of this year, violent crime is 5 percent higher than the same period last year, when Boudin was district attorney. That is also driven by a double-digit increase in robberies, up 16.1 percent.
While violent crimes are up, property crimes are marginally down: Police recorded 769 fewer property crime incidents in Jenkins’ first 11 months, compared to the same period under Boudin — a 1.8 percent decrease. Overall crime is also down.
The District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Reported property crimes, July 8 to June 4
50,000
-1.8%
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
’17-18
’18-19
’19-20
’20-21
’21-22
’22-23
Reported property crimes
(July 8 to June 4)
50,000
-1.8%
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
’18-19
’22-23
’17-18
’19-20
’20-21
’21-22
Chart by Will Jarrett. Data from the San Francisco Police Department.
Crime unrelated to DA, experts say
Experts cautioned, however, that crime rates cannot be laid at the feet of district attorneys, despite politicians’ rhetoric and voters’ beliefs.
“The causes of crime and the causes of changes in crime rates are complicated, multiple and often mysterious,” said Professor Robert Weisberg, the co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
DAs are “facing backwards” in regard to crime rates, according to Professor Jonathan Simon, a criminal law professor at Berkeley Law. Because DAs charge individuals only after crimes have been committed, the effects they can have on crime are to deter would-be criminals or lock up criminals likely to be repeat offenders, both of which are “theoretical” effects only.
“Criminologists are pretty skeptical of that,” said Simon. “If your claim is that you’re going to try to reduce crime by being tougher, you better hope you have a lot of luck, because it’s hard to change things meaningfully as a DA.”
Violent crime, in particular, is often “opportunistic and impulsive,” Weisberg said, and involves “gripes, insults, angry vengeance” where the prosecutorial conduct of the local DA is a far-flung concern for a criminal.
“It’s not like thugs who have a proclivity to beat people up are checking the daily reports out of the DA.”
‘We are at risk 24/7‘
That did not stop the current DA on the campaign trail, however: In the months after Jenkins publicly quit the District Attorney’s Office and as she was being paid some $115,000 by various nonprofits affiliated with the campaign, Jenkins explicitly blamed Boudin and his approach for San Francisco’s crime.
“Crime rate is directly linked to his failed policies,” she wrote in January, 2022, referring to looters in a string of highly publicized retail robberies in Union Square and the Mission, who received misdemeanor charges instead of felony ones.
Boudin’s recall was fueled, in part, by such viral shoplifting videos, highly publicized deadly crimes by individuals who had been released from prison, and anecdotes of an ungovernable crime wave, which were largely belied by the facts: Crime was, and remains, at historic lows in San Francisco.
But between October, 2021, and July, 2022, Jenkins gave interviews, spoke on panels, and repeatedly tweeted her belief that Boudin’s policies resulted in lost lives, worsening street conditions, small business closures, and “chaos.” She presented an outsized view of the DA’s power over crime rates and public safety, experts said, when she took aim at policies embraced by Boudin, like pretrial diversion and plea bargains, and said they drove lawlessness.
“We are at risk 24/7,” she wrote in March, 2022. That April, she wrote, “We cannot wait another two years while lives are lost, small businesses suffer, other businesses leave, [Asian and Pacific Islander] residents are attacked.”
Simon, for his part, said he was “pretty skeptical” that Boudin had a significant impact on crime, or that Jenkins would in her tenure. And Weisberg said that Boudin accepted the “limitations of what a DA can do in a very complicated system,” but Jenkins “acted as if that was baloney.”
“She’s got some explaining to do, and it will take some interesting rhetorical skill on her part,” he added. “Maybe she will say that it’s going to take her longer. Maybe she will say that this is Boudin’s legacy. But boy, that’s not gonna sell.”
Boudin staffers lament tough-on-crime rhetoric
Staffers leading the anti-recall campaign lamented the dominance of simplistic crime narratives, which they said precluded a more nuanced conversation on public safety.
