Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, as an
Speaker 1: inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even
Speaker 1: represent my own and nothing contained in this show should
Speaker 1: be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any
Speaker 1: type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: Chasa Boudin. Chasa was elected the District Attorney of San
Speaker 1: Francisco in late twenty nineteen, running out of, you know,
Speaker 1: basically a progressive prosecutor's agenda, and served there for about
Speaker 1: two and a half years, and then was the subject
Speaker 1: of a well financed and well coordinated recall campaign in
Speaker 1: California it's one of the states where you can recall politicians,
Speaker 1: doesn't happen in most states, and landed up losing that.
Speaker 1: So he is now the x d A. So, Chasa,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you're getting on with me now and
Speaker 1: hope this is a good moment when you're not running anything,
Speaker 1: not in office, to be well be able to talk
Speaker 1: as freely as possible about all sorts of criminal justice issues. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be with you, Ethan, and I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: listening to your pod in the past and honored to
Speaker 1: be a guest on the show. So Chisa, I mean,
Speaker 1: let me get start off by asking you this. You
Speaker 1: came with a very strong reformist perspective. You were working
Speaker 1: in the public Defender's office. Why was it that you
Speaker 1: decided to throw your hat in the ring and actually
Speaker 1: run for, you know, the chief prosecutor job in San
Speaker 1: Francisco when that would be a job that involve putting
Speaker 1: people behind bars, as I imagine we'll talk about. I
Speaker 1: grew up visiting my own parents in prison. My dad
Speaker 1: served forty years before he was ultimately released. My mom
Speaker 1: did twenty two years, and though I don't remember their arrest,
Speaker 1: I was too little. My earliest memories are waiting in
Speaker 1: lines at prison gates to go through metal detectors and
Speaker 1: to get searched, just to be able to see my parents,
Speaker 1: just to be able to give them hugs, and so
Speaker 1: as long as I can remember, I've been impacted by
Speaker 1: and thinking about this country's response to crime and how
Speaker 1: we meet out punishment and what rehabilitation means. And I've
Speaker 1: been acutely aware of the tremendous carnage that the war
Speaker 1: on drugs has left in its wake. I've been actively
Speaker 1: witnessing the racial disparities that our criminal legal system amplifies.
Speaker 1: And when I went to law school, I wanted to
Speaker 1: try to fight to change that system, the system that
Speaker 1: had done so little to invest in victims, and it
Speaker 1: was so disinterested in re entry and rehabilitation and was
Speaker 1: so focused on punishment in ways that we're not making
Speaker 1: our communities safer. And at the time I went to
Speaker 1: law school, UM prosecutors were really part of the problem.
Speaker 1: They were a driving force in mass incarceration, in what
Speaker 1: had led the United States to be the country that
Speaker 1: embarrassingly leads the world in locking people up. And so
Speaker 1: I became a public defender of after law school. And
Speaker 1: it was only in that context that UM I saw
Speaker 1: professionally what I'd experienced personally my whole life. And I
Speaker 1: looked around the country and was witnessing a national movement
Speaker 1: that recognized we can build safety through decarceration and that
Speaker 1: prosecutors are a key part of that movement. And it
Speaker 1: was in that context that I decided to run for
Speaker 1: San Francisco District Attorney. I say, you know, yeah, we
Speaker 1: just mentioned your parents for our listeners. Chases mother was
Speaker 1: Cathy Budan and his father David Gilbert, and they were
Speaker 1: part of radical, militant left wing organization of all the
Speaker 1: weather Underground. And on one day when Chase was just
Speaker 1: a tie Um landed up being connected with members of
Speaker 1: the Black Liberation Army driving a getaway car when an
Speaker 1: operation happened where two police officers and a BRINX guard
Speaker 1: were killed. And so, as he said, his parents were
Speaker 1: sentenced and he was then adopted. I mean his legal
Speaker 1: guardians were two other well known members of the Weatherman Underground,
Speaker 1: Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dort. So he comes from quite
Speaker 1: distinguished what might be called radical royalty. In fact, his grandfather,
Speaker 1: Leonard Buddan, was the civil rights and UH civil liberties
Speaker 1: activists who represented Daniel Ellsberg in the Depending on Paper's case.
Speaker 1: So I have to say there are probably a few
Speaker 1: other names or families that are as linked to the
Speaker 1: kind of radical left and contemporary American politics as yours. Well,
Speaker 1: I I didn't live through that whole history, but as
Speaker 1: you say, um, I have a lot of family members
Speaker 1: who have been actively involved in politics and in different ways,
Speaker 1: and student organizing and in litigating. And we could go
Speaker 1: back even further. My grandfather's uncle, Louis Boudin wrote a
Speaker 1: number of really important scholarly works and books criticizing the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's refusal in the nineteen thirties to accept the
Speaker 1: New Deal and the ways in which the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: was striking down the federal legislative initiative aimed at addressing
Speaker 1: the Great Depression. So yeah, we we have a lot
Speaker 1: of lawyers and scholars in the family, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have been very critically involved in responding
Speaker 1: to fascism and imperialism and racism. And I'm certainly proud
Speaker 1: to have learned from some of the mistakes made along
Speaker 1: the way, and also to share a commitment to fighting
Speaker 1: to make the world a better place. Now. Were your
Speaker 1: parents incarcerated in New York State prisons? Yes, both Kathy
Speaker 1: and David served the entirety of their prison sentences in
Speaker 1: New York State correctional facilities, and so As I recall,
Speaker 1: in the late nineties early nine New York State was
Speaker 1: either first or second among all the states in the
Speaker 1: country in terms of the proportion of people incarcerated for
Speaker 1: drug law violations. In fact, I think at one point
Speaker 1: in New York it came close to fifty of all
Speaker 1: new commitments. So I imagine when you went to visit
Speaker 1: your parents, basically you must have been surrounded by families
Speaker 1: visiting people who were getting locked up, oftentimes on non violent,
Speaker 1: low level drug offenses, the notorious Rockefeller drug laws. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I vivid memories of talking to my mother, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course, I remember many of the women in my
Speaker 1: mother's prison were there serving time for essentially standing up
Speaker 1: for themselves in the face of horrific sexual violence and
Speaker 1: domestic violence. But increasingly over the years it was people
Speaker 1: who were casualties of the War on drugs. And I
Speaker 1: remember one woman in particular who was one of my
Speaker 1: mother's best friends in prison and helped teach my mother
Speaker 1: Spanish and inspired me to go to Latin America and
Speaker 1: learned Spanish. And she was there for many, many, many
Speaker 1: years because of the role she played as a low
Speaker 1: level mule for a bigger drug cartel. Another woman, the
Speaker 1: mother of a close friend of mine who I became
Speaker 1: friends within the prison visiting room, was serving a many
Speaker 1: decades long sentence under the Rockefeller drug laws. All of
Speaker 1: these folks had no violence, no history of violence, no weapons,
Speaker 1: and yet we're filling jails and prisons across New York State.
Speaker 1: I mean, with your mom in the Bedford Hills prisons
Speaker 1: in New York exactly right, Bedford Hills at the time,
Speaker 1: maybe still today, but throughout her tenure there was the
Speaker 1: only maximum security prison for women in New York State,
Speaker 1: and so anyone considered maximum security um and it might
Speaker 1: seem odd to folks who aren't familiar with the American
Speaker 1: criminal legal system, but my mother was there serving a
Speaker 1: sentence for the most serious offense on the books. She
Speaker 1: had participated it in an armed robbery that left three men,
Speaker 1: two of them police officers, dead, and though she wasn't
Speaker 1: personally armed and didn't personally hurt anybody, she was ultimately
Speaker 1: convicted of murder, and she was in a prison that
Speaker 1: was designed for people who were maximum security. Makes sense,
Speaker 1: given her charges and the violence in her case, for
Speaker 1: her to have been in that prison, certainly at the
Speaker 1: outset of her commitment. But ask yourself, why would a
Speaker 1: maximum security prison be filled with women serving as long
Speaker 1: or longer in some instances for entirely non violent drug
Speaker 1: related offenses. So I mean your you know, your background
Speaker 1: is impressive. I mean Yale Road scholar, Yale Law School.
