Embattled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was greeted with some additional bad news this week if he bothered to read the local newspapers. His city, like too many around the country, is awash in a flood of illegal fentanyl and drug addicts are dropping dead in increasing numbers. Almost 500 people died from overdoses last year alone. But the San Francisco Standard has been poring through the city’s Superior Court records for 2021 and they discovered that Boudin’s office did not secure a single conviction for anyone dealing fentanyl. In fact, there were only three convictions of people dealing any sort of illegal drugs. So what exactly have Boudin’s prosecutors been doing with all of the people that the police managed to arrest?
Despite a surging fentanyl crisis that killed nearly 500 people last year in San Francisco, the office of District Attorney Chesa Boudin did not secure a single conviction for dealing the deadly opioid for cases filed during 2021, according to a review of court data.
Case information The Standard obtained from San Francisco Superior Court shows Boudin’s office secured just three total convictions for “possession with intent to sell” drugs in 2021: two for methamphetamine and one for a case including heroin and cocaine. By comparison, Boudin’s predecessor, George Gascón, oversaw over 90 drug-dealing convictions by the DA’s Office in 2018.
The article makes it clear that Boudin’s office has brought in some convictions and they do include a number of people involved in the fentanyl trade. But those people were not convicted of possession with the intent to distribute. They were mostly convicted of other crimes such as being an accessory to illegal trafficking or even lower, less serious offenses. Few if any received the lengthy prison terms that dealers are subject to.
We are now only a few weeks from Boudin’s recall election. This week, a poll commissioned by the DA’s own supporters found that voters were in favor of removing him from office by a 48/38 margin. Is anyone really surprised? Boudin has lost the support of Mayor London Breed and other prominent liberal officials. Chesa Boudin looks like the lonely kid at the municipal lunch table at this point.
San Francisco is a mess, with mounting problems involving crime, homelessness, and drug addiction. Housing prices are driving away many residents and the quality of life has deteriorated significantly. The city has finally agreed to reinvest some additional money into the police department, which is a welcome development. But it doesn’t matter how many criminals the cops arrest if the DA’s office isn’t putting them behind bars.
It’s clearly taken a while for the residents of San Francisco to wake up and realize that their liberal paradise hasn’t turned out to be as wonderful as the socialists who are running the show had promised. Boudin’s conviction record for drug trafficking is pathetic, even compared to that of his predecessor, George Gascon. Incidentally, Gascon moved on to become the DA in Los Angeles County and is now facing a recall of his own. Are the voters in California beginning to notice a pattern? Perhaps they will finally realize that the real cause of many of their problems is the army of leftist voters who keep putting people like Boudin and Gascon in charge.
