Per Requested Public Records: Boudin Has No Felony Convictions of Fentanyl Dealers
Boudin is guilty of fraud
If New York’s Wall and Broad Streets represent the central exchange for capitalism, the open air drug markets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District embodies the epicenter of fentanyl deals. The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported the city’s death rate is four-times the per capita rate of Los Angeles. More than twice as many people died in San Francisco from fentanyl than from Covid. Because the problem is worsening, San Francisco’s Mayor declared a state of emergency in the city’s Tenderloin district in mid-December.
The Chronicle’s Heather Knight blamed SFPD for the deaths with an article titled, What have police been doing in the Tenderloin until now? Residents say not a whole lot. Knight undermined her progressively biased argument by citing that SFPD had already made 489 drug-dealing arrests in 2021. The arrests resulted in 23 kilos of fentanyl and 25 kilos of other narcotics being seized, but Knight’s blame doesn’t add up: the SFPD removed more than one drug dealer a day from an area smaller than a square mile, yet the problem is increasing?
More than 80,0000 San Franciscans seem to disagree with Knight’s assessment and signed a petition to recall Chesa Boudin in a June 2022 election. The petition signers believe it’s not the cops, but Boudin’s anti-incarceration attitude that results in no consequences for lawbreakers thus incentivizing additional criminal activity.
To date, Boudin has mollified his supporters spouting the nebulous synonyms, “I charge more cases…I file more cases…I prosecute more cases than my predecessors.” But this impressive jargon only describes Boudin’s practice of merely considering a police report for further legal action before figuratively tossing it into the trash only seconds later. The trash can literally still meets Boudin’s definition of prosecution: where one “prosecutes” without actually pursuing a conviction. To not mislead the public, it would be more proper for Boudin to say, “I consider more cases than my predecessors.”
Boudin gives large fentanyl dealers misdemeanor treatment
On a late evening in September, two Tenderloin police officers observed William, a man who matched the description of a wanted person. The officers went to detain him, but he took flight. After SFPD caught William, they retraced his path and atop a large garbage bag resting on the sidewalk, they found a bag containing two ounces of fentanyl, an ounce of methamphetamine, and a fourth ounce composed of heroin and rocks of cocaine. The officers later accessed a video that clearly evidenced William tossed the supermarket of drugs on the garbage bag.
William was arrested and Boudin claimed he charged the case. Boudin’s first offer to William was a misdemeanor vandalism charge. Judge Richard Darwin objected, “I don’t know that we can call it vandalism unless there’s some reference in the police report or somewhere to a vandalism incident.” The case was continued for two weeks when Boudin’s next offer for the two ounces of fentanyl plus, was a misdemeanor loitering violation. The SFPD seized enough fentanyl from William to kill hundreds of people and Boudin’s “prosecution” let William return to the Tenderloin, to likely continue selling fentanyl. Perhaps the real problem in the Tenderloin is that Boudin carousels these dealers from court right back to the streets. To make matters worse, despite four ounces of drugs in William’s possession, Boudin and the progressives will group him in as a drug user and thus justification for the need for safe injection sites.
Willam, a professional fentanyl dealer, walks out of court with a loitering conviction from DA Boudin
Boudin pattern of avoiding felony convictions
Was William’s misdemeanor loitering deal an anomaly? A sampling of more egregious violent crimes establishes a pattern in Boudin’s prosecutorial vandalism:
· In January of 2020, two drug dealers were involved in the murderous shooting of a woman swinging a crate. Boudin charged the case as a felony and then let the killers walk on a misdemeanor accessory after the fact.
· In February 2021, a photographer was robbed at gunpoint in Golden Gate Park for $13,000 worth of camera equipment. Boudin filed the case as a felony and then let the robber off with a misdemeanor disturbing the peace violation.
· Over a 6-month period, 19 takeover robberies and kidnappings occurred at McDonalds restaurants committed by a single man. Boudin prosecuted this case by allowing the robber to seek mental health therapy whereby his robberies and kidnappings will be expunged from his record.
Boudin’s treatment of murderers as misdemeanors, the high volume of SFPD-arrested fentanyl dealers immediately returning to the streets, and the ridiculousness of William receiving a loitering crime for fentanyl leads to the question: How many of the 489 drug dealer arrests referred to in Heather Knight’s column did Boudin achieve a felony conviction on?
Boudin thinks SF laws do not apply to him
Though obligated, Boudin has refused to respond to public records requests for data on his convictions or conviction rate. He blames the courts’ computer system as the problem. So, I polled SFPD narcotics officers to see if they were aware of any of their drug dealer arrests resulting in felony convictions under Boudin. No one knew of a single felony narcotic conviction.
The facts above and Boudin’s secrecy resulted in me questioning whether he’s accomplished a single felony conviction of a narcotics dealer. Rather than having an additional broad request ignored or denied, I narrowed the scope: name one SFPD incident report for which a felony drug dealing prosecution was attained.
Boudin’s office engaged in a follow-up email exchange whereby I learned they don’t use the public’s Merriam-Webster’s definition of prosecute: “to follow to the end.” Rather, Boudin uses “prosecute” in the court procedural jargon sense: “to consider….or to ponder… or to think about an SFPD’s arrest report.”
After Boudin’s office agreed to accept “convictions” as a substitute term, they have been deadly silent for a month, never responding to my request, and never asking for an extension. Despite the simplicity of my request, Boudin’s deafening silence means either:
a) he has once again violated the Sunshine Ordinance law that requires his mandatory compliance with transparency, or
b) it confirms that through his first two-years as DA, every SFPD narcotics dealer’s arrest resulted in misdemeanor charges or diversion to mental health treatment.
I’m betting on b.
No felony convictions mean the 489 SFPD-arrested drug dealers in Knight’s column are back at work in the Tenderloin.
The fact that I can assert a district attorney, despite the numerous “prosecutions” he claims, has never earned a single narcotics conviction is evidence enough of incompetence, intentional sabotage, and it means Boudin is guilty of fraud. And exactly like Boudin fools the public with the double-meaning of “prosecute,” I cherry-picked one of Merriam-Webster’s multiple meanings for fraud: “a person who pretends what he is not in order to trick people.”
Mayor Breed must demand audit of Boudin’s convictions
We should applaud Mayor Breed’s efforts to make the Tenderloin a safer, less drug-infested neighborhood. But as the city’s top executive, it is her responsibility to ascertain the extent to which Boudin is impairing arrests of narcotics dealers. The mayor must demand an audit of Boudin’s conviction performance for all felony crimes. Otherwise, for Breed to allocate more taxpayer money to SFPD chasing drug dealers, only to have Boudin undermine the City, SFPD, and the families of the Tenderloin, would be a misappropriation of public funds.
In San Francisco, preschoolers are required by the California Department of Health to show a negative Covid test to attend Golden State Warriors games. Yet, only two miles away, children in the Tenderloin must dodge armed drug dealers and hopscotch over feces and strung-out addicts sleeping on the sidewalks just to get to school. In the most regulated city in the country the DA ignores the safety of the Tenderloin’s youth by not enforcing the criminal laws that would protect them.
Those children matter! However, because there are no consequences to dealing fentanyl in the Tenderloin, Mayor Breed’s state of emergency will only be effective if Boudin’s felony conviction rate is made transparent through an audit.