Speaker 1: You clerked for Judge Chuck Bryer, the little brother of
Speaker 1: the Justice Stephen Bryer, became a public defender, and then
Speaker 1: you get elected, what in your late thirties, to be
Speaker 1: the District Attorney of San Francisco. I remember at the time,
Speaker 1: and I had people close to me who were working
Speaker 1: closely with you, and everybody was enormously excited. Did you anticipate,
Speaker 1: um some of the extent of the backlash that would happen?
Speaker 1: I remember, I think somebody like set up a website
Speaker 1: like the day after you were elected recall Chasy Bludan,
Speaker 1: before you've even been inaugurated. But did you anticipate how
Speaker 1: significant and serious this backlash would be? Certainly we expected
Speaker 1: pushback and backlash, and folks like Kim Fox and Larry
Speaker 1: Krasner and George Gascon and others who are part of
Speaker 1: this national movement across the country Rachel Rowlins Marylyn Mosby
Speaker 1: had given me fair warning after I was elected that
Speaker 1: I would expect this kind of thing. But but no,
Speaker 1: there's no way until you've lived it and experienced it
Speaker 1: that you could be fully prepared for the intensity and
Speaker 1: the vitriol and the dishonesty in the attacks. You know,
Speaker 1: it would be great if we could have honest policy
Speaker 1: discussions about climate change, or public schools or the drug war,
Speaker 1: and we could agree to disagree on some points. We
Speaker 1: could look at data, and we could let policy and
Speaker 1: practice and government institutions be driven by honest, nuanced conversations.
Speaker 1: That is not the way that the world works today,
Speaker 1: if ever, and instead we are seeing a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of intentional misinformation, vitriolic attacks. Um, it's a very intentional
Speaker 1: and explicit and frankly successful part of the broader republican playbook.
Speaker 1: And we saw Donald Trump and his allies us it
Speaker 1: extremely effectively for years, and we see it even in
Speaker 1: deep blue cities like San Francisco as a key part
Speaker 1: of the political discourse and the way in which public
Speaker 1: perception is shaped about issues like drugs. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: you win office in late nineteen and just a few
Speaker 1: months later, COVID happens, and the kind of the world
Speaker 1: is in this bizarre, confused state. People are off the
Speaker 1: streets in many cities, including my home in New York.
Speaker 1: You see, you know, a disproportion number that people are
Speaker 1: out in the street to the time where people suffering
Speaker 1: from mental illness, people are homeless, I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of people not feeling safe anymore walking around. This obviously
Speaker 1: has happening in San Francisco, and some months later the
Speaker 1: killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests
Speaker 1: and some of the violence that you know happened during
Speaker 1: that time as well. And then of course you're setting
Speaker 1: up and running an office when all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: nobody's coming into the office anymore, and you're all online.
Speaker 1: So what were those first three four or five months
Speaker 1: like for you? And I was elected in November, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sworn into office until January, almost exactly two months
Speaker 1: after I was sworn in um the mayor declared a
Speaker 1: state of emergency and essentially shut down the city, and
Speaker 1: San Francisco has been one of the slowest cities in
Speaker 1: the country to reopen. People are still working remotely in
Speaker 1: higher proportions than in almost any other big city, and
Speaker 1: so it's had a dramatic impact on our courts. Are
Speaker 1: courthouse remains partially closed, we never fully reopened, We never
Speaker 1: got back to full capacity for trying cases. The impact
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen and the shutdown on crime trends was
Speaker 1: far more dramatic and long lasting than we initially anticipated.
Speaker 1: UM And, as you pointed out, trying to run an office,
Speaker 1: trying to shape the culture of an office, trying to
Speaker 1: do training, trying to build trust and increase moral in
Speaker 1: an office when you're doing everything over zoom, including new
Speaker 1: job interviews and orientations for people you're on boarding, was
Speaker 1: tremendously challenging. And there's no question that it was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge obstacle to my ability to build relationships with and
Speaker 1: trust with some of the constituencies in San Francisco who
Speaker 1: maybe hadn't supported my election in the first place, but
Speaker 1: in principle agree with the policies we were implementing UM,
Speaker 1: But we just didn't have any opportunity to get face
Speaker 1: to face in the same room with a lot of
Speaker 1: people across the city because of the pandemic. Well, I'm curious,
Speaker 1: I mean you mentioned before Larry Krasny, or the district
Speaker 1: attorney in Philadelphia who ran on a progressive agenda and
Speaker 1: they got re elected. And I had him as a
Speaker 1: guest on Psychoactive last year, and I'm wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: in your office like his, part of what happened was
Speaker 1: tons of the old time prosecutors in the office left
Speaker 1: or were fired by you know him or by you.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile a number of people come in from the
Speaker 1: public defender's office where you had worked before. I mean,
Speaker 1: there must have been a massive culture clash when that
Speaker 1: sort of thing happens. So can you describe what that
Speaker 1: was like? What you have to remember is that people
Speaker 1: who have spent five or ten or twenty five years
Speaker 1: of their lives working as district attorneys in a traditional
Speaker 1: carstoral prosecutor's office, the office that wholeheartedly and enthusiastically waged
Speaker 1: the war on drugs, are not doing it primarily for
Speaker 1: the money. They're not doing it primarily for the glory.
Speaker 1: And so they believe on some core level that what
Speaker 1: they're doing is in the interest of justice and is
Speaker 1: in fact promoting public safety. And so if somebody an
Speaker 1: outsider like Larry or myself comes along and runs a
Speaker 1: race in which were openly critical of the War on
Speaker 1: drugs or of many of the traditional ways that prosecutors
Speaker 1: have behaved, like seeking convictions at all costs, like covering
Speaker 1: up police misconduct, like refusing to consider the possibility that
Speaker 1: people have been wrongfully convicted of crimes and are languishing
Speaker 1: in prisons. Those new approaches that are quintessential parts of
Speaker 1: the progressive prosecutor movement are not going to be well
Speaker 1: received by folks who have dedicated their lives and their
Speaker 1: careers to a very different approach to doing the job.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, there's inevitably a certain degree of distrust
Speaker 1: and disconnect, and bureaucracies are very effective at resisting change,
Speaker 1: digging their heels in, at simply refusing to follow instructions
Speaker 1: or new policies. We see it with police departments all
Speaker 1: across the country when efforts at reform are implemented through
Speaker 1: state legislation or police commissions or police chiefs. Even and
Speaker 1: certainly we experienced some very active resistance and sabotage from
Speaker 1: within our ranks. We also, though, and this is important,
Speaker 1: we also had a large number of staff who were
Speaker 1: excited and supportive and embraced the vision who had joined
Speaker 1: the office because it was San Francisco and it was
Speaker 1: known as a progressive town, and because my predecessor, die
Speaker 1: Gascone had certainly in his later years begun to implement
Speaker 1: a lot of reforms that again we see as part
Speaker 1: of the national conversation around progressive prosecutors. And so there
Speaker 1: was a mixed a mixed reception, I would say, a
Speaker 1: lot of resistance and entrenched hostility. And yet also some
Speaker 1: of the attorneys were and some of the other staff
Speaker 1: were very open to the ideas um and I learned
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount from the people in the office over
Speaker 1: the two and a half years that I had the
Speaker 1: honor to service district attorney. What do you think in
Speaker 1: your interactions with the old time prosecutors in your office
Speaker 1: who remained. Was there anything that you learned from them
Speaker 1: that really changed the way that you thought about criminal
Speaker 1: justice or about the role of the prosecutors A good
Speaker 1: away here, I'm talking about the old line prosecutors who
Speaker 1: chose not to leave. I learned a lot from from
Speaker 1: some of these folks, and some of them were public
Speaker 1: supporters of mine in opposition to the recall. Um, some
Speaker 1: of them helped me navigate my first ever grand jury
Speaker 1: indictment in a homicide case that I present to do
Speaker 1: a grand jury. UM. So you know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot that I learned from folks both day to day,
Speaker 1: um nuts and bolts about running the office, about interactions
Speaker 1: with other agencies like the police and the courts from
Speaker 1: this side of the aisle. But I think big picture,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I learned is from these
Speaker 1: folks and from the job, and you know, is the
Speaker 1: disconnect between the way the Supreme Court describes the ethical
Speaker 1: and legal obligations of the prosecutor Minister of justice. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to be um, justice seekers, not conviction seekers.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not advocating for a particular party in
Speaker 1: the case. We represent the people, all of the people. UM.
