SFGATE columnist Drew Magary interviews San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Well, it's a really small increase. In a two-and-a-half-year period, there's been nine more homicides. Every one of those is a really serious life, but luckily San Francisco has historically low homicide rates. If you compare it to Oakland, the homicide rate there has doubled. The homicide rate in Sacramento has skyrocketed. We're talking about huge numbers of people getting killed.I think you can use the word failure for the Sacramento district attorney's office.
Let me show you another spreadsheet, which is also SFPD data. There's a 63% decrease in the rate at which rapes are being solved in San Francisco. There's a 35% decrease in the rate at which robberies are being solved. There's a 21% decrease in the rate at which assaults are being solved. Property crime numbers are even worse.It’s the responsibility of the police department to respond to 911 calls, to investigate crimes, and to make arrests.
A lot of the tough-on-crime proponents will say,"We need to be tough to deter people from committing crimes. We need the death penalty." Evidence is overwhelming that neither the death penalty nor other supposedly tough-on-crime policies are effective deterrents. The most effective deterrent, according to the National Institute of Justice and decades of research, is certainty of arrest.