San Francisco residents are upset with the consequences of the soft-on-crime regimes they have voted into office. But these consequences were entirely predictable. They are now left now with two choices: Vote to change them or move out.
The stories have piled up this month. A New York Times report details how representatives from Walgreens told the city’s board of supervisors that the chain has closed 17 stores in the city due to thefts. According to them, thefts at its San Francisco locations are four times higher than the national average. The director of the retail crime division of CVS Health, which owns the CVS Pharmacy chain, called the city “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime.”
Local regulars at one closing Walgreens location have taken up a petition to keep it open, arguing that Walgreens makes too much money to be worried about theft. Apparently, the store is supposed to be a charity. Meanwhile, restaurant owners are upset about the surge in burglaries and break-ins. And in the land of soft-on-crime, the pleas of rallies demanding justice for Asian American crime victims fall on deaf ears.
Then there are the repeat offenders who just keep getting out and re-offending. Theft and assault victims often see familiar faces. Even the San Francisco Police Department acknowledges that it is a problem. The city’s issues with repeat offenders were highlighted when two women were killed by a man driving a stolen car on New Year’s Eve. He had been released on parole in April, yet even after his arrest for car thefts in November and December, he was on the street for that fatal incident.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin deserves a lot of blame for the city’s problems. Boudin’s entire view of “justice” stems from his view that his parents, terrorists who took part in a planned arm robbery that killed three people, were given excessively harsh sentences.
But it isn’t all on Boudin. His predecessor, George Gascon, subscribed to a similar theory of justice. During his nine-year tenure in San Francisco, property crime rose by nearly 40%. He’s since taken his soft touch to the far more violent city of Los Angeles, with predictable results. But San Francisco chose Gascon, and they have since chosen Boudin.
Through years of soft-on-crime district attorneys and other city leaders who hold similar views, this is what residents have decided to prioritize. If they think the benefits of “rehabilitative justice” outweigh the thefts, burglaries, rampant homelessness, and now the high-profile repeat offenders and assaults, that is fine. (Rape and homicide have generally fallen in the city.) But these are the trade-offs that come with lenient justice systems led by people such as Gascon and Boudin.
As progressive cities should know by now, this is what they voted for.
