Why do you feel that you are being targeted for recall?
What do you think is behind this?
>> Well, let's be really clear about the chronology and
they registered the domain website for the recall, the week I was sworn into office.
They literally started Twitter feeds and recall efforts before I implemented
a single policy, and I've been dealing with recalls or attempted recalls for
more than half the time I've been in office.
This has far less to do with any specific policy that I've implemented and
far more to do with the fact that the Republican Party and
major national Republican donors, who are bankrolling this effort,
were unhappy with the outcome of the 2019 election.
And are determined to undermine the free and
fair democratic process that occurred here in San Francisco.
Determined to roll back the clock and to undo the kinds of reforms that I've made,
that I promised voters I would make, that you've been describing,
things like our worker protection unit that you mentioned.
Things like meaningful police accountability, things like reducing
juvenile incarceration or creating an independent innocence commission to ensure
that people who were wrongfully convicted are not languishing behind bars.
Those are policies that are consistent with San Francisco values and
I'm proud of my record in implementing them.
>> So let's talk about how San Francisco voters feel.
There was actually a poll released today that doesn't look good.
It was conducted by a market research firm EMC Research, and
they found that 68% of likely primary voters say they will vote
yes to recall Boudin, that number includes 64% of registered Democrats.
In fact, a total of 74% have an unfavorable opinion of you,
with 59% of voters overall having a strongly unfavorable opinion,
61% agree that you are responsible for
rising crime rates in San Francisco, especially burglaries and thefts.
Considering the fact that the majority, a clear majority of Democratic
voters in San Francisco agree that your soft on crime policies are a problem.
How do you respond to that?
How do you persuade them otherwise?
>> Well, there's a lot there to unpack Ana, so let's start with the basics.
This poll was paid for by the recall and
it was released by the recall weeks if not months after the actual survey was done,
precisely because they wanted to get folks like you talking about it.
We have seen polls that are more recent that put us neck and neck.
I feel good about the progress we're making and
the direction we're going in the campaign.
But here's the other thing to recognize.
We know that people all across the country are increasingly concerned about public
safety issues and crime, that's not unique to San Francisco and my policies or
anything but soft on crime.
I wanna be clear, under my leadership, conviction rates for homicide cases have
increased, charging rates for drug sales and for sexual assaults have increased.
And we are being creative, proactive and innovative in the ways in which we
hold people who commit crimes in San Francisco accountable.
More importantly, empirical evidence data, hard numbers show that overall
San Francisco is safer on a relative basis than neighboring cities like Oakland or
places like Sacramento.
Where they do have tough on crime, so called prosecutors.
We are doing what's smart on crime.
We're being proactive about holding people who commit crimes accountable.
And San Francisco has lower violent crime rates and
lower property crime rates than any time in the last five years.
No question, the pandemic has been tremendously difficult for all of us.
It has put local government and local businesses and local communities
to the test in ways none of us could have predicted when I ran for office in 2019.
And there's a tremendous amount of outrage and frustration from our voters and
my office and I are working as hard as we can to ensure that everybody in
San Francisco is safe and feel safe.
>> So Chesa, I did look into the methodology of that poll because I'm
always suspicious of polls, especially and I knew that it was a very
likely commissioned by the individuals trying to recall you.
But we have to be fair and honest, the poll was conducted in the first week of
March, so it wasn't conducted months and months ago, but
>> That's not what I read in the paper,
they didn't share the poll results with me Ana, but
I read in the paper that it was done in February.
Again, I don't know, but I know the same kind of approach to polls would
have suggested that Larry Elder was gonna be governor of the state of California.
Thankfully the polls that had him beating governor Newsom were way off.
>> Fair enough.
So let's move on to, some of the decisions you made as soon as you were sworn in.
The first thing that really raised eyebrows was your decision to
immediately fire seven prosecutors within your office.
