The nationwide campaign to stop progressive reforms of the justice system

When most people think of reforming the justice system it almost always starts and ends with BLM and Defund the Police.
But in fact there is a much more tangible effort being made by electing progressive district attorneys. That started with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in 2017, and continues with newly elected Los Angeles DA George Gascón.

However, the biggest target is San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The strategy being used to thwart this trend is hyping a crime wave that doesn't really exist. The method being used are recall elections.
I live in San Francisco. I see paid petition gatherers almost every single day. So there is very Big Money behind this effort. What I don't see is a crime wave.

One of the two recall efforts seeking to oust San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin reported nearly $650,000 in donations in recent months, thanks largely to a single, deep-pocketed political action committee, according to recent campaign finance filings....
The two recall groups have collected a combined total of $921,000, while two anti-recall campaigns supporting Boudin have picked up $485,000.
Bankrolling $400,000 — nearly two-thirds — of the second recall campaign’s war chest is a PAC called Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, according to the most recent campaign finance filings. The two biggest contributors to that PAC were investment banker Steven Merrill of Marco Ventures and William Oberndorf, a hedge fund investor.

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A few viral videos have been hyped to the extreme, and the creator of one of the videos has gone all in.

In a statement to Newsweek on Wednesday, Instagram user sfstreets415 said: "Crime is basically legal in San Francisco thanks to the policies and ideology created by Chesa Boudin and backed and fully supported by most of the members of our Board of supervisors.
"Crimes are allowed and tolerated in the city and residents and criminals all know it," they said.

"Criminals are emboldened by the DA's policies and have no fear of the police since there's no consequences or repercussions. They know Boudin is soft on crime and has their back," they added.

This is all bullsh*t.
The actual truth is totally different.

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San Francisco’s rate of property crimes – including shoplifting (Figure 1) – has plummeted to its lowest level since reliable crime statistics were first compiled 45 years ago. That’s a cause for celebration, right?

Apparently not. Ignoring these clear trends, the May 21, 2021, “California Today” column by the New York Times’ San Francisco Bureau Chief Thomas Fuller declared in alarming tones: “The mundane crime of shoplifting has spun out of control in San Francisco, forcing some chain stores to close.”

Fuller’s evidence? Anecdotes, quips, and claims from spokespersons for Walgreens that thefts from its stores in San Francisco are “four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable,” and from CVS branding the city “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime.” In fact, Walgreens is closing hundreds of stores nationwide in a cost-cutting measure, and the trend toward fewer but larger retail thefts is occurring statewide, not just in San Francisco. Since 2016, thefts valued at $400 or more have risen by 19 percent, while thefts valued at under $50 have fallen by 21 percent.

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It isn't just the NY Times that is smearing him. So is the WashPost.

Last week, Boudin was part of a national news story after Washington Post opinion writer Radley Balko alleged that a KGO (ABC7) report on Boudin's handling of a carjacking incident contained inaccurate information, and that the reporter's news-gathering process was questionable. (KGO has since updated the story, albeit after a long delay. For more on that odd saga, click here.)

In the article, Balko, a criminal justice reform advocate himself, defended Boudin's record by highlighting a handful of statistics regarding crime in San Francisco. In the days after publication, Balko noted the unusually vitriolic nature of Chesa Boudin discourse, tweeting, "Don’t recall ever getting this fanatical a response over a local politician."

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Why all of this hate for Chesa Boudin?
Let's not overthink it.
Cops want to stop progressive reforms of the justice system because they don't want to be accountable for their abuses of power.
The partisan right-wing wants to use this invented crime wave to push a partisan agenda.
And finally there are the wealthy: Boudin has made an effort to prosecute white collar crimes.

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If they take down Boudin, George Gascón in LA will be next.

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but the rubber meets the road at the sitting trial judge.
They are both elected, DA and judge.
First round Appeals courts judges are elected.
The next appeals court (state Supreme court) judges are elected.
Kick up into Federal court, the judges are appointed.
Cops on the street are hired by a Sheriff or City Police Chief that is elected.
I have a good DA in my county, whack job DA's in all counties contingent.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Make believe crime waves to justify higher police budgets.
This needs to be unwound a bit. If left unchecked,
the consequences will become harder to counter.

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Dawn's Meta's picture

but iirc, the Republicans are putting their own in Secretaries of State in each state. It is a great strategie: you don't have to win elections, just be sure your SoS is in place.

We are in the midst of cleaning up the homestead and getting things right for the future. Our helpers: one Irish and one English. Both from the Rudolf Steiner.

We need all the manpower we can get.

We have had so much rain and some truly powerful wind and thunderstorms. Close to 27 inches since May 1st. Run off is good and swift. Our petite riviere drains fast into the real river which feeds the Loire. The quick flash rain events are changing the bottom of stream contours: much more 'V' shaped, with pools rather than wider and flatter. The pools are good for fingerling Trout, Crawdads and Frogs. This is new. However, the late into Summer downpours scour these critters out along with nesting Ducks and other streamside dependents.