“That was the argument that we made, that this is a distraction from what needed to be done to actually improve public safety and save lives,” said Julie Edwards, a spokesperson for Boudin during the recall campaign. “But San Franciscans were told that this was the silver-bullet solution to public safety, and that was a lie. It was a lie that wasted a lot of time and money.”
Rachel Marshall, Boudin’s former communications director and the current head of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College, added: “It was always a flawed premise that a new DA and reversing criminal justice reform would bring down crime, but voters were sold this false promise.”
Jenkins’ and the city’s policies have likely been toughest on drug crimes, but it is unclear that has had an effect on the ground: This year, overdose deaths are on a steep upward trajectory, according to the city’s medical examiner, with at least 268 deaths so far in 2023. If the trend continues, this year would be the deadliest for overdoses since at least 2017.
City officials, including Jenkins, have promised to crack down on dealers and users alike: On Thursday, officials announced a plan to deploy 130 sheriff’s deputies to arrest people for public drug use. The city’s sheriff said “jail can be a place of compassion” for drug users.
That announcement was at least the third promise from Mayor London Breed’s administration this year to crack down on drug use by arresting dealers — and now users. Breed has made declarations going back as far as 2021, promising a law-enforcement response to the overdose epidemic, saying most recently at the end of May that “compassion is killing people.”
And, though voters may have punished Boudin for a perceived weakness on crime, it is not clear they would do the same to Jenkins, according to Simon from Berkeley Law.
“She has embraced a lot of the rhetoric of the tough-on-crime prosecutor, and that rhetoric is aligned with deep cultural biases,” he said. “People are much less likely to blame her for crime increases, because they think she’s doing the things that work.”
Additional reporting by Will Jarrett.
We could have the worst mayhem any city has ever known and they’d laugh at the suggestion of recalling Jenkins. If crime went through the roof and to the moon, they’d say “at least we have Jenkins”. Boudin was the red bull’s eye before he was even sworn in. Reminds me of another political leader’s following …. at least they keep it simple so other’s can see right through it.
I’ve called SFPD refuse to take a crime report numerous times. Once I pointed to the very visible fingerprints on the window from a burglary and the officer looked right at me and said those aren’t clear enough to run… The statistics are what they want them to be.
Go DA! Don’t listen to these naysayers. Mission local, would you not want the DA to charge the criminals! Why write these passive aggressive pieces, when 9 people just got shot around the corner on 24th?
In my opinion Boudin was recalled because he refused to push for jail time.
If Jenkins actually does the job of DA she will be okay.
It takes time for policies to take effect
I live in San Francisco. I was born here. I see the bad changes. I know damn well that petty crimes are not reported that much. Knowing the police will not show up make them not call at all. I no longer have a car. Cannot afford all the broken windows. I budgeted for two break ins a year. FOUR happened and I sold the car. I know there are many other San Francisco residents who feel as I do. They too are frustrated over the fact that dope fiends have taken over the city. The Supervisors who say we cannot arrest our way out of the situation. I say BS. Finally they are arresting them for public intoxication. Good !!!!! They are only arresting the worst cases. When they make a total spectacle of themselves by making a huge gross mess on the sidewalks. Yes WE CAN partially arrest our way out of Hell. Deport the dealers. I say this and I consider myself very liberal
Excellent article with the essential background and context, so that we can really understand what this is about, and what came before it.
Thanks to the writing and editing team. Great work.
What a waste of space of an article. Crime being up or down is irrelevant without comparing the trend to other cities.
Violent crime is trending down around the country.
So that is a double hit for Jenkins.
Maybe people are reporting crimes more now because the prior guy who previously ignored and downplayed them is gone, and they think they’ll be taken seriously under the new regime.
Joke’s on them!
So once again, the answer is just let San Francisco rampant drug addiction go unabated? The increase in violent crime has many diverse causes, but you can bet drug gangs fighting turf wars for control of distribution is one of them. And they’re not just local gangs. Not all addicts choose to shoplift to sell on the street or to fences for chump change. Some take a a much more lucrative approach: strong-arm and armed robbery.
