San Francisco criminal court clerks issued a “cry for help” on Monday, threatening to strike for three days if the court did not respond to their demands for more staff and better training to handle an influx of criminal cases.
After 11 hours of negotiations, the clerks’ union and the court’s bargaining team came to a tentative agreement on Tuesday night. The strike was called off less than a day before a picket line was set to form outside San Francisco Superior Court’s Hall of Justice on Wednesday morning.
But the agreement was made on “terms that don’t really address the issues,” said Rob Borders, a union organizer. He said that the soaring caseloads would continue to directly affect about 40 courtroom clerks.
Clerks were promised a 2-percent annual raise in order to stave off a strike, Borders said. That is less than the annual 3-percent U.S. inflation rate. The court’s management also agreed to have “ongoing meetings” about clerks’ overwhelming workloads, but made no guarantees about concrete action.
Early last week, the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the court. As clerks are forced to take on more cases, Borders said it is “only a matter of time before something really bad happens.”
Clerks’ duties include managing court records, processing documents filed in court and preparing court orders to protect victims or arrest defendants who did not appear for their hearings.
This year, criminal courtroom clerks have gone from processing 20 cases a day to 50, Borders estimated. The “historic” number of cases, Borders warned, has led to delays and higher error rates.
An error, he said, can mean someone getting arrested — or released from custody — when they shouldn’t be.
Borders has been a San Francisco criminal court clerk since 2023. He started to see caseloads rise, he said, after Mayor Daniel Lurie took office and vowed to address “quality of life” issues like vandalism, drug possession or sleeping on the street.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has charged more such cases in her three years in office than her predecessor, Chesa Boudin.
Heavy caseloads may delay how quickly people who are arrested for such crimes, and ordered by the court into substance-use treatment, can get into those facilities. San Francisco has a shortage of treatment beds. When a bed becomes available, it often only remains that way for a day, or even a few hours.
“If the paperwork isn’t right, they miss that bed,” Borders said. “Every day that they’re sitting there in jail waiting is another day their treatment is delayed.”
Criminal cases must be heard within set time limits. In order to ensure that all the cases are started on time, multiple trials are now being heard simultaneously at different times of the day in every available courtroom, Borders added.
Meanwhile, clerks said they have been forced to work late without additional pay. They’ve described being assigned to courtrooms with cases that they weren’t trained to handle, without so much as a reference guide to help. Taking a two-week long vacation, Borders said, has become “nearly impossible.”
Union organizers said they asked management to bring in clerks from the city’s civil courthouse, where caseloads are more manageable. The court’s administration, they said, rejected all their proposed solutions.
According to Borders, the court’s CEO, Brandon Riley, rarely visits the criminal court at 850 Bryant, which is (as Borders put it) a “crumbling, rat-infested death trap” compared to the civil courthouse.
A spokesperson for the court declined to offer comment about the tentative agreement.
“We want justice to be served, whether [people are] convicted or exonerated,” Borders said. “Incompetent” management is “making it hard for us to do that.”
Sadly, this crisis will not stop with this tepid agreement. The real source of this problem is Brooke Jenkins. She has broken the criminal legal system by filing garbage cases. She loses so much in court it’s hard to believe she’s the prosecution!
The Public Defenders office is declaring unavailable and the courts are overwhelmed because politics seems to prevail over the rule of law. She wants to appear “tough on crime” so she can run for higher office. Even at the expense of evaluating cases fairly.
The reality is that the caseloads have been rising since she took office. And the reason is that the offers are unreasonable, and her minions oppose ALMOST every application for diversion, drug court, young adult court, etc.
These people want to send everyone to prison, everyone should have strikes on their record, and everyone needs to be convicted of felonies. Even when the cases are not provable in court.
All prosecutors must use discretion. Think about it–police cannot arrest every single violation of law, nor can DAs file on every single violation. I realize jaywalking is no longer a crime as of a year or two ago, but it’s a good example – cops can’t stop every jaywalker and ticket them any more than DAs can prosecute every one of those cases because they don’t have the resources. Nor should they. Would that be a good use of taxpayer dollars?
Similarly, evidence establishes that spending money on prevention is more effective than on punishment. Fund treatment programs and housing and food security and you’ll see less crime.
If Jenkins’ minions didn’t file on every single bad search by cops, every unprovable crime, every single low level crime, and/or let more people go to diversion and get treatment, and resolve cases for what they are worth, the courts might not be so overloaded and the PDs might not declare unavailable due to overwhelmingly high caseloads.
But some people are running for higher office, and corruption, dishonesty and cruelty will rule the day in SF until she is recalled or voted out.
If you care about “public safety” you should care about prevention and treatment and the rule of law–don’t prosecute cases you can’t prove in court.
I know I’m biased, but I’m also right.
Blame the CA BAR. They let her get away with shenanigans, now she feels like she’s London Breed grade untouchable. Chiu certainly isn’t going to investigate.