All of us are noting drops in Bat, Swallow, Owl, Perching Birds, insects including Bees and pollinators. It is a visible and sound loss.

Too scary for words.

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

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usefewersyllables's picture

@Dawn's Meta

Our swallow population is down by 50%, easily, and we've only seen our bats once or twice this year. The mosquitoes are thick enough to walk on. I have no idea where out nighthawks have gone. The owls and raptors are doing okay, feasting on the local prairie dogs and pasture rodents...

Our tomatillo plants are huge and beautiful because of the incessant heat- but we have only a few tomatillos setting on, because we only see one or two bees a week. I'm glad that most of the rest of our veggie plantings are hybrids, so they will produce regardless. The pollinators have taken a beating hereabouts.

This year's serranos are searingly hot, which is great for me but perhaps a bit less so for my wife... It's been too hot even for the cilantro, which has grown to maybe 3" tall and immediately gone to seed. Well, okay, fine, so we get lots of coriander this year.

No measurable rain in over a month, so lots of daily hand-watering in the heat. The conventional local wisdom (central Colorado, ~6500 feet elevation) is that is 6 months to the day from the first thunder in the spring to the first hard freeze in the fall. That puts our garden hard-stop at October 10th, if this year runs to form. We shall see, but meantime: the clock is ticking, plants!

I have no idea what next year will look like, but somehow I'm not encouraged...

With respect to republican secretaries of state, we might as well have one. Ours (the dem Jena Griswold) is such a very good dem party tool that she suppressed the publication of the outcome of our Super Tuesday primary in 2020 by over a month (Still counting!) in order to reinforce the party's chosen narrative that the unelectable Senator Sanders had unelectably lost everywhere and, being unelectable and all that, should drop out of the primaries (and did we mention that he was unelectable?). When she finally allowed the results to be released, it was revealed that he'd actually won the damned thing by over 18 points against all comers. But by then he'd folded his tents and gone home. Just like California. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

And with respect to justice reform: we're a blue state, and our cops like to kill people. And we keep giving them more and bigger blue-painted military weapons and blue body armor and blue tanks. So that's not going to change much, regardless of which jersey color runs the state. There is a good pilot program up in Denver to send psychological response teams to talk to people in crisis, rather than just unloading SWAT on them, and it seems to be working. Which is why I don't think it'll last much longer. Shouldn't be too long now before they roll SWAT up on a psychological response team working with a person in crisis, and simply blow them all away. And that'll be the end of that.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Is not necessarily a meaningful figure - it could simply mean people have no confidence
that any meaningful response from authorities can be expected even if victims *do* report
them.

You didn't even get around to telling us how great Kim Gardner and
Kim Foxx and other Soros sponsored DA notables are...

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has dropped over 25,000 felony cases, including charges of murder and the alleged hate crime hoax from former Empire star Jussie Smollett, according to an analysis released by the Chicago Tribune on Monday.

source

Incompetence might only be a secondary issue in the scandal at the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s office. Yesterday, KSDK reported that Kim Gardner’s office had repeatedly failed to show up at hearings or respond to a judge’s order in a murder case, leading to the dismissal of the charges and the apparent flight of the subject. Gardner’s office tried to pass this off as confusion over maternity leave, which itself is rather suspect.

Late last night, the maternity leave excuse became even more threadbare. KSDK reports that Kim Arshi, the original prosecutor in the case who went on leave, has resigned after finding that someone used her electronic signature without her consent in as many as 28 cases — including the infamous case of Brandon Campbell:

source

As for SF - I'll leave that one the locals:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU6o2MIuMQc]

Hey, at least the likes of Boudin and the Kims get to rake in big Soros $$$. I hope you are not having to shill for them gratis...

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@Blue Republic like you.
Or I could believe my own lying eyes.

It sure makes a lot more sense that Soros is behind everything. /s

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edg's picture

@gjohnsit

Isn't there a rule here that accusing someone of being a paid shill earns a warning? Blue Republic has crossed the line there IMHO.

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@edg

whether gjohnsit is getting paid for his contributions to defending these DA's. I rather doubt it and am not accusing him of doing it on anything other than his own electrons.

That said, considering how much money is being dumped in to buy these offices, by Soros and like-minded elite types it just doesn't seem *fair* somehow for gjohnsit to put in so much effort into defending the likes of Boudin and Gascon without sharing in the largesse...

Soros Dumps Another $2.5 Million into George Gascón’s Race for Los Angeles DA
‘Gascón is running on a promise of turning our court system upside down’
By Katy Grimes, September 28, 2020 11:23 am

In 2018, billionaire oligarch George Soros funded the campaigns of leftist District Attorney challengers across the United States. In California alone, Soros spent $3,625,000 on DA races in Sacramento, San Diego, Alameda, Marin and Contra Costa counties.