Its very biased to present one year increased violent crime figures asserting evidence the DA has no effect on crime and that getting tough on crime doesn’t work. City Hall ignored the increasingly serious decline in police staffing for many years, and don’t think for a minute criminals of all kinds didn’t recognize that. The City has also permissably allowed the drug addict and homeless populations to increase over many years as well, and it is hard in many ways to distinguish those two from each other. Add in the courts’ long-standing lenient treatment of serial offenders here into the mix, and you
expect a the DA in office one year to correct all that? And to suggest that she hasn’t “because being tough on crime doesn’t work,” is political ideology, not serious reporting.
It will take years to build back the staffing level of the police department, with a Mayor and Board actively exploring solutions instead of continuing to ignore the problem as they have done for decades. And a succession of DAs over years who will actually prosecute violent criminals, and courts that will sentence them, not steer them to “diversion programs” that don’t work and that frees them to commit more crimes.
How would San Francisco know being tough on crime doesn’t work? It’s never been tried here. What’s crystal clear is this is a city with major problems of its own making, having been guided by incompetent government and well-meaning but misplaced ideology.
Thank you. I wish it felt good to crow, “I told you so!” This sorry state of criminal justice under the “leadership” of Brooke Jenkins was predicted by all of us working within the system. In fact, anyone paying attention should have noticed the mountains of evidence exposing Jenkins’ duplicitousness. Not only her incompetence and dishonesty, but most importantly, voters should have paid attention to the data-driven research that was finally published revealing that her militaristic approach to law-and-order would be a failure. Tragically, most of the media was too slow and too reliant on the narrative that Chesa Boudin, police accountability and the restorative justice approach was leading to a doomsday scenario. Not only was the recall election a loss for a promising new direction in criminal prosecution, the whole City ends up suffering with a striking rise in violent crime. And predictably, unleashing a state-of-seige on drug addicted impoverished communities will just make matters work.
Exactly …
Cue the commentators who will write a Boudin hate post and defend Jenkins despite the data and laws presented.
Most “moderates” in this city prefer the hateful and misconstrued rhetoric when it comes to crime. And it’s a bonus for them when crime is conflated with our most vulnerable communities.
It will take time to undo the damage.
“It’s not like thugs who have a proclivity to beat people up are checking the daily reports out of the DA.”
The decision makers in organized criminal organizations and gang leaders do take how a local police force is policing and prosecutors are prosecuting. Those leaders decisions’ filter down to the streets in multiple ways and effect the behavior of people not directly involved with these organizations because the organization are the ones directing drug distribution, fencing, prostitution, etc. Also, the street level criminals in this city know that the DA and police forces have their hands tied so of course they will take bigger risks knowing that their is little chance they will be arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to jail, rehab or prison, effectively guaranteeing they get to continue operating on the streets.
Chesa Boudin moved on to a much better job but we’re stuck here holding our proverbial dick waiting for the incompetent idiots that came to power to Make San Francisco Better Again!
No doubt, the right-wing electorate who delivered Breed and Jenkins to us are like, “yep, she’s an incompetent SOB but she’s our incompetent SOB”!
Many of us understood that the DA, be they one or another, does not CAUSE more crime or STOP most crimes. As this thoughtful piece mentions, they look back and deal with crimes already committed. Many of us said Jenkins was not truthful when she blamed all the crime on Boudin, but alas, I will not hold my breath waiting for any of the pro-recall people to admit they were wrong. All in all, San Francisco is pretty great place, despite our flaws.
“It takes a village”. Replacing one idiot is not going to change things much; you still have the chorus that is ‘strummin’ and hummin”. Until there is a complete change at the top – from the Mayor and legislators on down, we will continue to get what we’re getting.
“Reported rapes have decreased 9.8 percent, sex-based human trafficking has gone down by 56.5 percent”
Both very violent crimes. Just ask the victims. We will not know whether Brooke’s approach is working for another few years. The current crack down on crime needs to be sustained. Police, juries and judges all play a huge role. What was clear is that the general public has lost faith in Boudin’s white savior complex attitude towards crime. How he interacted with victims was just appalling.