Speaker 1: Either way it's described in Supreme Court opinions and in
Speaker 1: ethical treatises is very very very far removed from the
Speaker 1: day to day reality of the political pressures of the job,
Speaker 1: in which there's huge, huge incentive two mitigate political risk
Speaker 1: and and perceive public safety risk by blocking people up
Speaker 1: for as long as possible and doing that without regard
Speaker 1: to evidence or data or justice or even the wishes
Speaker 1: of the victims. And it's easy to see why goodhearted,
Speaker 1: well intentioned people in this role would naturally lean and
Speaker 1: skew towards seeking pre child attention. Seeking incarceration and relying
Speaker 1: on incarceration is a primary response to the tremendously diverse
Speaker 1: array of social problems that get dumped on the criminal
Speaker 1: legal system. I saw why and how that happens, and
Speaker 1: it made me all the more determined to ensure that
Speaker 1: my office would not fall victim, would not participate in
Speaker 1: that horrific aberration of justice and of the real constitutional
Speaker 1: duties of prosecutors. We'll be talking more after we hear
Speaker 1: this ad reading about what you did, Junior. Two and
Speaker 1: a half years there was a piece in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: and it said Budan has ended cash bail for our listeners,
Speaker 1: basically the practice whereby your ability to get out on
Speaker 1: bail once you've been arrested depends on whether or not
Speaker 1: you can raise the money or not. Um He has
Speaker 1: ceased prosecuting cases in which the evidence came from quote
Speaker 1: unque pretextual traffic stops, such as when a police officer
Speaker 1: pulls over a car for a broken tail light and
Speaker 1: ends up booking the driver after founding drugs. He you
Speaker 1: stopped using enhancements that add years to the sentences of
Speaker 1: gang members. He quit using the stakes three strikes law.
Speaker 1: He filed charges against the San Francisco police officer accused
Speaker 1: of brutality. He instituted a commission to identify and overturn
Speaker 1: wrongful convisitions. He cut the number of young people in
Speaker 1: car street in half and reduced the pre trial jail population.
Speaker 1: And he also expanded the use of diversion and restorative
Speaker 1: justice programs. So accurate description of what you did, in
Speaker 1: fact do while you were there. Um, we did that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all true. We could keep going. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of work that I'm that I'm proud of that. Uh.
Speaker 1: We promised voters in we would work towards and which
Speaker 1: in fact we did work towards. Okay, keep going, what else?
Speaker 1: Tell me some of the other things so our listeners
Speaker 1: will understand. We launched the Independent Innocence Commission that exonerated
Speaker 1: a man wrongfully convicted of murder after decades in prison.
Speaker 1: We created a worker Protection Unit because we recognize that
Speaker 1: wage theft is causing harm to far far more Americans
Speaker 1: than most of the property crimes that are traditionally prosecuted.
Speaker 1: We UM dramatically expanded victim services, including appointing the first
Speaker 1: ever Chinese speaking head of Victim Services and increasing the
Speaker 1: number of Chinese speaking staff in our office by over
Speaker 1: fi UM. We expanded victim services into areas that had
Speaker 1: never gone before to begin offering services to victims of
Speaker 1: property crime. To UM work in partnership with both private
Speaker 1: and public stakeholders to create housing for domestic violence survivors,
Speaker 1: for example. And we also really embraced our commitment to
Speaker 1: preventing crime and being proactive rather than reactive, with cases
Speaker 1: like our groundbreaking lawsuit against the manufact of ghost guns,
Speaker 1: illegal firearms that are designed to be untraceable and sold
Speaker 1: on black markets or over the Internet to people who
Speaker 1: intend to use them to commit crimes. We didn't wait
Speaker 1: for those crimes to be committed. We filed the major
Speaker 1: lawsuit against three of the biggest manufacturers of those guns
Speaker 1: in the nat of California. Now I know that in
Speaker 1: part of the debate over what was going on leading
Speaker 1: up to the recall, I mean, you were putting out
Speaker 1: statistics about in fact, you were charging much more than
Speaker 1: people said, and other people and and of course you
Speaker 1: know the stats. Anybody can to some extent manipulated them
Speaker 1: one way or another. And then with COVID coming in,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to do, you know, year by year
Speaker 1: comparisons in any real way. Um, but what's your some
Speaker 1: of your critics, let's start off with um, good old uh,
Speaker 1: what's her name? Brooke Jenkins? Right? Who worked in your
Speaker 1: day's office, who left, and who after you were recalled
Speaker 1: Mayor London Breed appointed to be your successor. I mean,
Speaker 1: sending a pretty clear message that she wanted to put
Speaker 1: a more tough on crime sort of person there. And
Speaker 1: what she said about you, I'm going to quote Chase
Speaker 1: has a belief that your approach should be defendant centered.
Speaker 1: Everything should revolve around what's best for the defendants. He's
Speaker 1: never let go of his role as the public defender.
Speaker 1: But she said, a prosecutor's primary function as public safety,
Speaker 1: you have to serve as an advocate of the victim.
Speaker 1: So what was or what it would be a response
Speaker 1: to that? Now? Well, first of all, my office, under
Speaker 1: my leadership, did more to expand victim services and to
Speaker 1: increase language access for non English speaking victims than any
Speaker 1: day in the history of San Francisco, and I am
Speaker 1: tremendously proud of my record when it comes to advocating
Speaker 1: for victims personally, meeting with families of homicide victims and
Speaker 1: more cases than I can count. Asking in every single
Speaker 1: budget I submitted to the mayor to increase resources for
Speaker 1: our Victims Services Division is a primary request in my
Speaker 1: budgets every single year. UM. So, clearly what Brooke was
Speaker 1: saying in that statement was was political. It was designed
Speaker 1: to attack and to support the recall, and it was
Speaker 1: part of an effective campaign. The thing that stands out
Speaker 1: at me more than just the dishonesty and the typical
Speaker 1: and traditional dishonesty of um of politics, is that actually
Speaker 1: our criminal legal system is set up around the defendant.
Speaker 1: And that's not a choice that I made or one
Speaker 1: that I necessarily even agree with, but the way that
Speaker 1: the system works in this country, going back to our
Speaker 1: Bill of Rights, is that people accused of crimes written
Speaker 1: into the U. S Constitution in the Bill of Rights,
Speaker 1: have civil protections, have rights like speedy trial and right
Speaker 1: to council and the right to confront witnesses against them,
Speaker 1: have a whole series of rights around which the court
Speaker 1: processes in this country have been developed over centuries. Victims
Speaker 1: do not have equivalent rights. They're not even represented in
Speaker 1: criminal cases. This isn't my interpretation or my view of
Speaker 1: how it should work. This is what every single criminal
Speaker 1: case in the state of California says. It says the
Speaker 1: people verse the name of the defendant. The victim's name
Speaker 1: is not in the charging document. They're not a party
Speaker 1: to the case. District attorneys have an obligation under state
Speaker 1: law to provide services and information to victims, and there's
Speaker 1: no funding that comes with those obligations. I fought every
Speaker 1: day it was in office to increase funding so we
Speaker 1: could do a better job communicating with victims, informing them
Speaker 1: of their rights, empowering them to make their voice heard.
Speaker 1: But the notion that I am somehow defendant centered and
Speaker 1: that is a criticism of me, is actually just an
Speaker 1: observation about the way the founding fathers designed our legal system,
Speaker 1: and one that goes back in fact to old England.
Speaker 1: People accused of crime we're facing deprivation of liberty, have
Speaker 1: a tremendous number of very strong rights written into our
Speaker 1: founding document. It is not equivalent. You can't find any
Speaker 1: equivalent for victims, and maybe that's something we should change.
Speaker 1: But until we do, her criticism is a criticism of
Speaker 1: the system, and it's one that she now is responsible
Speaker 1: for running. M Okay, well, let's get into specifically the
Speaker 1: drug issue, which is the main focus of the of
Speaker 1: this podcast. You know, one thing San Francisco has had
Speaker 1: to deal with. I mean, on the one hand, there's
Speaker 1: this horrific rate of overdose fatalities, among the highest in
Speaker 1: the country, notwithstanding a whole lot of progressive public health policies.
