The Political Fallout of a Tech Executive’s Murder

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Political Fallout of a Tech Executive’s Murder"

Podcast: The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Episode Date: April 19, 2023
Host: Tyler Foggatt
Guest: Jay Caspian Kang, Staff Writer, The New Yorker

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Overview

This episode explores the political and social reverberations following the murder of Bob Lee, Cash App founder, in San Francisco. The conversation examines how narratives about crime, homelessness, and the role of progressive prosecutors—especially Chesa Boudin—shaped media, public opinion, and local politics. Jay Caspian Kang provides on-the-ground perspective and insight into the complexities of urban criminal justice reform, public anxiety, and the challenges faced by so-called “progressive DAs.”

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Immediate Aftermath of Bob Lee’s Murder

• The Crime & Public Reaction:
  • Bob Lee, a prominent tech executive, was murdered at 2:30 a.m., prompting a media frenzy and wild speculation before details were released ([01:16–02:36]).
  • Vacuum of Information: The police’s unusual silence led to an information vacuum, fueling people's deepest anxieties about crime in San Francisco.
    • Quote (Jay): “That dearth of information...opened up this gigantic vacuum in everybody’s feelings about crime in San Francisco.” ([03:36])
• Speculation & Narrative Formation:
  • Tech figures, notably David Sacks, quickly speculated that a “deranged homeless person” was responsible, invoking long-standing stereotypes about violence and homelessness ([04:43]).
  • Quote (Jay): “The public fears that specific population of people far outpaces the actual violent crimes that that population of people do.” ([05:23])

2. Crime, Homelessness, and City Perception

• Trend Over Time:
  • Homelessness has become dramatically more visible in San Francisco over the years, causing both compassion and frustration among residents ([06:39]).
  • Many residents, especially those new to the city or wealthy, often perceive the situation as more traumatic and bewildering.
    • Quote (Jay): “It is a traumatic thing to behold...I think that a lot of it does come out of compassion and bewilderment for, 'How is this possible?'” ([07:16])

3. The Scapegoating of Chesa Boudin

• Political Blame Game:

  • Chesa Boudin, the city's recalled progressive DA, was blamed for a “fog of permissibility,” with politicians and media holding him responsible for rising crime, sometimes even for incidents outside his jurisdiction ([08:56–11:17]).
  • Boudin’s inability to effectively address public criticism—often coming across as dismissive or condescending—made him an easy political target ([10:45]).
    • Quote (Jay): “He became a very convenient punching bag for almost everybody in the city.” ([09:32])

• Policy vs. Perception:

  • Despite following through on his reform promises, Boudin was attacked for problems largely beyond his control; the limitations of a DA’s power are often misunderstood ([11:34]).
    • Quote (Jay): “He did basically exactly what he said he was gonna do...They can make 100 separate decisions on how to go ahead and prosecute these hundred people. That’s the impact that they have.” ([11:39])
  • Many criticisms were misplaced, as broader conditions in San Francisco (like property crime and homelessness) were not unique to his tenure ([12:41]).

4. Progressive Prosecutors Across the U.S.

• Comparative Perspective:
  • Other prominent progressive prosecutors include Larry Krasner (Philadelphia) and Kim Foxx (Chicago), both of whom have weathered some backlash but remain relatively popular ([14:25]).
  • By contrast, Pamela Price in Oakland is facing pressures similar to Boudin, showing how quickly recalls and media negativity can escalate—especially in the Bay Area ([15:19]).
  • Quote (Jay): “In this supposedly extremely progressive part of the country, [SF and Oakland],...the ones that were in trouble all the time.” ([15:45])
• Demographic Dynamics:
  • Support for progressive prosecutors often comes from Black voters and younger, progressive white voters, particularly in gentrifying areas. San Francisco’s complex racial and ethnic makeup—especially its large, politically organized Asian American community—shaped both Boudin’s support base and opposition ([17:00]).

5. High-Profile Crimes and Public Backlash

• Certain types of crimes—those with perceived “randomness” or that cross racial/ethnic lines—tend to become flashpoints leading to public outcry ([17:00–20:51]).
  • Quote (Jay): “If there is any type of crossover between races, then it’s a high profile murder. That’s why these Asian attacks are [so] high profile.” ([20:25])
• DAs face a Catch-22: respond forcefully (potentially undermining reform principles) or risk political fallout.