> “Today, I will begin sharing specific case examples to prove how he is refusing to hold offenders accountable and lying to voters. Let’s start with guns…”
Just so obvious now she was on the clock. Quite the coup.
DA’s in the Bay Area seem to have a hard time bringing the rate of crime under control. Maybe it has to do with the economy. I believe that sometimes it just has to do with poor work performance. For instance, I told District Attorney Jeff Rosen that my kids are being sexually abused. I was sure that he would do something to protect them. Instead of stopping the abuse, HE FILED CHARGES AGAINST ME. I didn’t even commit a crime. The whole point was to protect a well connected attorney. Now I am forced to post an online petition. Please sign it if you believe that Mr. Rosen should act. https://www.thepetitionsite.com/272/404/301/district-attorney-jeffrey-rosen-please-stop-sex-trafficking-my-kids/
Joe, this is a shamelessly cherry-picked clickbait title. You clearly state in the article that other crimes including property crimes are down. Why stating only half of the story in the title? This is the type of writing that makes people stop trusting the media these days. Do better.
Adam, we note very clearly that property crimes are down and what the crime rate even has to do with the DA. The reason we emphasized violent crime is because the DA herself did so during the campaign, and we are pointing out that fact out.
Womp-womp! 🤷🏿♀️ Meanwhile, Chesa Boudin levelled-up to get hired at UC Berkeley alongside Angela Davis.
We didn’t have capacity (staff wise) months ago. What has changed? The jails are not properly staffed to process hair-brained plan. Call this what it is: window dressing and political opportunism to make sheeple feel “safer.”
“The new DA Brooke Jenkins’ promise to increase prosecution i.e., of fentanyl pushers, as stated in her press interviews, means an increase in incarceration,” writes Ken Lomba, the president of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association.
“And we don’t have the deputy staff to properly run the jail.”
You do not have to be a bleeding-heart liberal to see trouble brewing here. Regardless of what you think about fentanyl and deterrence and accountability, it is problematic to funnel more people into a jail system enduring these problems.
Every union wants management to hire more workers. But it’s hard to argue with Lomba’s union here: The Department in May was down 176 sworn staffers, and hiring has not been brisk. As we noted earlier this month, the department’s hiring goals are unlikely to keep up with projected attrition.
“If we believe chickens should be cage-free, we need to ask: What are we doing to these human beings?”
ATTORNEY YOLANDA HUANG
As such, an astounding 25 percent of work hours are done on overtime — during an era with some of the lowest jail counts in history. Deputies are mandated to work so much overtime — three mandatory 16-hour shifts in a five-day period, deputies say, is par for the course — that some opt to sleep in a communal room at the jail annex. Others live in RVs parked in a lot outside the jail.
Earlier this month, we wrote that lockdowns in which inmates are restricted to their cells due to staff shortages are a regular occurrence at the jails. The Sheriff’s Department has now provided us statistics telling us how regular: 44 lockdowns in the first six months of 2022. One of those lockdowns prevented lawyer Yolanda Huang from seeing a client; she was told they did not have the manpower to transport the inmate from his cell to the visiting area.
Again, one needn’t be a bleeding-heart to see problems here. And one needn’t be altruistic, either. “It makes the staff less safe,” Huang continues. “One day they will all be released. And what happens to us when they are more damaged than when they came in?” 48 Hills
And with this new ridiculous strategy of arresting “drug addicts” or “drunks” …..what’s going to happen to all the people SFPD and the SF Sheriffs Dept. are ticketing and arresting? There’s no room at the jail, and there’s zero staff at the jail. https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/san-francisco-jail-staff-shortages-lockdown-brooke-jenkins-ken-lomba-sunny-schwartz-fentanyl/
Takes longer to rebuild a house than to burn it down. Recently a ton of dealers and junkies were arrested and turns out most of them were from out of town and a ton of them had warrants. Big surprise.
The crime and degradation of San Francisco will not improve until every closet marxist anarchist ( ie: San Francisco “progressive” ) is voted out of office by rational thinking people. That may never happen.
Keep up the pressure, Ms DA. Make it uncomfortable for drug dealers and street users.