Speaker 1: Um so, you know, far more people dying of of
Speaker 1: overdose in recent years in San Francisco than died of COVID. Right. Then, secondly,
Speaker 1: you have an open air drug dealing scene where people
Speaker 1: can drive through the Tenderloin or some other parts of
Speaker 1: San Francisco and they see people openly selling drugs or
Speaker 1: if you walk down that street, you'll be offered drugs.
Speaker 1: Right now, my understanding is that when it comes to
Speaker 1: the drug dealing piece of this, that you know, significant,
Speaker 1: maybe half of all the drug dealers, the low level
Speaker 1: dealers at least as far as we don't know about
Speaker 1: the higher level dealers, are you know, young guys coming
Speaker 1: out of Central America, mostly Honduran and you know, some
Speaker 1: of them are ourselves even being trafficked into the US.
Speaker 1: And one criticism of you was that you specifically charged
Speaker 1: many of these low level drug sellers Hondurans who are
Speaker 1: not legally in the country. You charged in in such
Speaker 1: a way as to avoid them being deported and that
Speaker 1: really piste people off. So tell me more about that. Well, First,
Speaker 1: a slight technical correction. We did not make charges or
Speaker 1: charging decisions in ways designed to avoid deportation. We charged
Speaker 1: drug sales cases across the board, regardless of immigration status,
Speaker 1: based on the facts and the law. One usually violations
Speaker 1: of the Health and Safety Code for the relevant quantity
Speaker 1: and kinds of drugs. What we did do, and we
Speaker 1: did this consistent with a requirement under state law, was
Speaker 1: we considered immigration status when negotiating plea deals. And that's
Speaker 1: a requirement of mandate. It comes from California state law
Speaker 1: predates my tenure. And what that meant is if we
Speaker 1: were negotiating a plea, which is how n of criminal
Speaker 1: cases are resolved across the country, and we were aware
Speaker 1: that the person we were negotiating with was not a citizen.
Speaker 1: We were required to consider their immigration status and to
Speaker 1: try to mitigate any collateral consequences that the guilty plea
Speaker 1: would have. As it happens that with standard practice in
Speaker 1: the office before I took over again, because it's a
Speaker 1: mandate of state law. You are correct that I was
Speaker 1: attacked viciously by many people, including Brooke, for simply following
Speaker 1: state law and staying the course HIGN policy that had
Speaker 1: been implemented before my administration. So what do you anticipate
Speaker 1: she's going to do differently on this? Is she going
Speaker 1: to not follow state law? Is she gonna try to
Speaker 1: charge people so they are much more likely to get deported?
Speaker 1: What do you think? Well, it's not gonna there's no
Speaker 1: way meaningfully to change the charging decisions on the front,
Speaker 1: and except for what she has already done, which I
Speaker 1: guess is to charge simple possession. Um, we under my
Speaker 1: administration and frankly under my predecessor in his final years,
Speaker 1: we're declining to charge virtually all standalone misdemeanor drug possession
Speaker 1: or paraphernalia charges. The only cases that we filed were
Speaker 1: felony level possession with intent to sell. Our actual sales,
Speaker 1: and there's really not a meaningfully different way to charge
Speaker 1: those cases, but there is a different, meaningfully different way
Speaker 1: to negotiate them. And it seems from the tough talk
Speaker 1: and rhetoric thus far that the new administration is determined
Speaker 1: to refuse to consider immigration consequences and to seek convictions
Speaker 1: that will in most cases not actually result in deportation directly,
Speaker 1: but which will make someone deeport of ball and have
Speaker 1: grave lifelong consequences for immigration status and adjustment of status
Speaker 1: without any increased benefit to public safe or other meaningful
Speaker 1: consequences or sanctions that could possibly serve as a deterrent um.
Speaker 1: So you know, in some ways, it's funny we're talking
Speaker 1: about such a tragic topic. As you point out, the
Speaker 1: overdoses every single day are just devastating San Francisco and
Speaker 1: really communities across the country. But San Francisco has been
Speaker 1: hit uniquely hard and and I suppose it's it's the
Speaker 1: real human tragedy that we're experiencing that we see in
Speaker 1: in certain neighborhoods in our city, Soma and Tenderloin. To
Speaker 1: be sure, that perhaps justifies in some minds doubling down
Speaker 1: on the war on drugs. Going back to a policy
Speaker 1: that I think, in our heart of hearts we all
Speaker 1: know has never worked and will never work. But these
Speaker 1: conversations and these surges of policing and arrests and pledges
Speaker 1: to be more punitive in response to drug dealing and
Speaker 1: the associated crime and the tenderloin in particular, or not
Speaker 1: new to San Francisco. In fact, if you go back,
Speaker 1: I'm looking actually as we speak right now at a
Speaker 1: page from the San Francisco Examiner back in in an
Speaker 1: article about how horrible the tenderline is. And it's describing
Speaker 1: open drug sales and use. It's describing um people with
Speaker 1: multiple drug charges back on the streets. It's describing kids
Speaker 1: witnessing crimes and people saying the tenderloin has never been worse.
Speaker 1: It's pushing for a strategy to flood the zone with
Speaker 1: police and quoting police officers saying in another two or
Speaker 1: three years, I do think we'll see some things turn around. Here.
Speaker 1: We're having exactly the same conversations today as though we
Speaker 1: didn't try this thirty forty years ago. It's the definition
Speaker 1: of insanity, and sadly it's being um. It's it's tragedies,
Speaker 1: and it's fear that's being exploited for cynical political gain
Speaker 1: by folks like Brook Jenkins. M But so I mean,
Speaker 1: let's just open this up bigger jasa when you actually
Speaker 1: think about what's going on. There's a number of cities
Speaker 1: around the U. S. And certainly we saw this in
Speaker 1: other countries. You know, they really did find a way
Speaker 1: of significantly diminishing the open air drug scenes. I mean
Speaker 1: New York City where I live. Many other places had
Speaker 1: you know, major open air drug scenes, but those are
Speaker 1: much less so. San Francisco is a bit distinctive in
Speaker 1: its being one of a smaller number of cities which
Speaker 1: still has this open air drug scene. And obviously it
Speaker 1: obviously has a homelessness issue, like Los Angeles and some
Speaker 1: other places with nice weather and liberal governments, you know,
Speaker 1: where there's a you know, a very substantial homeless population.
Speaker 1: So before we get to the homelessness one, though, the
Speaker 1: question is what I mean, if you had more power,
Speaker 1: if you weren't just a d a, if you were
Speaker 1: the mayor, right, I mean Mayor London. Breed has been
Speaker 1: generally antagonistic to you. She's been balancing, you know, sounding
Speaker 1: like a progressive with being quite tough on crime and
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff, and she appointed, you know,
Speaker 1: a kind of tough person to be your successor. But
Speaker 1: if you had, if you were in the mayor's position,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can't change state law, you can't
Speaker 1: change federal law. But what would you be pushing for
Speaker 1: to deal with this open air drug dealing thing? What?
Speaker 1: What do you think the answer is, Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's be clear, talking quote unquote tough is not the
Speaker 1: same thing as having effective policies or even being tough.
Speaker 1: If if we want to be tough on open air
Speaker 1: drug use, if we want to be tough on overdoses,
Speaker 1: then we need safe consumption sites and we need treatment
Speaker 1: on demand. I mean, let's be very very clear. The
Speaker 1: so called tough approach is actually criminogenic. It's creating crime.
Speaker 1: We know that. You don't even need to just look
Speaker 1: at UH narcotics, look at prohibition on alcohol and how
Speaker 1: that played out in this country. It created mafias, it
Speaker 1: created al capone, It generates a tremendous amount of crime.
Speaker 1: I was talking to my father about some of the
Speaker 1: men who were in prison with him, and some of
Speaker 1: them who were there for crimes unrelated on the charges
Speaker 1: themselves to drugs. Were there because they were doing two
Speaker 1: three robberies a week to pay for their drug abbit.
