[economusty]

Because the local elected government officials stopped prosecuting incident of theft under 1000 dollars. You can steal 350k worth of goods a year and not worry about going to jail. Guess which political party implemented that policy, guess which party those shoplifters will vote for?

[StanislavPetrov]

I'd be willing to wager that most of the junkies and mentally disturbed people looting stores in SF don't vote at all.

[wahern]

> Guess which political party implemented that policy, guess which party those shoplifters will vote for?

The DA election was non-partisan, but in any event the lion's share of Democratic endorsements went to Loftus, not Boudin. Most of Boudin's Democratic endorsements came from out-of-state, and weren't from national office holders. His biggest endorsers were Bernie Sanders (I) and the Green Party. Boudin only won in the 3rd round of instance run-off voting, though he was the top vote-getter in the first two rounds. See https://ballotpedia.org/District_Attorney_election_in_San_Fr...

Also, interestingly, by the 3rd round the conservative votes split almost equally between Boudin and Loftus. Boudin won because of name recognition and mindshare regarding criminal justice reform. (Also, look at campaign money. Boudin led the pack--he has some very big benefactors, none of whom are mainstream Democrats, AFAIU.) Unfortunately, voters tend to vote based on one-liners, without understanding candidates' substantive policies, so many people who were "pro reform" ended giving a vote to Boudin even though they probably wouldn't have if they understood precisely what Boudin had planned.

Finally, to be clear, the only elected government official in the city openly supporting these policies is Boudin. His two allies on the Board of Supervisors have quietly slinked away. Most other city officials, especially the Mayor, have been vocally opposed to and critical of Boudin's policies from day 1. That said, he still receives a ton of support in the media, including from the SF Chronicle as well as commentators on KQED (NPR affiliate), unfortunately. (I'm a KQED member and donor, and SF Chronicle subscriber.) The narrative is that the evidence doesn't show any causation wrt his policies, though the narratives typically use straw men to "debunk" the anti-Boudin claims. To be fair, I don't tend to support or oppose these types of reforms because causation is indeed rather tenuous, but when you're the only city in a huge metropolitan region promising no jail time for these offenses, guess where all the criminals go to commit their crimes?

[leereeves]

This is not simply the policy of a single DA in SF. For example:

Dallas

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/04/11/dallas-county-district-a...

Los Angeles

https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...

Seattle

https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-policymakers-untouchabl...

[iammisc]

>The DA election was non-partisan

I'm surprised you didn't just blame the GOP, since that seems to be so popular these days. I mean our president just blamed the gop for the defund the police nonsense.

In reality, anyone can see that only one party wields any power in CA. And we all know the policies Boudin favors are more favored by one party over the other.

At some point, we need to be honest with ourselves.

Only one party has consistently and unequivocally condemned policies like boudins.

While I would love it for the democrat establishment to also denounce his policies and talk about how awful they are as much as conservatives, the fact remains that even once they do, they'll be late to the party and will have tolerated it for far too long.l

[x0x0]

The local government officials stopped because it's a california-wide law. You can like the law or dislike it, but don't blame the local officials.

[dragonwriter]

> The local government officials stopped because it's a california-wide law.

No, its not. Prop. 47 is a state law, but while it reduces the category of offense for some thefts, it doesn't require nonprosecution or no police response. That's a DA and/or police policy choice, and it’s not one every other place in the state does the way SF does.