Will leftist DAs get the message?

We reap what we sow, and that is as true for communities as it is for individuals. For decades, city leaders in San Francisco have coddled criminals with soft social policy rather than serious law enforcement and criminal sentencing. It has reached the point where San Franciscans can now download an app to report where they find piles of human excrement in public places. Dog walkers are expected to clean up after their canine pets—homeless humans, not so much. The city sponsors its own official tent city for the homeless (annual cost: $60,000 per tent), and shootings and drug deals are accepted parts of everyday life.

A raft of resignations from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office thus comes as no surprise, and several are joining efforts to recall their former boss. The DA has found himself in the national news last week after dropping a case against a woman linked to a felony property crime because the DNA sample connecting her to the crime came from a sexual assault victim database. That came on the heels of a previous scandal when a DA’s office investigator was told to intentionally mislead police on an officer-involved shooting case. The week before that, it was a lenient plea deal in a case involving anti-Asian hate crime. It has not been a good few months for District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

But should we be surprised? District attorneys are generally elected, and for many years, blue counties have elected leftist DAs. Still, traditional prosecutors have reflected the social conservatism of their profession and respected the cops who feed them cases. But no longer—today’s DAs are partisan warriors for a political agenda. But this trend has rapidly accelerated in recent years, for two reasons.

First, George Soros and other left-wing billionaires have intentionally pumped millions of dollars into winning prosecutor elections in big cities for their preferred candidates. In the words of the Los Angeles Times, that noted right-wing echo chamber, “Wealthy donors are spending millions of dollars to back would-be prosecutors who want to reduce incarceration, crack down on police misconduct and revamp a bail system they contend unfairly imprisons poor people before trial.” These Soros-approved DAs then concentrate on Soros-style projects, like helping the Mexican government sue American firearm manufacturers.

Second, elected prosecutors respond to their electoral constituencies. For Democrats in large urban districts, that means Black Lives Matter and the woke activist corps are in charge. When an urban DA shows up at a local Democratic Party fundraiser, he or she is likely to get an earful about mass incarceration, gun control, ending cash bail, and defunding the police. That is what the progressive base of the Democratic Party now demands.

So we should not be surprised when the new Manhattan (New York City) DA announces on his first day in office that he will no longer seek incarceration for crimes like armed robbery or drug dealing (a policy he later revised). He, Boudin, and other Democratic district attorneys are responding to—if not creatures of—their donors and their base. And right now, there is no demand among the loudest voices in their party to get tough on teenage carjackers or drug dealers. If a DA wants a glowing profile and interview on MSNBC, it’s going to be for investigating former President Donald Trump for election fraud, not for cleaning up the streets.

As evidence, look no further than the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. As a U.S. senator, Joe Biden voted for Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill. Kamala Harris, as California’s attorney general, actually prosecuted criminals, or at least oversaw prosecutors and staff who did so. Both candidates were roundly criticized by their own party for having ever been tough on crime. We cannot be surprised that politician-prosecutors take note, especially in deep-blue states where the Democratic primary is the election.

But the people, much like San Francisco’s fed-up (former) assistant district attorneys, will stand for it no longer. Voters in St. Francis’ city just ejected three school board members who were more worried about renaming schools than raising test scores. We shall soon see if they are equally angry with a district attorney more interested in critical race theory than stopping crime.