Boudin: 19 Takeover Robberies Not Worthy of Jail Sentence

DA Office’s Acquiesces to Mental Health Diversion

More than 50-years ago, the door of the Post Street jeweler’s office that Marjorie Brady worked in was buzzed open so that she could go down the hall to the bathroom.  Before she could exit, a robber snuck in through the open door and pointed a gun at Marjorie.  Silent alarm, lack of escape routes, panic.  The situation deteriorated with the robber parading Marjorie out onto Post Street with his gun pointed at her head. 

An undercover SFPD officer cowered stealthily in a doorway.  Fear, muzzle flash, brain matter, chaos, surreality, euphoria, and then guilt. Three lives permanently changed.

For a robbery to occur, the victim must be unsuspecting, and unlike other violent crimes, robbery is premised on the victim and the perpetrator not being acquainted.  To ensure they are not recognized, robbers sometimes travel more than a hundred miles to plunder.   It is the shock and the complete absence of any relationship with the robber that causes the victim’s permanent trauma.

A Methodically Planned Robbery:

Imagine that you are a young person working the graveyard shift at a San Francisco McDonalds—hustling and performing honest work on a food assembly line just trying to better your family’s life.  It’s 3:30 am and except for drive-up traffic, you feel secure knowing the restaurant is closed to the strange people that wander our streets.

Unexpectedly, you are startled by a large hooded and masked man that confronts you with what appears to be a gun.  How did he get in here?  Is he going to kill me?  The man demands “where’s the big money” and orders you to open the safe, then the cash register.  Will I see my husband again?  Did I tell him I loved him when I said goodbye?  Who will watch out over my children?  He takes $1,200 and disappears into the night.

Stop imagining.  Here is the actual November 8, 2015, nightmare robbery as provided by ABC Channel 7 linked here

In the video, SFPD spokesman Officer Manfredi warns this suspect is going “to do this again and again.”   Manfredi wasn’t speculating, like most of SFPD he knew this was the eighth time the same M.O. was meticulously used in a San Francisco/Daly City takeover robbery series.

On February 3, 2016, the Big Mac Bandit returned to same McDonalds as the video for his 19th takeover robbery.  SFPD arrived at the McDonalds to find shaken and crying victims, with one describing the Bandit as having pointed the muzzle of his gun directly in her side.  Vigilant SFPD units followed and arrested the Bandit at the Moraga/Orinda exit of Highway 24 on his commute back to his Sacramento residence.  Evidence from the robbery was still in his car.

The Bandit was charged with 11 counts of robbery and 10 counts of kidnapping and was facing a harsh state prison sentence.  The Bandit had an arrest record and sources have told me he previously served a long jail term for robbery.

The Bandit’s public defender stalled prosecution for three-years so that he could build up credit for time served in SF’s soft county jail system.  Finally, a preliminary hearing was held in January 2019 and the Bandit’s public defender asked for him to be diverted to “mental health services” in lieu of prison.  The judge determined that there was probable cause to pursue further prosecution, but more importantly, because of the Bandit’s criminal history, the careful planning, and the gravity of the takeover robberies, the Bandit was “ineligible” for mental health diversion.

California Penal Code section. 1001.36(b)1(F)) eliminated the Bandit’s eligibility for mental health diversion because he “posed an unreasonable risk or danger to the community.” 

Had the Bandit had been granted mental health diversion, California Penal Code 1001.36 (e) fiats the 11 counts of robbery and 10 counts of kidnapping SHALL be dismissed (expunged) as if no crime had ever been committed.

Boudin’s Former Public Defenders Crew Take Over:

In 2020, as SF’s new district attorney, former career public defender Chesa Boudin assigned fellow career public defender Kimberly Lutes-Koths as the lead DA prosecutor on the Bandit’s case.  In August 2020 the Bandit was again determined ineligible for “mental health diversion” in lieu of hard prison time.

