[tptacek]

I can speak at length to the tenure of Kim Foxx, Chicago's former high-profile progressive prosecutor. I know some of the issues rhyme with Boudin's term, but San Franciscans can tell his story better than I can.

So, first, no, I feel like I'm saying the opposite of "they're dumb". I don't think either Foxx or Boudin are dumb. I think they're both interesting people with interesting and valuable views.

When I say "basic competence issues", I'm talking about the kinds of things that would go wrong if, like, you or I took over the CCSAO and started managing all the prosecutions in Cook County. For instance: having huge numbers of line prosecutors resign, in part because you totally fuck up the promotion ladder, in part because you shift staffing priorities away from line prosecution and towards internal policy positions, and in part because you fail to sell your immediate-term vision for how you're going to manage the agency.

The superficial way to look at veteran prosecutors resigning is that they're no longer culture fits, which you can look at as a good thing: Boudin and Foxx were hired to change those cultures. But a more practical and immediate way to look at them is that losing veterans puts the screws on your ability to execute the day-to-day of the agency. These prosecutor offices were incredibly strained before people like Boudin and Foxx got there. Which means: there was already an extent to which prosecution decisions were being made not just on justice, safety, or public policy more broadly, but simply on a triage basis.

When you start losing significant numbers of people, you lose the ability to set your own execution priorities; circumstances are making prosecutorial decisions. Foxx tried to put a brave face on it, but nobody was buying it.

What's more frustrating is that Foxx was doing this at the same time as Illinois was rolling out SAFE-T, which ended cash bail in Illinois. I am wholeheartedly in favor of SAFE-T, and I think by-default cash bail is an idiotic system that unnecessarily amplifies the societal cost of law enforcement. But SAFE-T was ultra-controversial in Chicagoland, and Foxx went through all this stuff while people were freaking out daily about catch-and-release. It didn't help that all of this coincided with a huge regional increase in carjackings, the second most important urban index crime after murder. It further didn't help that she was accused of refusing to prosecute juvenile carjackers, and that when confronted by reporters about that, she didn't have a clear denial.

I hope this reads as I intend it to, which is: not ideological, just an assessment about whether someone is prepared to step in and run the office, most of which is boring and just needs to be done correctly.

(I think you can probably look at Krasner as an example of a prosecutor who has avoided these traps.)

[dionidium]

We almost certainly have opposing ideological views, but something I said a lot during this era (that I'm happy to see you hinting at) was that if you come into office as a progressive prosecutor without any plan to deal with the people in your office or in law enforcement who aren't on board, then that's really the more immediate failure. You can't just say, "I would have been successful if not for my detractors," because the detractors are a totally predictable obstacle for which you need a plan.

In big systems you can't always just do whatever you want!

[plorkyeran]

To some degree there simply isn't any plan you can have beyond that in the short term things will suck and hopefully the long term benefits will be worth it. If the existing incumbents are sufficiently ideologically opposed to your goals that they'll refuse to work rather than let you even inch towards them, there's not much you can do beyond try to replace them with people who don't have the relevant experience but are willing to work with you.

"Defund the police" didn't poll well so the progressive prosecutors who actually got elected were the ones who didn't admit that they were going to have to tear things down and start over (and maybe they didn't even realize it), but it was a very unsurprising outcome.

[tptacek]

Prosecutors have no agency over police funding.

[wallst07]

So it's not enough to say that the progressive ideology is a bad plan in that environment? You said it yourself, there isn't any plan. What happens in complicated high risk situations when there is no plan? You end up with bad results, which is a result of the failed ideology.

[fzeroracer]

I mean, you have basically no control over law enforcement if they decide to arbitrarily slow down arrests or protest your leadership. This has been one of the more consistent issues in American politics and you can see it when the police union doesn't get their way they have a huge tantrum and make things worse for everyone involved.

This isn't really a statement on Boudin did or did not do since I don't have that knowledge but rather from separate experience seeing law enforcement shit itself during other elections.