Speaker 1: If you understand that addiction is a public health crisis,
Speaker 1: that overdoses and open air drug use our public health crises,
Speaker 1: then you see that district attorneys and police have a
Speaker 1: very very limited role to play and responding or solving
Speaker 1: these problems. Instead, we need to follow the strategies that
Speaker 1: have been successfully implemented in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: places like Portugal, pit places like Vancouver, where you have
Speaker 1: designated safe consumption sites. And let me tell you why
Speaker 1: that's important. First of all, nobody dies in safe consumption sites.
Speaker 1: Nobody dies of overdoses. In safe consumption sites, you dramatically
Speaker 1: reduce the human suffering and the loss of life from
Speaker 1: this addiction epidemic. Second of all, you take some of
Speaker 1: the urban blight and the real devastating experiences that children
Speaker 1: and families with school aged children have stepping over people
Speaker 1: who are passed out in the streets, human feces, hypodermic needles,
Speaker 1: and you cansolidate the drug use in a safe, clean
Speaker 1: place where it doesn't need to invade the daily lives
Speaker 1: of small business owners. And immigrant families and so on,
Speaker 1: and and third, and this is critical. Safe consumption sites
Speaker 1: are a place where we can connect people who have
Speaker 1: substance use disorders with harm reduction services so that when
Speaker 1: they're ready to engage with strategies to reduce dependence, when
Speaker 1: they're ready to try and redirect their lives and get
Speaker 1: housing or employment, they have access to services where they
Speaker 1: can get that help. In San Francisco, there has never
Speaker 1: been a political commitment from city Hall, not from this
Speaker 1: mayor prior mayors, to make treatment on demand a reality,
Speaker 1: or to make safe consumption sites a reality. And until
Speaker 1: we have housing and treatment, we are always going to
Speaker 1: be reading those same stories in the San Francisco Examiner,
Speaker 1: whether it's two but on the safe injection site. So
Speaker 1: I think many of our listeners will know because we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before. There are now dozens of safe
Speaker 1: injection sites, which are sometimes known as over those prevention centers,
Speaker 1: in dozens of cities around the world, in Europe, in Canada,
Speaker 1: in Australia. There's now one operating above ground in New York,
Speaker 1: and there's even some operating semi below ground in San
Speaker 1: Francisco and some other cities. Right, And the evidence is,
Speaker 1: as Chase has says, right, these are essentially needle exchange
Speaker 1: programs with a bat with a back room and a
Speaker 1: nurse president where people can safely inject the drugs they
Speaker 1: brought with them. They're not provided with those drugs. And
Speaker 1: we know they reduce public new sense when they reduce
Speaker 1: over those fatalities, effect eliminate over those fatalities. They do
Speaker 1: all these good things. The question is what's been the
Speaker 1: problem in San Francisco. I mean, as we speak, right,
Speaker 1: there's a bill that went through the state of the
Speaker 1: state legislature. I think it's sitting on Governor Gavin Newsom's desk.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that he knows it's the right
Speaker 1: thing to do, and I have no doubt that he worries,
Speaker 1: like hell, how he's going to explain signing that thing
Speaker 1: into law if in fact he runs for national office.
Speaker 1: So he's in a andry he's going to deal with.
Speaker 1: But the question I'd understand is why didn't London Breed
Speaker 1: do what de Blasio did, just say go for it.
Speaker 1: I mean a few years ago you had to worry
Speaker 1: about Trump prosecutors, you know, going after you, and they
Speaker 1: made a big thing of you know, the Trump Justice Department,
Speaker 1: We're going to go after anybody who approves these safe
Speaker 1: injection sites. But now you have a friendly administration, Biden administration,
Speaker 1: which hasn't said anything on the issue as yet, but
Speaker 1: they're not going to go after people. You have a
Speaker 1: friendly guy in the governor's office who's not going to
Speaker 1: go after people. Why do you think London breed it?
Speaker 1: For that matter, some other California mayors just don't proceed
Speaker 1: now the way that de Blasio did. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: I wish I had the answer. It's something that I
Speaker 1: pushed for and called for every single day I was
Speaker 1: in office. I was urgent our city to move in
Speaker 1: that direction, and I knew what a huge impact it
Speaker 1: would have had on reducing fail overdoses, on cleaning up
Speaker 1: parts of the city that were very difficult to live in,
Speaker 1: and there was virtually no action from city Hall. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the tremendous frustrations that I have and
Speaker 1: that many San Franciscans have, And and you know, I
Speaker 1: think in many ways it was a strategic decision because
Speaker 1: it seems have been very effective and useful for the
Speaker 1: mayor to have an opportunity to blame me for the
Speaker 1: police department, to blame me and my policies for these
Speaker 1: age old problems that will never be solved until we
Speaker 1: invest seriously and the kinds of solutions that we know work.
Speaker 1: But Chasi on that one. I mean, she's publicly on
Speaker 1: record of supporting safe injection sites, right, she has the model.
Speaker 1: To Blasio, do you understand is there a real legal
Speaker 1: argument or fear? I mean, there already is what a
Speaker 1: long standing safe injection side in San Francisco, at least
Speaker 1: one which is sort of operating with the understanding of
Speaker 1: the cops. Everybody knows it's there, right and it's doing
Speaker 1: good work. It's just a matter of doing what they
Speaker 1: did in New York and saying, Okay, it's going to
Speaker 1: be legally sanctioned at this point. But any sense about
Speaker 1: what would be the argument that her legal counsel or
Speaker 1: anybody else would be telling her why she shouldn't move
Speaker 1: forward the way to Blasio, did you know the person
Speaker 1: who advises the mayor on legal issues and at least
Speaker 1: formally is the city attorney. The city attorney is normally
Speaker 1: an elected position who represents all the city agencies, including
Speaker 1: the mayor, and if, for example, we were to open
Speaker 1: a safe consumption site, and if the Feds were to
Speaker 1: come in and try to shut it down, it would
Speaker 1: be the job of the city attorney to defend San
Speaker 1: Francisco against that federal incursion in the courts. The current
Speaker 1: city attorney was appointed by the mayor. It was her pick.
Speaker 1: If this was a priority for her, if this was
Speaker 1: something she cared about, certainly it's something that the city
Speaker 1: attorney would defend her on. It's absolutely puzzling to me
Speaker 1: why we have not done more on this as a city.
Speaker 1: And I wish that, you know, the district Attorney's obviously
Speaker 1: the budget or the mandate to do these things. It's
Speaker 1: it's not really what we do. We need the mayor
Speaker 1: and the Department of Public Health to step up. And
Speaker 1: and mind you, the mayor appoints the head of the
Speaker 1: Department of Public Health, and they have in San Francisco
Speaker 1: a budget that's well over two billion dollars. There's a
Speaker 1: massive budget, tremendous resources available, and it simply has not
Speaker 1: been a priority for people in the city. And it's
Speaker 1: to all of our detriment. Well, let's go bigger this.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look with part of what old
Speaker 1: saman in Europe beginning thirty years ago, and they were
Speaker 1: dealing with open air drug scenes and overdose as we
Speaker 1: were dealing with in the US. They didn't pull back
Speaker 1: all law enforcement. I mean, they still had people getting
Speaker 1: busted and all this sort of thing, but there was
Speaker 1: a high level of coordination between They called it the
Speaker 1: Frankfurt system at one point in the early nineties where
Speaker 1: the mayor would call a meeting every Monday morning with
Speaker 1: the head of prosecution, head of police, head of Housing services,
Speaker 1: head of health services, and where if the cops said,
Speaker 1: well we have to crack down on such and such
Speaker 1: a park, We're gonna do it Wednesday morning, somebody from
Speaker 1: Housing services will say, well, wait, wait a second, wait,
Speaker 1: can you wait till Thursday so that we can make
Speaker 1: sure we're set up to receive the people you're gonna
Speaker 1: be pushing out. But beyond that, they also did things,
Speaker 1: beginning in Switzerland thirty years ago, to start setting up
Speaker 1: heroin maintenance clinics for p both for whom method on
Speaker 1: or drug free treatment was not working. They said, let
Speaker 1: people come into clinics and get pharmaceutical heroin and they
Speaker 1: can't take it home, but it will be like a
Speaker 1: well run method on program, but they can get pharmaceutical heroin.
