July 14, 2021
SAN FRANCISCO, California—Rapes, robberies, and thefts are down but car break-ins, auto thefts, gun violence, and homicides are up in San Francisco. To make matters worse, suspects who were arrested were rereleased back into the public under the city’s new Pretrial Diversion Program.
On top of the Pretrial Diversion Program, San Francisco Mayor London Breed is “reinvesting” $120 million from the police department to African-American communities instead, which should help increase crime in the city.
When reporters from ABC7 Bay Area asked Mayor London Breed and Police Chief Bill Scott point-blank if they believed that reformed-minded District Attorney Chesa Boudin and the court system are holding criminals accountable, these were the responses they received.
“For me, I think we’d like to see more traction. And this is not knock or finger-pointing. So I want to be very clear on what I’m saying. We want to see accountability,” Chief Scott replied to ABC7.
London Breed responded with:
“I think I have some real concerns about what’s happening in our criminal justice system as a whole. Because I think overall, there’s been a big push to reform our criminal justice system. And let me just back up and say, you know, I grew up in a community where there had been people who had been arrested and convicted for crimes that they never committed. And we see this big call for reform. And it’s something that has been important to me, even from the time that I served on the board of supervisors, but there’s also women whose sons have been murdered, and they want the killer of their kids brought to justice.”
Mayor London Breed completely deflects reporter Phil Matier’s question and sidetracks the entire conversation by talking about African-American people going to jail for crimes they didn’t commit.
Exacerbating the current uptick in crime, San Francisco’s Pretrial Diversion Program just got an $18.7 million contract approved by the Board of Supervisors after an assessment disproved its success, according to ABC7.
By law, the Diversion Program is required to complete a Public Safety Assessment (PSA), which is a measurement tool that helps the court system determine whether someone arrested should remain in custody or be released while charges are pending, reports to ABC7.
An independent assessment found that 55 percent of alleged criminals released in San Francisco reoffended before trial.
“This is a scandal,” said San Francisco Supervisor Catherin Stefani. “They are masking what’s actually happening.”
Supervisor Stefani was the only board member who voted against approving the $18 million contract.
“The data didn’t add up,” she said. “It wasn’t matching what we were seeing out on the streets.”
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