Flash forward to 2020: Soros has already funded more than $2.5 million of George Gascón’s race for Los Angeles District Attorney. “The infusion of dark money in these races, usually in the final months before a primary or general election, makes a huge impact,” Michele Hanisee, President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, recently wrote. “District attorney elections are typically minimally funded, local races. The last-minute spending by these PACs leaves opposing candidates with scant time to raise a corresponding amount of cash to respond.”

California Globe

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@Blue Republic

whether gjohnsit is getting paid for his contributions to defending these DA's.

You found me out. I'm getting rich on Soros Bucks.
I'm swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck.

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7 users have voted.

@gjohnsit

real world examples of blatant crimes of violence or against property you are
presented with FROM YOUR OWN COMMUNITY you refuse to acknowledge their
significance and that there are real victims here - and retreat into generalities and
platitudes.

I am all for police being held accountable for abuses. But I am also (as are most people, I think) for people who are serially committing violent, destructive acts to be held accountable. I'm not quite clear on why you seem to have a problem with that. Or if not, how you would propose to deal with the problem of people being robbed and attacked on a daily basis in your own city?

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@Blue Republic
You'll have to try harder than that.
Put some effort into it.

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5 users have voted.

@Blue Republic
doesn't fly around here.

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@JtC

JtC - I was writing a reply to EDG when you posted this - I hope that clarifies what I meant.

I don't have any evidence that gjohnsit (or anyone else here) is getting paid to promote certain people or agendas without disclosing the fact. If they *were* that would, by definition, be shilling. I am not and have not accused anyone here of that.

The term is not necessarily limited to the above, though - there is also this:

shill (shĭl) Slang
n.
2. One who publicly promotes another's cause, especially in an extravagant or misleading way.

source

Just to be clear, does expressing the opinion that someone is doing *that* 'not fly here'?

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Murders are the easiest thing to track. They get reported. Bodies get identified and cause of death tabulated. Oh we have fewer murders than 40 years ago in the midst of the crack thing but the biggest increase in murders can't be ignored. If you want to kill someone, and they belong to a gang, it's a great time to get away with it.

They call it "the Ferguson effect". Remember Ferguson where BLM really took off using a lie about hands up don't shoot? Arrests in St Louis went down 30%, and murders went up 47%. Well now it's nationwide. In my state we are experiencing a large increase of immigration from CA, especially SF.

Last summer there were riots, looting, and burning nationwide, largest insurance payout on record. Cops were vilified and 2,000 injured. So now cops are just putting in their time or moving to the safer suburbs. Why take a chance of being on some video? Almost all big cities are short on officers, and they'd experienced years of funding cuts anyway.

NY city just elected a Dem former cop to run for mayor, and it's a cinch he'll win as Republicans are a tiny minority in NYC.

The fallout from all this is not going to be any kind of reform. When it becomes harder to hire police, they lower their requirements. The first thing all the public wants is to stop the crime.

Dion Lim, a SF TV reporter, regularly posts vids of violent attacks on Asians in SF and Oakland. She isn't posting old vids to get people angry, but rather new ones as they happen. Ms Lim wants to draw attention to all the grannies getting cold cocked, stabbed, kicked, and beaten. Ya it's anecdotal, but Ms Lim is operating in a target rich environment. https://twitter.com/DionLimTV

Personally I could care less if San Francisco fell off into the sea. They have their own stuff to deal with and don't need my help. But nationwide, ya, we have a problem. Six years of anti police rhetoric hasn't done us much good and now it's all coming back to haunt us.

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@ban nock
Actual verifiable numbers.
Yes, murders are way up from last year. But murders were down by a record amount last year. You left out the second part.
Thus the murder rate has stabilized at the 2019 rate - which is HALF of the murder rate of the early 90's.

Look, if you REALLY, REALLY want to believe that we have an epic crime wave and it's all because of BLM, then there is no amount of facts that are going to disabuse you of that.
In which case, have a great day. Or huddle in terror. Or whatever you want. It's your choice.
But if you want to debate actual facts, then let me know.

[update]
About five years ago, long before BLM became a nationwide thing, I was visiting my parents.
My father started going off on "punks running wild in the streets" and "this is much worse than before". When he paused to catch a breath, I mentioned "You know the murder rate is down 50% from the early 90's."
"That's bullsh*t! Where did you hear that?!"
I said "It's the official crime statistics from the FBI."
My father replied, "And you believe them?!? I can turn on the local news every night and see what is happening!"
I was shocked by how angry my father got when I tried to tell him that he shouldn't be so afraid. He actually got even angrier when I offered to show him the official numbers.
He didn't need to see the official numbers. He had the local news.

This is what I'm reminded of now.
I knew enough to just let it drop then, and I'll let it drop now.

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edg's picture

@gjohnsit

I rarely visit here any more as some members and some essays are far more extreme than I would like. I can visit Newsmax and Gateway Pundit when I want to see that kind of crap. But I applaud you for sticking around and continuing to contribute, and I look for your essays on the rare occasions I do come here. Bravo!

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