On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins stated that the city has “a really out of control drug dealing problem” in the downtown area and “repeated violent attacks” on Asian Americans and “rampant retail theft” “remain issues that we still need to address.”
Jenkins fired back at Twitter CEO Elon Musk over his statements on crime in the city in the wake of the slaying of Cash App founder Bob Lee by saying that “since taking over, I’ve acknowledged that we have a public safety issue. Of course, our city voters decided that they wanted to recall the previous D.A. because they didn’t feel that he was living up to the job of district attorney and keeping them safe. I came in as a former prosecutor, saying, I believe that we should have accountability. I believe that we need to address the ongoing problems that are on our streets. And so, for him to tweet anything otherwise about me or my office releasing violent and repeat offenders couldn’t be further from the truth. I also, like I said, cautioned anyone from making — from entering into speculation or assumptions about what led to Mr. Lee’s murder. We cannot control targeted killings. Those are things that happen anywhere, but of course, I do acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do with respect to public safety in this city.”
She added that since she took over the job, her focus has “been dealing with a really out of control drug dealing problem that we have in our downtown area. We saw a period of time where Asian Americans were under repeated violent attacks in our city. We had rampant retail theft. All of those remain issues that we still need to address. And so, that’s why I said, I’ve stepped in to say, I’m going to work as a partner with our San Francisco Police Department and make sure that anyone who commits crime in this city faces actual consequences. ”
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