On July 8, San Francisco Mayor London Breed appointed Brooke Jenkins as the interim District Attorney, replacing the ousted Chesa Boudin. Jenkin’s appointment comes at the heels of a recall election founded on concerns over public safety and sealed by a low voter turnout.
Come the Nov. 23 special election, San Francisco voters will determine the fate of the DA office, but until then the reins rest with Jenkins, a long-time critic of Boudin and his office’s criminal justice reform measures.
Boudin and Jenkins’ fallout traces back to the 2020 Daniel Gudino case, preceding the recall election. In April of 2020, Daniel Gudino killed his mother, Beatriz Gudino, and then mutilated her body. When authorities arrived at the scene, Gudino cried out in horror and said that he thought his mother was a clone. During the trial, Gudino’s family supported an insanity plea but Jenkins, the lead prosecutor on the case, argued against it. With the jury deadlocked 7-5, the majority voting insanity, Boudin made the definitive decision to accept the insanity plea — a decision further strengthened by Gudino’s non-violent record.
Catalyzed by the lost case, Jenkins quickly quit her position as a prosecutor and turned to the media. To San Francisco columnist Heather Knight, Jenkins named the DA’s office “a sinking ship.” Aligned with the recall camp, Jenkins then became a leading champion for Boudin’s removal, making various public appearances to discredit the DA’s office. To “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Jenkins said, “we are watching as lives are being lost and continue to remain in danger by his [Boudin] radical policies.”
Skeptics of Jenkins highlight the misalignment between her claims and reality. To the LA Times, John Hamasaki, SF defense attorney and former police commissioner, dispelled the mistruth surrounding the Gudino case — reminding listeners that the accepted insanity plea did not serve to place public safety at risk but did become the origin of Jenkins’ dissatisfaction with Boudin. “She [Jenkins] quit because she lost and the DA wouldn’t let her retry,” Hamasaki said.
Now in office, Jenkins’ tune has shifted as she recoils from her team’s previously offense-led approach.
Turning her back on the promise of the recall election — a utopian-esque safe city — Jenkins warns that the DA alone cannot erase crime. To KQED Scott Schafer, Jenkins said “I always attempted to be fair to him that no, he [Chesa] can’t control natural trends in crime.” The recognition of natural trends in crime counters the recall camp’s leading claim — that crime holistically had gone up on Boudin’s watch: a claim dispelled by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice’s June report.
When asked if the public will see immediate changes in public safety, Jenkins continued to tell Schafer, “people are going to have to be patient. They’re going to have to temper their expectations.”
To date, Jenkins’ known plans for public safety contradict her self-described image as a progressive. Namely, Jenkin’s entrance indicates the rollback of criminal justice reform measures: heightening surveillance, welcoming sentence-enhancing strikes, and bringing back the cash bail system. The re-introduction of the cash bail system flags concern as it is a system indivisible from structural racism.
In 2019, the Prison Policy Initiative found that Black and Brown defendants are, “at least 10-25% more likely to have to pay money bail” and the amounts are “twice as high as bail set for white defendants.” To pursue equity, the Boudin office implemented the public risk-based assessment, but it is now up for discardment.
To KQED, Jenkins also revealed her first priority as restoring prosecutorial discretion — a promise with the potential to create irreversible repercussions for immigrants. Previous SF DA’s, Boudin and George Gascon, offered Penal Code 32, as their discretion to immigrants charged in drug sale cases. Under PC 32, low-level offenders would not receive a sentence of more than three years in state prison.
Pivoting away from PC 32, Jenkins favors allowing prosecutors to take away “accessory after the fact” plea deals. This means that all non-citizens, inclusive to permanent residents, can face automatic deportation, and a lifetime ban from the U.S., if caught in the case of a drug sale — regardless of the amount sold. According to immigrant law, a judge is then unable to consider individuals’ circumstances, such as ties to U.S.-born children, in cases of deportation.
As highlighted by the Immigrant Law Resource Center (ILRC), Jenkins most recently exercised this executive in the charge of 17 individuals–charges since dropped. Senior Staff Attorney at the ILRC, Carla Gomez named the situation and race to redact reform as “heartbreaking.”
Further entangled with the immigrant community is Jenkin’s policy for surveillance, one favoring her appointee, Mayor Breed. In December of 2021, Breed first proposed expanding the city’s surveillance ordinance to allow police access to private cameras in the case of retail theft, rioting, looting and drug dealing. Breed’s proposal, now backed by Jenkins, departs from current policy and goes against public opinion.
“As written, SFPD’s proposal would allow officers to use private cameras to monitor people going about their daily lives and to request troves of recorded footage,” said ACLU Norcal in a public statement. “In practice, local police could conceivably turn over stockpiled and time-stamped footage to prosecutors from other states. It’s not hard to guess the potential targets: immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, abortion seekers, Black people, and any other frequent targets of state violence,” the ACLU further warned.
Beyond the realm of surveillance, Jenkins presence raises a host of questions — largely gone unanswered. The firing of 15 staff members, although standard protocol for a new DA, has the office in disarray and special units at risk of abandonment. In particular, Jenkins’s firing of Managing Attorney Arcelia Hurtado, raises concern.
In 2020, Boudin established the Innocence Commission, headed by Hurtado, which investigates potential wrongful convictions. “Arcelia was critical to the commission’s function. It is also concerning because Arcelia was the head of the DA/s post-conviction review unit, which, among other things, is currently considering the petition by Mayor London Breed’s brother Napoleon Brown to be granted leniency and released from prison following his conviction for carjacking and manslaughter,” said the University of San Francisco law professor and chair of the commission, Lara Bazelon to SFGate.
Prior to Hurtado’s removal, the prosecutor’s office requested that Hurtado report to the DA Office Chief of Staff, Kate Chatfield to avoid any conflict of interest due to Jenkins and Breed’s relationship. With Chatfield now fired by Jenkins as well, distrust brews, and Breed’s brother’s trial date looms for August.
In the limbo of uncertainty heralded in by Jenkins, core San Francisco community organizations ask for answers as well as accountability from the DA office. Most recently, SF Rising and ACLU Northern California partnered up to form the DA Accountability Alliance to advocate for reform and upholding public safety for all.
SF Rising’s Co-Director, Emily Lee, speaks to the worried atmosphere among community organizers and those they serve. “It’s obviously concerning,” Lee said. “If the staffing is gone from the Innocence commission, from the restorative justice division, what does that mean for reform?”
In lieu of these changes, the alliance has requested public hearings for the DA to openly answer the public’s question but Jenkins is yet to reply.
“Besides her saying, ‘I support reform,’ her actions have not demonstrated that,” said Lee.
From Jenkin’s nebulous dance, certainty only arises in knowing who the criminal justice system serves and who it doesn’t –– as illustrated by the ills of the cash bail system.
“[Jenkins] sends a signal of the potential plans to dismantle the criminal justice reforms made in San Francisco to undo draconian drug war policies that have oppressed our communities of color,” said the ILRC.
Devoid of reform, San Francisco’s systemic racial inequality continues to persist under the guise of public safety.