Speaker 1: And that thing worked in Switzerland. It's spread to other
Speaker 1: European countries and to Canada. You know, reduce crime, reduce
Speaker 1: over those reduced addiction, help people stabilize their lives. And
Speaker 1: now you see in British Columbia, especially Vancouver, you know
Speaker 1: more and more movement and support by first the provincial
Speaker 1: government and now the national government for what was called
Speaker 1: safe Supply, which is basically a policy that says, you know,
Speaker 1: if people are going to be buying drugs no matter what,
Speaker 1: from the illicit market, let's allow them to get it
Speaker 1: instead from illegally regulated source and either they get it
Speaker 1: for free or they get it for a few bucks.
Speaker 1: Allowing people to get the drug they want from illegal source.
Speaker 1: Would you support all that sort of stuff. It seems
Speaker 1: they have worked really well in Europe, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence behind it. And on the
Speaker 1: other hand, what we in doing is far more costly,
Speaker 1: far less humane, and is not working. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: would support those approaches. I think we need a radical
Speaker 1: rethinking of how we respond to addiction in this country
Speaker 1: and Frankly, I was sorry we didn't have more time
Speaker 1: to try and push those changes. We were continuing to
Speaker 1: file drug sales cases. In fact, we filed them at
Speaker 1: a higher rate than my predecessor did when the police
Speaker 1: brought us family drug arrests. Not because I thought it
Speaker 1: was in and of itself going to work, but because
Speaker 1: I recognized the need not to simply abandon the field,
Speaker 1: abandon the space. And it was unfortunate that, as we
Speaker 1: talked about a moment ago, the city was not willing
Speaker 1: to do the work on the public health front that
Speaker 1: would have truly been necessary to decrease our reliance on
Speaker 1: cars roll police responses to these issues that are clearly
Speaker 1: public health issues and that have been dealt with effectively
Speaker 1: in other jurisdictions. Let's take a break here and go
Speaker 1: to an ad If you look at the issue of
Speaker 1: all the drug dealers, if that's not so much a
Speaker 1: health issue, that's something else. And the question is, if
Speaker 1: you were in charge of the police department, if you
Speaker 1: were talking to the police chief, I don't know what
Speaker 1: your relationship with him was, what was like, but what
Speaker 1: would be that your your answer um giving current laws
Speaker 1: for that matter, about what to do with that. What
Speaker 1: do you think is actually the optimal answer giving current
Speaker 1: laws to dealing you know, with that situation, not the overdose,
Speaker 1: not the open droid use, but the drug dealing on
Speaker 1: the streets. Well, I think in an ideal world, if
Speaker 1: you have the kind of policies you just described, you
Speaker 1: don't have a market for illegal street drugs because people
Speaker 1: who are seriously dependent on illegal drugs can go and
Speaker 1: get safe supply somewhere. In an ideal world, the role
Speaker 1: of police is far more limited when it comes to
Speaker 1: these sorts of public health crises. They're not responding to
Speaker 1: try to reverse overdoses. Instead, they're simply ensuring that people
Speaker 1: are consuming in the safe consumption stites and not elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But even on safe consumption sites that people who use
Speaker 1: drugs there have to get them from some place else
Speaker 1: and it's an illicit source. So, you know, in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: back in the early nineties, before they started the heroin
Speaker 1: prescription programs, they had a place that became known as
Speaker 1: Needle Park. It was the plot Spits, a park behind
Speaker 1: the main train station. It was somewhat set off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the city and basically at some point
Speaker 1: the you know, the city government said, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're going to let all the drug dealers and all
Speaker 1: the drug users use there in that park, right, and
Speaker 1: if they caught people on the streets, they say, get
Speaker 1: to that park or we're busting you. And for the
Speaker 1: first year or so year and a half it worked
Speaker 1: really well. The public health services were there, the drug dealers,
Speaker 1: everybody could see that, you know, the whole thing was working.
Speaker 1: And then at some point they just got total, really
Speaker 1: out of control and they had to shut it down
Speaker 1: and start doing something else. I mean, some people thinks
Speaker 1: the Tenderloins like that, except zillion people drive through the
Speaker 1: Tenderloin all the time. It's highly visible. You know, it's
Speaker 1: embarrassing for people who live in San Francisco, not in
Speaker 1: those neighborhoods, and it's bad for tourism. It's bad for
Speaker 1: the sense of public order and public safety. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think something like that might work in San Francisco? Well,
Speaker 1: I think they, as you said, I mean, they've essentially
Speaker 1: done it with the Tenderloine for decades. It's been city
Speaker 1: policy and police policy to push open air drug used
Speaker 1: into essentially a containment zone. As ironic as it is,
Speaker 1: It's not surprising to anybody who's paid close attention that
Speaker 1: when interim appointed District Attorney Brook Jenkins went to do
Speaker 1: her big press conference on how she was gonna take
Speaker 1: the war on drugs seriously, she did it in the
Speaker 1: Tenderloine and across the street from a press conference, people
Speaker 1: were openly using illegal drugs and selling them. The police
Speaker 1: were there. The police walked by drug sales and drug
Speaker 1: use all day every day in the Tenderloin. And although
Speaker 1: they get a lot of overtime and do a few
Speaker 1: hundred operations a year where they do buy bust, the
Speaker 1: reality is there's virtually no meaningful enforcement efforts. I think
Speaker 1: during my administration, police were bringing us on average to
Speaker 1: felony drug arrests today in a city where if you
Speaker 1: read the national news and if you spend any time
Speaker 1: in the Tenderloin, there is a very very real, big problem.
Speaker 1: You'd think it'd be thousands and thousands of arrests, and
Speaker 1: instead it's to a day. And and then the notion
Speaker 1: that somehow being tougher quote unquote on the two people
Speaker 1: that the police arrest each day is going to meaningfully
Speaker 1: solve problems that are decades in the making. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just dishonest. But the Police All Association was saying, well,
Speaker 1: why should we bust them all if you're just giving
Speaker 1: them all the same day release or things like that.
Speaker 1: In fact, even if they were arresting its thousand, they
Speaker 1: would just be replaced with another thousand. So it seems
Speaker 1: like an entirely kind of you know, chasing one's tail
Speaker 1: sort of policy where the whole game seems to be
Speaker 1: about who can be blamed for. Was unsightly and not
Speaker 1: working about all this, and you ended up being the
Speaker 1: guy who got blamed. Well, everybody loves to have a
Speaker 1: place to point the finger. That's that's true just about
Speaker 1: anywhere you go in the world. Yeah, So for our listeners,
Speaker 1: just you're aware of what happened in San Francisco was
Speaker 1: a KIPAI started going to recall Chase Uh. It was
Speaker 1: funded by some wealthy folks and Silicon Valley some Republican
Speaker 1: folks as well. You had activists in the Asian American
Speaker 1: community up at arms. You had wealthier people in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: some people live in the community, and everything started to
Speaker 1: coalesce around Chase of Boudan being the person responsible um,
Speaker 1: for all of San Francisco's problems. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: I think the editorial paget of the San Francisco Examiner
Speaker 1: called it the chase of Boudin derangement syndrome, where anything
Speaker 1: and everything would be blamed on him. Even in Humboldt County,
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles north of San Francisco, the Border of
Speaker 1: Supervisors put out a release blaming Chaser for the fact
Speaker 1: that fentinyl was showing up in Humboldt. Now there was
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff going on as well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was COVID and people going crazy. There
Speaker 1: was you know, this stuff around defund the police that
Speaker 1: got people's backs up, and a lot of things. But
Speaker 1: a lot of the things you had done were not
Speaker 1: radically different. I mean, but your predecessors, Terrence Hallinan Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: George Gasco, and I've known all of them, they were oftentimes,
Speaker 1: you know, had had to deal with the same sorts
Speaker 1: of assaults and charges that you had to deal with.
Speaker 1: But somehow the stuff all stuck with you. Why do
Speaker 1: you think I don't have an answer for you? Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, we certainly were living through really unprecedented times.