[wallst07]

The flip side I've heard is that LE doesn't arbitrarily slow down arrests due to a difference in ideology. It seems more simple than that. Who wants to go through the effort of making arrests if the DA is letting them free. The LEO will see them commit the same event the next day. I don't think anyone would want that in their day to day job, much less law & order.

It's like writing a PR/MR every day [by hand] and having it declined every day, eventually you stop.

[fzeroracer]

Maybe so, but the difference is that my job is my job; if I don't do my job I get fired. If the police don't do their job they get rewarded with more funding because people see the effect and not the cause.

You could make the argument that it discourages them from making the effort, but they're still getting paid and supported by my tax dollars and so should do their damn job.

[ChuckMcM]

-- When you start losing significant numbers of people, you lose the ability to set your own execution priorities; circumstances are making prosecutorial decisions.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! God so many people don't "get" this. Engineering leaders that come in and create and exodus of senior leaders, same thing. I started calling it organizational momentum. The speed at which you get things done, goes up as the organization gets to understand itself. A bunch of key people leave and BAM momentum goes to zero and suddenly all the milestones you are missing are putting all the wrong pressure on the org to get moving again.

[lazyasciiart]

> prosecution decisions were being made not just on justice, safety, or public policy more broadly, but simply on a triage basis.

> When you start losing significant numbers of people, you lose the ability to set your own execution priorities; circumstances are making prosecutorial decisions. Foxx tried to put a brave face on it, but nobody was buying it.

So, circumstances were making prosecutorial decisions, and the new DA efforts to make fundamental changes did not fix those circumstances, and therefore all changes they made were considered to cause that state.

The office wasn't running. It is not the fault of the new guy that it keeps not running.

[tptacek]

If you assume office and things get worse, that is in fact on you! I'm not saying Foxx's predecessor was good; Foxx's predecessor was Anita Alvarez, who was herself a trainwreck in the opposite direction.

A problem I see all the time in these kinds of public policy debates is that people have ideological rooting interests. That isn't going to get you anywhere in a debate about a major metro prosecutor's office. You can't project out "this person was progressive therefore they were good" and you can't do "this person is a law-and-order tough-on-crime prosecutor so they're good" either. It's a very difficult job. Notably: I think you'd have a hard time finding credible people who believe Foxx did a good job in her office.

[lazyasciiart]

A problem I see all the time is that you are responding to a hell of a lot that I didn’t say.

[HDThoreaun]

The office was running. Not in a way the voters wanted but they were competent in accomplishing their goals. Then the new DA was elected and tons of people left and now the office isn’t running.

[lazyasciiart]

That is not my understanding.

[camgunz]

Yeah people think government is like, you elect people and they get a turn at the wheel. But all the people you could elect aren't equally experienced or competent drivers, and the car doesn't suit them all equally (this is simple systems theory, either your government is highly tailored towards--say--centrists running it and thus is very efficient, or anyone on any part of the political spectrum could run it but it's significantly less efficient).

Or like, in your example (to be clear I defer to you entirely on the facts), not only would Foxx have to be a competent State's Attorney, she'd have to be competent at changing a system that's not ideal for her into one that is, e.g. by persuading existing staff, hiring new staff, etc.

This is by no means impossible--it's called leadership. My hot take, more or less, is that if you get someone into office who shares your values but can't make the office execute those values, not only will you fail but you'll tarnish your political movement for... a good long time, so competence is actually more important than values alignment.

My even hotter take is that people used to know this. When people from minority groups or political persuasions got power (women, LGBTQ people, racial/ethnic/religious minorities, ideological/philosophical minorities, etc) they knew they were modeling for everyone in their group. Is it fair? No. Is it reality. Super yes! Is whining about unfairness good politics and/or attractive at all? Super no!

[JumpCrisscross]

> the second most important urban index crime after murder

Can you comment on why this is? Is it because it's common? Or so visibly impactful?