Since then, dozens of lawyers working for
the prosecutor's office have also decided to resign, many of whom did so quietly.
A few of whom did not do so quietly and
decided to join the recall effort against you.
We'll get to that later.
But the argument is that they were then replaced with career defense attorneys.
Individuals who aren't necessarily trained in being prosecutors and
what is your response to that?
>> Well, it omits key facts, including that I've hired nearly a dozen
people who used to be employed by the office left under prior administrations.
And then we're eager to come back and join my administration.
We've got people from all walks of life, different genders and
racial backgrounds and language groups, who were prosecutors in this office,
left and now came back to work under me and my administration.
I'm proud of the folks we've recruited to come to our office, including, yes,
some former defense attorneys, who have a really good history of litigation of
understanding how to anticipate the kinds of arguments that we'll see in cases.
But also of folks who came from other district attorney's offices,
all around the state.
The truth is, we've been overwhelmed by the quality and
the quantity of applications we've received and
I'm proud of the folks that we've hired, a new energy, new ideas.
And folks who are really eager to serve and
help protect the people in the city of county of San Francisco.
>> So I wanna get to some of the statistics that you published.
I really think it's great that you're transparent in regard to your
prosecutorial work, you published data about it.
And it was recently analyzed by the SAN Francisco Chronicle in a piece written by
Susie Neilson.
And she writes that based on the data that you shared,
Boudin has sent a greater percentage of defendants in robbery, assault and
drug cases to diversion programs than his predecessor who was a Gascon.
Who by the way is facing his own recall effort here in California.
Boudin's office has also more frequently charged defendants with crimes
that are less serious than those sought by police officers after robbery and
assault arrests.
They find that the District Attorney's Office files charges and cases brought
by police, finding that Boudin's charging rates were in fact higher than Gascon
in narcotics and homicide cases, but lower for lesser offenses such as petty theft.
Overall, Boudin's charging rate was 48% and it was actually
lower than Gascon's 54% in his last two years in the same office.
And so, the results are a little mixed.
What is your response to that?
Especially when it comes to, honestly, what I would argue are violent crimes that
end up getting sent to these diversion programs.
I think it's insane that assault or robbery is not considered a violent crime.
>> But robbery is considered a violent crime under California law and
assault is depending on the particulars, the details, It can be a violent crime or
a non-violent crime depending on the facts.
But really what's at issue here is, me and my office following through on what we
promised voters we would do and on what state law requires.
So let me be clear about what I mean when I say that.
First of all, my commitment to voters in San Francisco was to expand access to
diversion, precisely because it is a more effective way to hold
low level offenders accountable.
A more effective way to break the cycle of recidivism or re-arrest that have so
defined America's failed approach to criminal justice.
And that's not something that's specific to San Francisco or
California, that's failure, those horrific re-arrest rates are something that we
see from coast to coast from north to south.
So when I ran in 2019, I said to voters, we're gonna ensure that people who
are committing crimes because of their addiction or their homelessness or
their mental illness, are required, court mandated to engage with services that can
ensure public safety in the future.
And we're gonna double down our efforts to hold those accused of the most
serious crimes like murder and sexual assault accountable.
That's exactly what those numbers show.
But there's another two factors that are really critical changes that have happened
in the last two years.
The first one is new state laws, not my policies or out of San Francisco County,
but state laws that were signed into law by the governor which created and
expanded diversion programs.
That's beyond the scope of any one county or elected district attorney.
When those programs exist, judges will often send people to them.
Many of them didn't exist two years ago.
And the other thing that's critical to remember is you're evaluating my record
when I've been in office for two years,
one of which was entirely defined by the COVID-19 pandemic in court shutdowns.
So you are absolutely right.
In 2020, we made difficult decisions not to charge lower level cases,
precisely because our courtrooms were closed.
We had limited bandwidth and we needed to prioritize holding people accountable who
committed serious and violent crimes.
