{"id":13933,"date":"2021-01-26T14:04:03","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T14:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=154663"},"modified":"2021-01-26T14:04:03","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T14:04:03","slug":"a-tech-investor-is-raising-funds-to-investigate-san-francisco-prosecutors-decarceral-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/26\/a-tech-investor-is-raising-funds-to-investigate-san-francisco-prosecutors-decarceral-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tech Investor Is Raising Funds to Investigate San Francisco Prosecutor\u2019s Decarceral Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Silicon Valley<\/u> angel investor is running a fundraiser to hire a journalist to investigate District Attorney Chesa Boudin\u2019s office and hold him \u201caccountable to the people of San Francisco\u201d in the aftermath of a fatal hit-and-run by a man whom Boudin\u2019s office declined to prosecute following several arrests last year. Boudin, who entered office one year ago on a decarceral platform, has come under attack from law enforcement and, more recently, faced heavy scrutiny from tech investors who say he isn\u2019t doing enough to curb crime.<\/p>\n

Jason McCabe Calacanis, a tech investor and former journalist in the Bay Area, put up a GoFundMe page<\/a> on January 2 titled, \u201cHold the DA of SF accountable to the people of SF.\u201d The fundraiser seeks to raise $75,000 \u201cto hire an investigative journalist to cover Chesa\u2019s office and this approach\u201d and has raised $48,000 from 368 donors as of Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Boudin, a former public defender, ran in 2019 on a platform of ending mass incarceration and holding police officers accountable in cases of brutality. He\u2019s one of a growing number of progressive prosecutors who ran a new style of prosecutorial campaign in the footsteps of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who entered office in 2017. Other radical reformers have also faced blame from law enforcement and members of the public for long-standing issues in the criminal legal system. That includes Krasner, who has been targeted by the cop union as well as Pennsylvania\u2019s Democratic attorney general<\/a> and the state legislature<\/a>, and newly elected Los Angeles DA George Gasc\u00f3n<\/a>, who is facing similar recall efforts. (Gasc\u00f3n preceded Boudin as San Francisco\u2019s district attorney.) Law enforcement groups have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars against the campaigns of reform-minded prosecutors like Boudin, Krasner, and Gasc\u00f3n.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In late November, Boudin became the first DA in recent San Francisco history to charge a police officer with homicide<\/a>. Social media pages calling for his recall started popping up in early December. Those calls intensified this month, following a New Year\u2019s Eve incident in which a man who had been recently arrested several times hit and killed two pedestrians while driving a stolen car intoxicated. Boudin\u2019s office had declined to charge him and referred the man\u2019s case to state parole officials, leading critics to blame Boudin for the deaths. Boudin later said it was \u201ca mistake to think parole supervision would be adequate.\u201d<\/p>\n

A website called \u201cRecallChesa.org<\/a>\u201d appeared late last year, although the domain name was purchased last January. The site is run by an anonymous person and invites people to \u201cjoin the campaign\u201d to recall Boudin, claiming that Boudin has not pursued justice for \u201cheinous crime\u201d and blaming the district attorney for an increase in crime. It also directs people to a petition on Change.org<\/a> calling on Boudin to resign. Richie Greenberg, a political blogger who ran as a Republican candidate for San Francisco mayor during a special election in 2018 and got less than 3 percent of the vote, started the petition on January 2, and it was closed after reaching 15,000 signatures. Greenberg is now calling on volunteers to join his efforts to organize support for a recall if Boudin does not resign.<\/p>\n

Boudin\u2019s critics say he\u2019s let crime in San Francisco go unchecked, claiming that his policies have emboldened people to commit crimes by removing the threat of incarceration. However, crime in San Francisco dropped overall by almost a quarter in Boudin\u2019s first year in office, as compared to the year before, according to data<\/a> from the San Francisco Police Department, though the city did see an increase in reported burglaries, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Boudin\u2019s office charged a slightly lower percentage of cases involving burglary and drug offenses than Gasc\u00f3n did in 2019, the San Francisco news site Mission Local reported<\/a>. Boudin prosecuted 73 percent of burglaries and 78 percent of drug cases presented by police last year, to Gasc\u00f3n\u2019s 75 percent and 83 percent, respectively. Boudin charged slightly more homicides in 2020 than Gasc\u00f3n did in 2019: 75 percent of those presented to Gasc\u00f3n\u2019s 65 percent.<\/p>\n