[tptacek]

Carjacking is a subset of motor vehicle theft, which is an index crime, but carjacking commands more public attention than anything except for murder; this is a vibes-based assertion but I feel like I could back it up easily.

Importantly: the carjacking wave wasn't Foxx's fault (it was in fact Kia's fault). She was in an incredibly tough position --- she also had to deal with Chicagoland police departments that have not covered themselves in glory over the last 20 years. But she didn't rise to the challenge.

[phil21]

How is carjacking Kia’s fault? Kia had a problem with immobilizer anti-theft devices not being installed plus a well documented trivial way to “Hotwire” certain models. This would simply be car theft. It was a well documented (via social media) technique that lowered the skill level needed to steal a car to basically the ability to sit through a 30s TikTok.

Is it that it’s a “gateway crime” to full on carjacking? You get away with a few joy rides in a Kia and get bold enough to do an armed carjacking of someone’s SUV while they load their kids up in the alley garage?

Carjacking is up there with murder for “scary” urban crime because it’s violent and anyone can imagine being a victim. Having your car stolen off the street overnight doesn’t really elicit the same visceral response.

Add in the CPDs general “no chase” policy (mostly a good thing for harm reduction) plus a bunch of largely juveniles posting on social media the dangerous driving stunts they were pulling on social media to really amp up the fear and outrage. Even if it were mostly for show, no prosecutor is going to survive an election if they come across as soft on that style of crime.

[tptacek]

Carjacking relies on burner cars; they drive up near victims, 2 people get out and rush the car, and then both cars speed off. Carjackers (at least in Chicagoland) don't generally post up in parking lots waiting for victims; they're highly mobile.

(I have two carjackings on camera from behind my old house, where we had a Nest camera. One thing I learned from that: anybody who thinks carrying a firearm is a realistic defense against a carjacking is in fantasyland. You don't get even a split second to react; the encounter begins with a gun in your face.)

No-chase is absolutely the right policy for a dense urban area. Every once in awhile where I live we get trustee candidates promising to bring chases back, and I have to wonder what they're smoking.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Carjacking relies on burner cars; they drive up near victims, 2 people get out and rush the car, and then both cars speed off

Oh, I misunderstood the term. I thought you meant randos who steal cars.

This strikes me as the sort of violent crime that should be aggressively followed and punished.

> No-chase is absolutely the right policy for a dense urban area

Drones?

[phil21]

To avoid double-posting, replying here.

> Carjacking relies on burner cars; they drive up near victims, 2 people get out and rush the car, and then both cars speed off

Ah yeah, I forgot about this part. Makes sense. I also happen to have two (well, 1.5 - only caught the drive-away for one of them as the actual carjacking happened down the block) carjackings on my home cameras in the immediate post-COVID era. It happened in a similar manner here in one of the "very safe" neighborhoods of Chicago with burner cars. One of the burners was another stolen Mercedes - so I guess it's likely turtles all the way down until a KIA.

> Drones?

We have giant human-operated ones here in Chicago (helicopters) with at least one in the air seemingly all the time (according to my desktop ADS-B display). These coupled with the various traffic cameras spread all around seem to do a fairly effective job of tracking a stolen car if the police care enough to respond in time. Of course it's limited in the number of "chases" and available manpower.

Not sure why drones haven't made more of an entrance to this space. I think partly police union/labor issues, and partly the size of a drone needed to be useful enough (station keeping and response time) for the task would tend to look at lot like military surveillance drones. I vaguely remember some noise about about CPD trialing something like this, or it could have simply been "partnering" with Federal agencies during various recent protest activity. These are MQ-9 Reapers and similar drones in the class and they have been deployed over the city in recent memory.

I'm not sure giving CPD that capability is a great idea overall. If they end up having one or two drones in the sky 24x7 as a matter of course, surveillance concerns and abuse opportunities multiply. At least with the helicopters there is a large manpower and financial cost involved, and it's usually very obvious when one is deployed in your area due to noise.

[wallst07]

I still fail to see how carjacking rates are Kia's fault. I mean, Did carjackings increase everywhere relative to the % of kia's on the road in every area (urban and rural)?

