{"id":31068,"date":"2022-04-24T12:41:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-24T12:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=31068"},"modified":"2022-04-24T12:41:35","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T12:41:35","slug":"the-online-caricature-of-chesa-boudin-doesnt-fit-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/24\/the-online-caricature-of-chesa-boudin-doesnt-fit-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"The online caricature of Chesa Boudin doesn\u2019t fit reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ad_1]<\/p>\n

Fewer than a dozen mourners gathered near the Gilman Playground in San Francisco\u2019s Bayview neighborhood last weekend to remember Keita O\u2019Neil, an unarmed Black man killed by police in 2017.<\/p>\n

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin stood among them.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019m just hear to celebrate Keita O\u2019Neil\u2019s life,\u201d he told the small crowd once people started noticing he was there.<\/p>\n

Boudin didn\u2019t post about the vigil online, mention his appearance in a fundraising email<\/a> or use it as a photo op for his anti-recall campaign.<\/a> I was as surprised as others to see him there. And while most of O\u2019Neil\u2019s friends and relatives thanked Boudin for his work on police accountability, one vocal person criticized Boudin for not going far enough. Over the next two hours, Boudin listened earnestly.<\/p>\n

At that very moment, his online detractors were going after him for completely different reasons.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On Twitter, a number of users were tagging him in a video of someone they alleged to be stealing items from a local CVS. \u201cThanks @chesaboudin you have created this,\u201d one user wrote. Another said, \u201cpeople are killing people and walking of jail\u201d in San Francisco because of Boudin.<\/p>\n

There were dozens of tweets like this. None had more than one or two likes, but their narratives are shared by Boudin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

To say crime is out of control in San Francisco is a blatant distortion of reality.<\/a> And to blame a shoplifting spike on Boudin is as asinine<\/a> as blaming the tragic mass shooting in Sacramento<\/a> on that county\u2019s conservative district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert. But these are the narratives that voters seem to be buying into<\/a> \u2014 of Boudin the online caricature rather than Boudin the imperfect public servant.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As my colleague Megan Cassidy reported earlier this month,<\/a> the recall campaign has been trouncing Boudin in fundraising, amassing more than $2.7 million as of April 3. The figure doesn\u2019t 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.<\/a><\/p>\n

Boudin, whose supporters had raised just over $1 million as of earlier this month, probably wasn\u2019t collecting any big checks from the people at the vigil, who are still awaiting closure more than four years after O\u2019Neil\u2019s death. But that didn\u2019t stop him from showing up.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neil was killed on Dec. 1, 2017, after allegedly stealing a state lottery worker\u2019s minivan and leading police on a brief pursuit that ended just a stone\u2019s 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\u2019Neil in the head. O\u2019Neil was unarmed.<\/p>\n

Boudin filed manslaughter charges against Samayoa in November 2020,<\/a> 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\u2019s office has pending cases against 11 officers, seven of whom face charges for alleged conduct while on duty.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The prosecutions rely on a 3-year-old memorandum of understanding with the SFPD that makes Boudin\u2019s 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\u2019t abiding by the MOU\u2019s terms,<\/a> which Boudin denied. Both sides are still negotiating on what a revised version could look like.<\/p>\n