The criticisms facing Boudin are the same criticisms the city\u2019s DAs have faced for decades, Mission Local wrote<\/a> in a recent analysis. At the center of the New Year\u2019s Eve case are some of the same issues that have long plagued the criminal justice system: a lack of communication between law enforcement and prosecutors, and a focus on punitive rather than rehabilitative treatment.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement<\/a> groups and individuals in Big Tech have been some of Boudin\u2019s leading critics. The union representing San Francisco police, one of Boudin\u2019s biggest opponents, ran $700,000 worth of attack ads against him in the days leading up to the 2019 election. Earlier this month, local tech entrepreneurs held a private chat on the Clubhouse app on \u201cThe Future of S.F.,<\/a>\u201d joined by one of Boudin\u2019s 2019 opponents, Nancy Tung, and investor Cyan Banister, another angel investor whose Twitter name is \u201cRecall Chesa Boudin<\/a>\u201d and who has been one of Boudin\u2019s most vocal critics on the site. Boudin later joined the call and answered questions and criticisms from other participants, discussing<\/a> his decision to enter a plea deal with the man who struck the two pedestrians and how the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has contributed to a backlog in jury trials.<\/p>\n

Calacanis told<\/u> The Intercept that he started the GoFundMe page, which says the funded journalists would likely produce a \u201cweekly newsletter and podcast,\u201d after the hit-and-run on New Year\u2019s Eve. He said that the effort \u201cis not a private investigation but rather investigative journalism.\u201d He personally donated $500 to the effort and said that he would not contribute more than 1 percent of the total funds raised.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor background, I have started several publications, hired hundreds of journalists in the past, and was a journalist and editor for many years,\u201d Calacanis wrote in an email. \u201cThis beat reporter would be independent and cover the space with complete autonomy after we hire them. If we can\u2019t find a journalist who wants to take this on, we will partner with a local publication or give ProPublica funding (we haven\u2019t approached them yet).\u201d<\/p>\n

One person who donated publicly to the fundraiser, Matt Billinsky, cited the hit-and-run on New Year\u2019s Eve as the reason he wants Boudin recalled. \u201cI think he is someone with a twisted and corrosive view of law enforcement and civic management. And he essentially prioritized the rights of criminals over law-abiding citizens,\u201d Bilinsky told The Intercept. \u201cI think Chesa Boudin\u2019s existence has a body count.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another person who donated publicly, Deepak Ganju, said he \u201ctrusted Jason C\u201d and agreed with his thoughts about Boudin. \u201cI don\u2019t like how he is running the office and the numerous catch and release incidents, including the one leading to the killing of the Japanese lady,\u201d Ganju said. \u201cWrong is wrong, and it needs to be exposed and stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s very rare that you hear from people in Black and brown communities that have been impacted by mass incarceration. Why is it that tech investors are driving this conversation about public safety?<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Boudin credits his decarceral style of prosecuting to growing up visiting his parents in prison. Both of Boudin\u2019s parents were part of the Weather Underground, an anti-war group that embraced violent opposition to the state in the 1960s and \u201970s, and were arrested for a robbery in New York that led to the killing of two police officers. Boudin\u2019s father is still incarcerated on a life sentence, and his mother is on parole.<\/p>\n

Considering last year\u2019s massive movement calling for racial justice, the people driving these conversations, including local tech investors, should include over-policed communities, said Emily Lee, director of San Francisco Rising, a coalition of grassroots advocacy organizing among the city\u2019s working-class areas and communities of color. The group\u2019s political arm endorsed Boudin and worked on an independent expenditure effort for his campaign.<\/p>\n

According to an analysis<\/a> of 2018 arrest data by ABC7 published last summer, Black people in cities in the Bay Area were more than four times as likely to be arrested than white people \u2014 and in some cities, as much as 16 times more likely.<\/p>\n

The extreme economic inequality experienced by the Bay Area\u2019s most over-policed communities has also been exacerbated in part by the tech boom, Lee added. \u201cI think that\u2019s been what\u2019s been so interesting around these conversations: It\u2019s very rare that the community are centered. It\u2019s very rare that you hear from people in Black and brown communities that have been impacted by mass incarceration,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWhy is it that tech investors are driving this conversation about public safety? People who have extreme privilege. It\u2019s baffling to me that that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brandon Harami, chair of the SF Berniecrats, which endorsed Boudin in 2019, said the recall efforts were unsurprising attempts to discredit Boudin\u2019s approach to criminal justice. Harami said the group would continue to support Boudin\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cDismantling systems of injustice was never going to be easy, and it is no surprise that wealthy tech investors and the local Republican Party have been working together to try and recall someone who is operating with empathy and equity,\u201d Harami said. \u201cIt\u2019s also unsurprising to me that Chesa has been in office for about a year, and people are already blaming him for problems that have existed for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Silicon Valley angel investor is running a fundraiser to hire a journalist to investigate District Attorney Chesa Boudin\u2019s office and hold him \u201caccountable to the people of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,4,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13934,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933\/revisions\/13934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}