San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Jenkins’ appointment at a Thursday evening news conference. Jenkins will serve as the district attorney until November, when she will run as a candidate in a special election to decide who will fill Boudin’s term through 2023, the mayor’s office said.
“I have no doubt that the person who is going to strike that balance and work with me and members of the board and members of our public safety teams and develop good relationships in order to bring about justice in this city in a fair and diplomatic way is no other than the next district attorney for the city and county of San Francisco, Brooke Jenkins,” Breed said.
Jenkins said that this is a moment to “take back our streets,” and that violent and repeat offenders will “no longer be allowed to victimize our city without consequence.”
“San Franciscans do not feel safe and concerns surrounding public safety have become their number one concern,” Jenkins said at the news conference. “The paramount mission of the district attorney‘s office is to promote public safety, and as your next district attorney, I will restore accountability and consequences to our criminal justice system here in San Francisco.”
Jenkins, the first Latina district attorney in the city’s history, worked at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office from 2014 to 2021, but resigned due to “mounting dissatisfaction with the direction of the office,” according to a release from the mayor’s office.
Boudin had been narrowly swept into office in 2019, amid voters’ concerns over police misconduct, criminal justice reform and mass incarceration in the city. His win was seen as a high point for the movement to elect more progressive prosecutors.
But his tenure was defined by the coronavirus pandemic and an overwhelming sense among San Francisco residents that crime, especially property crime, was both out of control and not a priority for the district attorney. This caused the political winds to shift dramatically against Boudin, with most San Francisco residents signaling at the ballot box last month that his more lax approach to certain kinds of crime was unacceptable.
Boudin sought to fight the recall effort by labeling it a natural reaction to the election of a progressive prosecutor and linking the effort to Republicans and police unions. But while Republican money did help the effort, the push to recall Boudin was initially supported by Democrats.
CNN’s Dan Merica contributed to this report.
