‘This is a blow to the judicial system…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) In his first two days on the job, San Francisco’s new district attorney, Chesa Boudin, fired seven traditionally tough-on-crime prosecutors, keeping his campaign promise to promote a “different version of justice” and reduce the prosecution of “quality-of-life crimes.”
“I had to make difficult staffing decisions today in order to put in place a management team that will help me accomplish the work I committed to do for San Francisco,” Boudin said in a statement to KPIX-TV.
Mike Swart was one of the prosecutors fired after 10 years as an attorney in the San Francisco D.A.’s homicide unit.
Swart had helped bring to justice Pearla Ann Louis’s murderer after he killed her and stuffed her in a suitcase.
Louis’s daughter told NBC San Francisco that she was “appalled” by Boudin’s decision to fire Swart.
“This is a blow to the judicial system,” Ayesha Louis said.
Linda Allen, managing attorney, and Ana Gonzalez, head of the D.A. office’s gang unit, were also fired, along with four other trial attorneys.
“What’s strange is that these people aren’t being moved, they’re not being demoted, they’re being fired and they’re being told that essentially their services have no use in the office anymore,” Tony Brass, a former assistant D.A. in the city.
Boudin, who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, said after he was elected that San Francisco clearly wants “radical” and revolutionary change.
“When we started this campaign, we believed that the people of San Francisco wanted a different vision of justice,” Boudin told The Washington Post.
“We were right,” he continued. “In voting for this campaign, the residents of San Francisco have demanded radical change and rejected calls to go back to the tough-on-crime era that did not make us safer and destroyed the lives of thousands of San Franciscans.”