>> One thing that I want clear and fair enough,
I think your point about the pandemic is a relevant and substantive one.
But there's one point that I need a little bit more clarification on because
according to the San Francisco Chronicle's analysis, they also show that your office
is sending a larger share of defendants in robberies to these diversion programs.
Is that true, I mean,
they're basing it off of the data that you've published and if that is the case,
is there any evidence showing that these individuals are not repeat offenders?
>> Absolutely, first of all, robberies can look a lot of different ways.
And in California, some of the cases we see that get booked into
custody as robberies are essentially shoplifting cases.
Where loss prevention officer may have felt fear or where some level of
force was used in a tug of war, for example, over a bag of stolen items.
That's a very different robbery from an armed robbery with a firearm where someone
is physically injured in the process.
Now, under California law, all of those may qualify as robberies.
So to look at what we're sending to diversion.
Now, we are not sending large numbers of cases that are violent armed
robberies to diversion.
Absolutely not.
But, we do have state laws that make certain categories of offense and
offenders eligible for diversion and we know, for example,
from our make it right program, which is a program that's been in place for
several years in our juvenile courts.
That when we give victims the option of whether they wanna see the person
who robbed them prosecuted using traditional tools or
whether they wanna see them go through a restorative diversion program.
The overwhelming majority of victims have asked that we go through
the restorative diversion path and
critically we see far fewer re-arrest rates or rates of repeat offenders.
When young people successfully complete that program than we see
with the same cohort,
people charged with the same crimes who go through a traditional prosecution.
We did that research in partnership with outside independent researchers.
We did a blind AB study where we randomly assign people to control groups over
a multiyear period and we were so impressed by the effect that these
diversion and restorative programs had on reducing re-arrest rates,
that we've significantly expanded them.
And the data you're citing is a reflection of exactly what our longitudinal studies
showed, that these programs are far more effective at reducing recidivism,
at protecting public safety.
And critically at leaving victims feeling satisfied and
empowered than our more traditional approaches to many of these cases are.
>> How do you explain the significant uptick in crime?
I mean, it's pretty difficult to ignore.
You might make the argument that your policies aren't contributing to it,
but how can you show clearly that that's really the case,
like what data can you point to.
And how are you using that to inform your decisions moving forward when it
comes to either using diversion programs or approving someone for no cash bail?
>> Well, first of all, the overall crime has gone down in the two years since I've
been in office in San Francisco.
So when we look at data it's not about ignoring data,
it's about looking at data as you say and I hope you'll take a look at
what the San Francisco Police Department crime dashboard shows.
If you compare Reported crime in 2019, the year before I took office with reported
crime in 2020 or 2021, you'll see that overall reported crime is lower in every
year that I've been in office than it was in the year prior to me taking office.
Now, look, those statistics don't mean anything, if you or
someone you care about have been a victim of crime and
I know that there are still far too many crimes committed in San Francisco.
But it is not my job or
the job of the San Francisco District Attorney's office to make arrests.
We rely on the San Francisco Police Department, to respond to 911 calls,
to investigate, to make arrests where appropriate and
to bring us their investigation.
And what I can tell you, is that when police bring us investigations, we file
charges, we hold people accountable and we do it in ways as you pointed out earlier
and that are transparent, that are consistent with San Francisco values.
And that are applying new state laws that are aimed at ensuring we're as effective
and as humane and as efficient as possible at breaking the cycle of recidivism.
That has so defined counties like Sacramento, where you've got traditional
tough on crime prosecutors and where and this is important Ana.
In the last two years, we've seen crime rates skyrocket in those jurisdictions.
In fact, across the state of California.
If you compare crime rates in the last two years from red counties to blue counties,
red counties are doing far worse in terms of murder,
armed robbery and pretty much every single category of crime.
We've got work to do in San Francisco, but let's be clear,
we are doing far better than Oakland, a city across the bay with a murder rate
four times the one we have in San Francisco