[HDThoreaun]

Carjacking increased a lot in Chicago, seriously a huge amount, when TikTok started showing people how to steal Kia’s. It really wasn’t an issue at all until then

[JumpCrisscross]

> the carjacking wave wasn't Foxx's fault (it was in fact Kia's fault)

I leave my keys in my car and don’t lock my front door. That isn’t because of the local prosecutor. But it’s not to their demerit. If my car were stolen, I’d still expect them to at least do some work.

[HDThoreaun]

I think it might be because you live in an area that has created zoning laws that make it impossible for non rich people to sleep anywhere within an hour and a half of you. You live in Jackson hole right?

[tptacek]

I think a lot of the cars actually get recovered? It's a pretty fucked up situation; 16-22-year-olds seem pretty clearly to be doing it for sport.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 16-22-year-olds seem pretty clearly to be doing it for sport

If they’re getting away with it, with YouTube views to boot, it is* sport.

[UncleMeat]

Carjacking is when somebody opens your door at a stoplight, points a gun at you, and tells you to get out of the car. Are you instead referring to vehicle theft in general? How is this Kia's fault?

[tptacek]

Answered elsewhere on the thread.

[jordanb]

O'Neill Burke is no more competent than Kim Foxx, and is a member of an Illinois crime family, but she has the support of the carceral state including the FOP. The reality is that Foxx's tenure coincided with (and partially caused) an effective strike/work stoppage by the police in Chicago.

How do you as an elected official change the culture of a rotten institution, that the public wants reformed but is engaged in vital public service who can simply stop doing the work if you piss them off?

I don't know. I feel like so many of our institutions are rotten these days and attempt at reform are sabotaged and/or cause backlashes.

[scarmig]

Make small, incremental changes in the correct direction that will face minimal internal resistance?

A lot of people want everything, immediately, and seem to believe maximalist approaches are no more politically dangerous than more incrementalist ones. They're wrong: prioritization is a thing, and pragmatism and realism about what you can accomplish isn't a sign of selling out but of wanting to be an effective agent of change.

And once you succeed at the first tranche of easier wins, you've built up the trust, skills, and political capital to take on the second tranche. Rinse and repeat.

[watwut]

That works only with honest opponents and that is not situation the world is in.

Successfull minimalist beneficient reforms will be maligned as much as possible, to prevent subsequent beneficient reforms. Simple as that.

[tptacek]

If you're suggesting she's related to Ed Burke, no, she isn't. But I'm also not here to argue that EOB is doing a great job. I'm telling you why Foxx is widely viewed as a failure, including by reformists.

Lots of organizations are riven with corruption (exhibit A: every fire department). Doesn't mean you can fuck them up, at least not if you want to matter in public policy for long. This is a difference between message boards and reality.

[jrflowers]

I enjoyed this long post about how changing the culture in a DA’s office is bad and should not be attempted

[tptacek]

Because that's definitely what I said.

[jrflowers]

Well, yeah

>The superficial way to look at veteran prosecutors resigning is that they're no longer culture fits, which you can look at as a good thing: Boudin and Foxx were hired to change those cultures. But a more practical and immediate way to look at them is that losing veterans puts the screws on your ability to execute the day-to-day of the agency.

Your whole point is (aside from Chicago and San Francisco being interchangeable to the extent that Kim Foxx and Chesa Boudin are functionally the same person) “if you don’t keep your ideological detractors happy and employed then you’re doing a bad job.” That’s just another way of saying that culture change isn’t feasible

[camgunz]

No he's saying that realistically it's a challenge you have to accept if your success depends on culture change.

[jrflowers]

Where did he write about success?

[wallst07]

It read to me like a post mortem on why she failed [opposite of success]. She failed because she was bad at changing the culture which is a core competency of leadership. It doesn't really matter what the people think one way or another, the job of a leader is to lead, "win hearts and minds"

This seems pretty self evident.