The online caricature of Chesa Boudin doesn’t fit reality

On Twitter, a number of users were tagging him in a video of someone they alleged to be stealing items from a local CVS. “Thanks @chesaboudin you have created this,” one user wrote. Another said, “people are killing people and walking of jail” in San Francisco because of Boudin.

There were dozens of tweets like this. None had more than one or two likes, but their narratives are shared by Boudin’s mainstream detractors, who blame his criminal justice reforms for pandemic crime spikes that have afflicted cities across the U.S. and have no single, easy-to-blame cause.

To say crime is out of control in San Francisco is a blatant distortion of reality. And to blame a shoplifting spike on Boudin is as asinine as blaming the tragic mass shooting in Sacramento on that county’s conservative district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert. But these are the narratives that voters seem to be buying into — of Boudin the online caricature rather than Boudin the imperfect public servant.

As my colleague Megan Cassidy reported earlier this month, the recall campaign has been trouncing Boudin in fundraising, amassing more than $2.7 million as of April 3. The figure doesn’t include the more than $600,000 the recall campaign has since received from the California Association of Realtors, Hotel Council of San Francisco and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, which is actually based in San Rafael.

Boudin, whose supporters had raised just over $1 million as of earlier this month, probably wasn’t collecting any big checks from the people at the vigil, who are still awaiting closure more than four years after O’Neil’s death. But that didn’t stop him from showing up.

O’Neil was killed on Dec. 1, 2017, after allegedly stealing a state lottery worker’s minivan and leading police on a brief pursuit that ended just a stone’s throw from where the vigil took place. When he jumped out of the vehicle and ran past a squad car, Christopher Samayoa, a rookie cop who was less than a week into his career with the San Francisco Police Department, fired a single shot through his passenger side window, striking O’Neil in the head. O’Neil was unarmed.

Boudin filed manslaughter charges against Samayoa in November 2020, less than a year after taking office. It marked the first time a police officer in the city faced criminal charges for an on-duty shooting. The criminal case against Samayoa is ongoing. Boudin’s office has pending cases against 11 officers, seven of whom face charges for alleged conduct while on duty.

The prosecutions rely on a 3-year-old memorandum of understanding with the SFPD that makes Boudin’s office the lead investigator in serious police violence cases. In early February, Police Chief Bill Scott tried to end the arrangement and alleged Boudin wasn’t abiding by the MOU’s terms, which Boudin denied. Both sides are still negotiating on what a revised version could look like.

April Green, O’Neil’s aunt, organized his vigil. There was a microphone available for use, but the crowd wasn’t large enough for most to need it. Among the folks who spoke from a makeshift stage was Jameel Patterson, a community activist who knew O’Neil and credited Boudin for “fighting for accountability” in political spaces that often lack Black representation. Others echoed his sentiments.

About midway through the vigil, one of Green’s cousins, who had spent most of the event pacing along the edges, started shouting that “there hasn’t been justice” in O’Neil’s killing, and that Boudin was like other politicians “who have been lying” to Black San Franciscans about police accountability.

Nobody was alarmed by the commotion. Patterson told me the man was just saying what many Black residents feel. Boudin quietly listened until Green led her cousin away.

As the vigil started coming to an end, Green told me she was surprised Boudin was still there.

“I know he has things to do,” she said. “But I know seeing him here for something like this meant a lot to people. … It shows we aren’t alone in this fight and at least one person thinks our voices matter.”