He was too progressive for even the most liberal city in the United States. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was removed Tuesday night by a vote of residents. A final result: 61% of voters voted yes for the “recall” of their District Attorney against a backdrop of an explosion of crime in San Francisco.
With our correspondent in Miami, David Thomson
His personal story forged his desire for radical reform of the American judicial system. Chesa Boudin’s parents were members of a far-left revolutionary group. One morning in 1981, they leave their 14-month-old son with a babysitter and set out to rob a Brink’s truck. Two policemen and a security guard are killed. The parents then receive life imprisonment and see their son grow up in the visiting room.
Nearly 38 years later, a graduate of Yale, Chesa Boudin was elected District Attorney, that is to say prosecutor of San Francisco, with the firm intention of combating mass incarceration. He prosecutes a police officer for homicide, creates a unit specializing in miscarriages of justice, refuses to cooperate with the immigration police and reduces prison time for minors, drug addicts and minor offenses.
But in the midst of a pandemic, crime is exploding in San Francisco and the opposition is making this ultra-progressive 41-year-old prosecutor the symbol of the Democrats’ laxity in security.
With the support of the police who accused him of being “the number one choice of criminals” the Republicans raised more than 8 million dollars to organize the impeachment vote of Chesa Boudinwhich they finally won overnight with more than 61% of the vote.