On August 4th, I attended the Bandit’s hearing in Department 15 in what Judge Crompton called “Treatment Court.”  Somehow, despite mountains of evidence, the volume of robberies, ten kidnappings, and approximately 50 victims, Lutes-Koths failed to repel her former coworker’s assertion that the Big Mac Bandit’s mental disorder was the cause for his well-planned 19 takeover robberies and that the career robber was not a future threat to the public.

Sources have told me that former-public defenders in Boudin’s office’s, like Lutes-Koths, act as gatekeepers to whether any DA opposition to mental health diversion can even be mounted.  And, that Boudin and his gatekeepers are extremely accommodating to diversion requests from their former coworkers in the Public Defender’s office.

The public should ask how Boudin and Lutes-Koths accepted that the Bandit, who was repeatedly determined ineligible for mental health diversion, could now qualify?  The Bandit was deemed dangerous to the public, and now he is not a safety risk?

And though the Bandit’s 19 takeover robberies will soon be erased from his criminal record, Boudin can mislead the public by using his nebulous verbiage, “I took action” and “I held the Bandit accountable.”

Removing the Victims from the Equation:

Despite robbery victims experiencing life changing trauma, Boudin seems to struggle with empathy for victims.

I have had previous conversations with Marjorie Brady.  For the rest of her career, she still was so terrorized with post traumatic fears that she had to be escorted down the hall to the bathroom.  And the undercover hero was never the same, forgoing proactive police work for the rest of his career.  Though fifty-years have passed, I have withheld the name of the officer that risked his life to save Marjorie’s out of fear that Boudin will try to indict him.

When a victim’s testimony is needed the most, to ensure that a violent criminal experiences some consequences, it is the natural reaction for the victim to want to put the traumatic ordeal behind them.  Enter Boudin’s Victim Services, which he claims acts on behalf of victims.  Per conversations with numerous victims of violent crimes, the first call they receive after a traumatic event is from Victim Services.  The victims only hear the “District Attorney’s Office” portion of the deceiving introduction and expectedly fail to grasp they are speaking to former public defenders or non-attorneys acting as advocates to discourage prosecution.

The Victim Services advocates play on the victims’ fears about reliving and confronting their personal monster in court and the victims are frequently bribed with cash restitution to walk away from the case.  The results are victims that lose their zeal to proceed because they are kept in the dark that there will be no penalties to the criminals that upended their lives.   (It was Boudin’s hyperpolitical interim chief of Victim Services, Kasie Lee- another career public defender- that provided the Washington Post with the leaked and confidential juvenile criminal information from the DA’s office in their effort to disparage ABC’s Dion Lim.)

Boudin’s soft touch for the Bandit is not an isolated case:

Boudin’s public defense of the Big Mac Bandit from going to state prison is consistent with:

a)     the Stow Lake robbery whereby Boudin rewarded the armed robber with a “noise complaint” traffic ticket, linked here  

b)    As a prosecutor, Boudin’s blocked a third strike for his former public defender client, Troy McAlister, on the takeover armed robbery of a Mission grocery store.  A major ethical violation for Boudin, which resulted in two innocents being killed on New Year’s Eve, linked here 

c)     Despite overwhelming evidence, Boudin did not file charges against an adult accomplice in the March 12th Richmond Safeway carjacking “due to a lack of sufficient evidence.”  linked here

Perhaps, Boudin’s approach is based on his seeing the similarities of his parents’ intentional Brinks robbery to the calculated criminal actions of the Big Mac Bandit.  Boudin seems to be more concerned about redeeming the 44-year-old Bandit and the effects on his family members versus empathizing with the victims’ families’ emotional pain.  I sympathize with the young Chesa Boudin’s loss of a parental relationship caused by his parents involvement in the triple homicide.  However, Boudin is still free to visit his mother and speak to his father, whereas because of the deliberate crimes committed by his parents, the three victims’ families were robbed of ever speaking with their fathers again.

Thus, maybe Boudin seems to find vindictive satisfaction in sabotaging robbery cases.  But by doing so, Boudin is just incentivizing “intentional” crimes and causing disruption to multitudes more “innocent” working mothers, fathers, and their families.  Sadly, attributable to Boudin and his former public defender crew, the Big Mac Bandit will be affecting more victims in the future.