Women’s groups are expressing alarm as San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has decreased the rate at which domestic violence charges are filed, allowing many suspects to go free and potentially putting women and children in danger.
Boudin was backed by billionaire left-wing donor George Soros in his 2019 election race — one of several left-wing prosecutors Soros has funded in a bid to overturn criminal justice in the U.S., long before the George Floyd case.
In addition, Boudin is also the son of two members of the Weather Underground, regarded by the FBI as a domestic terrorist organization. As Breitbart News has noted, Boudin’s parents “were getaway drivers in a 1981 armored car heist that led to the deaths of two police officers and a guard, the UK Guardian recalled.” After taking office, Boudin began cutting prosecutors and dropping charges in serious cases, notably one in which a man allegedly attacked police officers with a vodka bottle.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, women’s advocates are alarmed by Boudin’s tendency to release domestic violence offenders — including a man who was arrested on suspicion of killing a seven-month old baby, and was released:
The news itself was crushing. A 7-month-old baby boy named Synciere Williams died Tuesday. The man charged with taking care of him that day, Joseph Williams, 26, was booked by police for allegedly murdering the child. And, it turned out, he’d been arrested twice recently on suspicion of felony domestic violence, in January and March, before being released without charges.
But when Kathy Black, the executive director of La Casa de las Madres, a shelter for domestic violence victims in the city, read how District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office had explained the tragedy, she felt even more devastated. His spokesperson said the woman in the previous cases had refused to cooperate with prosecutors, so he couldn’t file charges.
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The notion that charging cases hinges on whether battered victims will stand up in court against people with whom they’re in a relationship — and may rely upon for income and housing — is so old-school, Black was surprised to hear the famously progressive district attorney use it as justification for dropping the case. It’s true that such a lack of cooperation can make proving a case more difficult, but it certainly doesn’t make it impossible.
“It’s so archaic,” Black said. “Oh, my God. It’s just shocking to me.”
The Chronicle notes: “The District Attorney’s Office filed charges in 15% of felony domestic violence cases last year, a rate that has continued so far this year. The same figure ranged from 20% to 27% from 2016 through 2019. Boudin’s filing rate for misdemeanor domestic violence cases is 38%, which is more in line with previous years.”
Thus Boudin is charging felony domestic violence even more rarely than his left-wing predecessor, George Gascón. Gascón is now the Los Angeles County District Attorney, after being supported by Soros in his own election race in 2020. He is pursuing similarly radical policies, over the opposition of his own prosecutors, who have taken him to court.
Both Gascón and Boudin face now possible recall elections. Gascón’s political action committee recently donated $100,000 to help Boudin fight the recall effort.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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