Speaker 1: The role of social media and shaping public consciousness, the
Speaker 1: resurgence of recalls as a tactic for those who can't
Speaker 1: win power through normal elections, the Black Lives Matter movement
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, and a whole series of factors I
Speaker 1: think shaped the the particular outcome. And I don't I
Speaker 1: don't entirely know. I mean it's I mean, it was
Speaker 1: also kind of recall fever, right. You had those folks
Speaker 1: on the on the school board who got recalled, so
Speaker 1: there was a whole sense of recall recall. Recall is
Speaker 1: something that California has done. I remember when Governor Grey
Speaker 1: Davis got recalled exactly. And that's the key, I mean
Speaker 1: for folks who aren't familiar, you know, in many jurisdictions
Speaker 1: in California, where recalls are notoriously easy to get on
Speaker 1: the ballot. If a recall does succeed in getting on
Speaker 1: the ballot, then other candidates throw their name in the
Speaker 1: ring and get their name listed on the ballot, and
Speaker 1: voters choose not only whether they want to recall, say
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom, but also if the recall succeeds, who do
Speaker 1: they want to replace him? And looking at um Larry
Speaker 1: Elder for example, as the likely replacement for Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: can motivate even people that deeply despise his role as
Speaker 1: governor his work as governor to vote against the recall um.
Speaker 1: The same thing is true in other jurisdictions like Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: if there's a recall on the ballot, other candidates for
Speaker 1: the office get their name listed and then voters have
Speaker 1: to choose. In San Francisco, by contrast, where it's very
Speaker 1: easy to get on the ballot as a recall, there
Speaker 1: are no other candidates, and so the recall against me
Speaker 1: was able to spend unlimited political dollars. They spend more
Speaker 1: than seven million in the end, simply attacking and amplifying
Speaker 1: criticisms without ever advancing a single concrete policy proposal or candidate.
Speaker 1: And in fact, when people pitched reporters on um criticisms
Speaker 1: of some of the people like Brook Jenkins who were
Speaker 1: in the running to replace me, if the recall succeeded,
Speaker 1: reporters would say, well, they're not running for office, they're
Speaker 1: not on the ballot. Nobody's interested in this story. It's
Speaker 1: a dynamic which very very few, if any, elected officials
Speaker 1: could serve. I've imagine if President Biden, for example, had
Speaker 1: to face an upper down vote yes or no. No.
Speaker 1: He may well be able to win re election if
Speaker 1: he's running against Donald Trump or Rhonda's antis, but running
Speaker 1: against yourself is something that virtually no like an official
Speaker 1: could survive. Yeah, well, okay, so now there's somebody your predecessor,
Speaker 1: George Gascon, who's now the district attorney in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: One of the things he said, and tell me if
Speaker 1: you think this is fair or not. He goes, this
Speaker 1: is a quote one of the mistakes that chas the
Speaker 1: maide that I learned from it, and he will readily recognize.
Speaker 1: He says, is he was trying to talk to people
Speaker 1: about data. People don't care about data. This is about emotions.
Speaker 1: This is about how you perceive and feel, and you
Speaker 1: cannot use data to deal with feelings. And I think
Speaker 1: that was a failure, and by the time he kind
Speaker 1: of woke up to that, it was too late for him.
Speaker 1: Fair common by George Gascon or not and a great
Speaker 1: fair comment. Um. I think it's important to have policies
Speaker 1: that are driven by data, that are informed by data,
Speaker 1: that are backed up by evidence and and and grounded
Speaker 1: in research. And as an elected official. It's important to
Speaker 1: meet voters where they're at and to understand that what
Speaker 1: they're feeling matters, whether or not it's empirically supported. And
Speaker 1: we spent far too much time and energy showing people's
Speaker 1: statistics about crime rates being down by double digits, about
Speaker 1: prosecution rates being up, trying to correct mistakes and in
Speaker 1: in mainstream media coverage about the issues and remind them
Speaker 1: that it's not our decision if somebody is held in
Speaker 1: custody pre trial, it's the decision of the judge or
Speaker 1: all the different things, the nuances, and we spent way
Speaker 1: too much time and energy trying to correct the record.
Speaker 1: And people needed to know that they were being heard,
Speaker 1: that their fears, however connected or disconnected to what you know,
Speaker 1: macro level data showed their fears were being listened to
Speaker 1: and taken seriously. And I think that's something we didn't
Speaker 1: succeed in doing, even when we tried our best. It
Speaker 1: was something that obviously we didn't get through to enough
Speaker 1: people on I'm curious. I mean, when you think I'm
Speaker 1: not imagining if you run for office again for this position,
Speaker 1: let's say next year or some other time in the future,
Speaker 1: can you vision yourself getting really outspoken and angry about
Speaker 1: some vicious killing, about some homicide, about something in a
Speaker 1: way that taps into the anger and frustration that people
Speaker 1: who are piste off at their house or you know,
Speaker 1: just got broken into, or that their car just got
Speaker 1: broken or stolen or whatever. I mean, was that something
Speaker 1: you did? Was it repellent to you to do that?
Speaker 1: Do you think you would do it in the future.
Speaker 1: I did do it, and I wouldn't do it in
Speaker 1: the future. People deserve to be safe and deserve to
Speaker 1: feel safe. And when that feeling of safety had violated,
Speaker 1: especially with violent crime, it's outrageous, it's offensive, it's harmful,
Speaker 1: it's destructive, and we need firm in quick response. We
Speaker 1: need accountability, We need to ancients. I have absolutely no
Speaker 1: qualms or hesitation about saying that, and I said it
Speaker 1: loudly and clearly throughout my administration. But I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: it in ways that undermined the legitimacy of the jury
Speaker 1: trial process, that prejudged the outcome of the case or
Speaker 1: the evidence. You know, there is often a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of political and public pressure after a high profile crime
Speaker 1: occurs to come out and condemn the person that's been
Speaker 1: arrested and commit to punishing them to the fullest extent
Speaker 1: of the law, or what have you. And it's it's
Speaker 1: actually unethical to do that. We don't know the false
Speaker 1: state of the evidence. A jury is going to decide
Speaker 1: whether this is the person and whether a crime was
Speaker 1: actually committed, and so by using the media in a
Speaker 1: way that tells the scales of justice, we violate a
Speaker 1: core ethical canon. We need to wait and see how
Speaker 1: the case develops. We don't know what the mitigation will be,
Speaker 1: or what the defenses will be that will be presented,
Speaker 1: and so I think it's a very delicate balancing act
Speaker 1: to represent and and speak the outrage of the community
Speaker 1: and the outrage that I feel personally when looking at
Speaker 1: some of these heinous crimes, but not to do it
Speaker 1: in a way that could lead the defense to get
Speaker 1: my office kicked off the case for being biased, or
Speaker 1: or reversal or a change of venue because we've tainted
Speaker 1: the jury pool case. Apart from all the concerns around
Speaker 1: crime in San Francisco, the issue of homelessness has been
Speaker 1: a huge one and it's apparent to anybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: I saw it when I was visiting their people who
Speaker 1: live there complained about it, and it seems like when
Speaker 1: people are throwing everything in the kitchen, think at you
Speaker 1: that homelessness was one of the other ones that was.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got a lot of blame for Yes,
Speaker 1: I agree, and we did speak out about the need
Speaker 1: to build housing and to expand shelters, but it's not
Speaker 1: something within the perv of the district attorney. I have
Speaker 1: no mandate or budget or staff to address the issues
Speaker 1: of homelessness, and no law in this state or in
Speaker 1: this country allows me to jail somebody simply for being
Speaker 1: poor or unhoused, even if I wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: even if I thought it was the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: which I don't. No law, no authority, empowers a district
Speaker 1: attorney to deprive someone of liberty because they're homeless. And
Speaker 1: so to the the extent that people in this city are
Speaker 1: frustrated with visible homelessness and they're looking to the district
Speaker 1: attorney to solve that problem, they're going to be sorely
Speaker 1: disappointed no matter who is named by the mayor in
Speaker 1: the future elected by the people to serve as district attorney.
Speaker 1: So chase that the overdose issue. I mean, San Francisco
Speaker 1: is almost notorious in this regard. It's over those fatality
Speaker 1: rate is one of the highest in the country. It's
Speaker 1: much higher than the rate of death from COVID over
Speaker 1: the last few years. Uh. Now, this obviously is not
Speaker 1: an issue that falls directly in the responsibility of the
Speaker 1: district attorney. But were you able to do anything about this? Well?
Speaker 1: I did. I'm back in February. I asked the city
Speaker 1: to implement an emergency supplemental budget to create a fentinale
Speaker 1: task force that could both provide some staff to my office,
Speaker 1: but more importantly resources to our public health partners, because
Speaker 1: we saw the ongoing horrific toll of human lives being
Speaker 1: lost overdoses, and we saw that the tools we had
Speaker 1: were totally impotent to address it. And so yes, we
Speaker 1: asked the city to introduce a supplemental emergency budget to
Speaker 1: create a fentinal task force, and um, we didn't even
Speaker 1: get a response from city Hall. You know, this makes
Speaker 1: me think about a coordinator approach that emerged in Europe
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, when you really saw harm reduction advancing
Speaker 1: at the municipal level, even in cities that were run
Speaker 1: by conservative politicians, And in Frankfurt was a good model
Speaker 1: where you had a major problem with the drug related
Speaker 1: street crime and drug related hiv A s and all
Speaker 1: these sorts of things, not unlike what you're seeing in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. And the mayor convened what he or she
Speaker 1: called the Monday Morning meeting, where the head of prosecution
Speaker 1: and the head of the ops, head of housing, head
Speaker 1: of social welfare, they all were there to kind of
Speaker 1: we deal collectively with how to deal with a multi
Speaker 1: dimensional drug problem. And I wonder, was this something that
Speaker 1: was happening in San Francisco that Mayor Breed was orchestrating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no I mean, I have no information suggesting
Speaker 1: that that kind of a meeting occurred. It may have occurred,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, they were very happy to blame
Speaker 1: me in the District Attorney's office for the problems and
Speaker 1: then exclude us from conversations about solutions, if in fact
Speaker 1: there were conversations at all being had. You know, it
Speaker 1: strikes me that in some of the cities where the
Speaker 1: progressive prosecutors taking a lot of flak, a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's really an issue involving the police more than
Speaker 1: it is the prosecutors, and I think about what happened,
Speaker 1: say in Baltimore after Freddie Gray died, where you had,
Speaker 1: you know, the police basically saying fuck it. You know,
Speaker 1: we're just not gonna put ourselves out there anymore. We're
Speaker 1: not going to come down and respond to crimes the
Speaker 1: way we did before. And I wondered, I mean, did
Speaker 1: you have the same sort of phenomena that happened in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Absolutely, we heard stories every single day of
Speaker 1: police officers responding to the scene of a crime and
Speaker 1: talking to a victim and saying to the victim, gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry this happened you. I wish we could help,
Speaker 1: but you know, this just won't prosecute, and then doing
Speaker 1: zero follow up investigation. And the data is really telling
Speaker 1: if you look at if you just compare this is
Speaker 1: using police department data, their own statistics, the rate at
Speaker 1: which they solved or cleared cases in the first half
Speaker 1: of two during the final months the recall, and you
Speaker 1: compare that with the first half of the year before
Speaker 1: I was the district attorney, the rate at which they
Speaker 1: solved every single category of crime they report data and
Speaker 1: fell by high double digits. In fact, the category of
Speaker 1: crime where there police arrest rate fell. The least was
Speaker 1: assaults and that fell by. On the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum, you've got things like arson, where the rate
Speaker 1: at which police solve those crimes fell by, and it
Speaker 1: was frustrating to see that. UM I had a good
Speaker 1: working relationship with the police chief, but I don't believe
Speaker 1: that he controls the department. I don't believe that any
Speaker 1: police chief controls the department in San Francisco. I think
Speaker 1: the police union controls the department in San Francisco. With
Speaker 1: the recall, once you lost. The next morning, I remember
Speaker 1: the New York Times, the national media coverage. It was
Speaker 1: all about this show is a major transformation and public opinion,
Speaker 1: you know, public turning against progressive prosecutors. There was a
Speaker 1: piece by Alec Kara katsan As. He's the founder and
Speaker 1: executive director of Civil Rights Corps UM and he critiqued
Speaker 1: this front page story in the New York Times basically
Speaker 1: saying it's bullshit. There is no massive wave against progressive prosecutors.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you look around the state, if you
Speaker 1: look at the race that the Attorney general was in, Robonta,
Speaker 1: who is a progressive if you look at the d
Speaker 1: a's races and Alameda and Contra Acosta counties, um, if
Speaker 1: you look at other cities that basically the notion that
Speaker 1: San Francisco voters were sending a message that was common
Speaker 1: around the rest of the country was basically bullshit. What
Speaker 1: do you think? No I would agree? And you know,
Speaker 1: the the the irony and the dishonesty and the way
Speaker 1: that the media coverage, I mean it, pundits went such
Speaker 1: a rush to have some sort of national lesson learned
Speaker 1: from my recall, which was a tremendously unique in many
Speaker 1: ways to a generous kind of a race that's one
Speaker 1: of a kind that's not reflective. It wasn't a head
Speaker 1: to head where a you know, a Republican traditional prosecutor
Speaker 1: was running against a Democratic reform minded prosecutor. It was,
Speaker 1: as I said, a race where it was a yes
Speaker 1: or no vote on me. After a two and a
Speaker 1: half year period in which we lived through a global pandemic,
Speaker 1: we'd uh seen the police department systematically refused to investigate cases,
Speaker 1: and in which a Republican group of largely Republican funders
Speaker 1: had spent over seven million dollars in attack ads that's
Speaker 1: what it was. It wasn't a head to head, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a traditional election. And then a few weeks later
Speaker 1: when Steve Mulroy in Shell County, Memphis, Tennessee, wins a
Speaker 1: Democrat reformer out an incumbent traditional right wing Republican prosecutor
Speaker 1: who had been the d A for something like eight years,
Speaker 1: no mention of it in any of the national media.
Speaker 1: He won in a landslide against a very traditional police
Speaker 1: union back UM old Guard prosecutor. And so you know,
Speaker 1: it's clear that there's a desire for whatever reason, maybe
Speaker 1: it sells papers, I don't know from many in in
Speaker 1: mainstream media sources to um to undermine the criminal justice
Speaker 1: reform movement in this way and to to to amplify
Speaker 1: attacks and criticisms, to blame high profile crimes on criminal
Speaker 1: justice reform in ways that they never ever do in
Speaker 1: jurisdictions where you know, we have more traditional punitive and
Speaker 1: carstral responses to crimes. I think the movement is growing
Speaker 1: in strengthening, and it's going to keep going for years
Speaker 1: to coming. It doesn't mean that, like any movement, it
Speaker 1: won't have setbacks. We will will have some high profile
Speaker 1: defeats and will continue to grow despite those defeats and setbacks.
Speaker 1: So thank you ever so much Chase for taking the
Speaker 1: time to be on Psychoactive. I admire your courage in
Speaker 1: running for office. I admire the work you did accomplish
Speaker 1: while you were districtor in San Francisco, and I very
Speaker 1: much hope that we and the voters of San Francisco
Speaker 1: will have another opportunity one day to put you back
Speaker 1: in office to continue the struggle. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: your work, Ethan, then pleasure to be on the show.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it,
Speaker 1: or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear
Speaker 1: from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories,
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Speaker 1: eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three
Speaker 1: three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive
Speaker 1: at protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Ethan natal Man. You can also find contact information in
Speaker 1: our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren
Speaker 1: Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio and me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is
Speaker 1: by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to ab brios f,
Speaker 1: Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BB. Next week I'll be talking
Speaker 1: with Professor Nancy Campbell, one of America's leading drugs scholars,
Speaker 1: who co authored a book called The Narcotic Farm about
Speaker 1: a remarkable institution that simultaneously punished, treated, and researched drug addicts.
Speaker 1: The Narcotic Farm was an attempt to separate out people
Speaker 1: whose sole problem was drug addiction, narcotic addiction, and narcotics
Speaker 1: was a catch all term at that time that did
Speaker 1: refer to both opiates and cocaine, which is a little
Speaker 1: bit hard for us to understand because they are drugs
Speaker 1: that do very different things have very different effects. However,
Speaker 1: it was basically um what became the illicit market. Subscribe
Speaker 1: to Cycleactive now see it. Don't miss it