6. The New Celebrity DA and Public Perception

• The progressive prosecutor movement has inadvertently made DAs “major political figures,” heightening both scrutiny and misplaced expectations ([22:32–24:35]).
  • Quote (Jay): “It’s strange to have this much attention on a prosecutor’s office...the size of their profile makes people think that they have powers that they don’t.” ([23:55])
  • DAs bear some responsibility for their heightened profile due to embracing national media and reformer narratives ([24:10]).

7. National Crime Politics and the Limits of “Tough on Crime” Rhetoric

• Recent political outcomes (L.A. and Chicago mayoral races) show “tough on crime” does not automatically translate to political success, suggesting crime may be receding as the central wedge issue—even as it remains potent locally in the Bay Area ([25:13–26:13]):
  • Quote (Jay): “I just don’t think it is as politically powerful as it was a year or two ago...Except here in the Bay Area, where it’s still going strong.” ([26:13])

8. The Challenge of Reform: Drugs, Guns, and Mass Incarceration

• Drugs:
  • Public consensus against harsh sentences for low-level drug offenses; disagreement centers on violent crime and, increasingly, drugs like fentanyl ([27:41–29:33]).
  • Attempts to distinguish high-harm drugs (fentanyl, meth) from others pose practical and ethical dilemmas.
• Guns:
  • There is tension between leniency for gun possession—seen as central to reducing incarceration of Black and Latino individuals—and political pressure to be “tough on guns” ([31:02–31:52]).
• Mass Incarceration:
  • Merely reducing prosecution for minor offenses will not significantly impact incarceration numbers, given most state prisoners are serving time for violent crimes ([33:05–33:53]).
    • Quote (Jay): “You can't base your politics around crime based on just innocent people and low grade, like, weed offenders...the real hey comes from, well, how do you deal with somebody that you’re pretty sure is guilty of doing something bad?” ([34:15])

9. Open Questions and the Future of Progressive Prosecution

• Is the movement sustainable given public backlash in high-profile cases?
• Are progressive prosecutors effective vehicles for criminal justice reform, or does their political liability limit their potential?

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Public Perception and Media:
  • “The public fears that specific population of people far outpaces the actual violent crimes that that population of people do.”
    — Jay Caspian Kang ([05:23])
• On the Limitations of a DA:
  • “They can make 100 separate decisions on how to go ahead and prosecute these hundred people. That’s the impact that they have. They can't really change the laws around any of this stuff.”
    — Jay Caspian Kang ([11:39])
• On Political Strategy and Demographics:
  • “These prosecutors...do best among black voters and then younger college educated white voters who are very progressive. It's basically the gentrifying neighborhoods is where they do the best.”
    — Jay Caspian Kang ([17:12])
• On the Visibility and Celebrity of DAs:
  • “It’s strange to have this much attention on a prosecutor’s office...you’ve willingly created these celebrities, right?”
    — Jay Caspian Kang ([23:55])
• On Systemic Change vs. Individual Policy:
  • “Is this really the best way to pass reform in the criminal justice system? Is there something intrinsic about the position of the progressive prosecutor that is going to lead to public revolt?”
    — Jay Caspian Kang ([35:16])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• The Initial Information Vacuum and Public Reaction: [02:36–05:57]
• Homelessness Trends and Frustration: [06:39–08:22]
• Chesa Boudin as Scapegoat: [08:22–11:17]
• Progressive Prosecutor Movement: Comparisons and Challenges: [13:56–16:35]
• Demographics and Political Dynamics: [17:00–20:51]
• Role and Public Perception of DAs: [22:32–24:35]
• Crime, Media, and National Politics: [25:13–27:41]
• Drugs, Guns, and Mass Incarceration: [27:41–33:53]
• Effectiveness and Limits of Progressive Prosecution: [33:53–36:11]

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Conclusion

The episode offers a nuanced look at the intersection of high-profile crime, homelessness, urban anxiety, and political dynamics in San Francisco—raising questions about the role and sustainability of progressive prosecutors amid public and media pressures. Jay Caspian Kang’s insights highlight both the limitations and perils of criminal justice reform when thrust into the national spotlight, and the movement’s uncertain future in the face of political backlash, demographic divides, and media narratives.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

On April 4, Bob Lee, a multimillionaire tech founder, was stabbed to death in San Francisco at 2:30 in the morning. Before anything was really known about the crime. People blamed Chesa Boudin, the former DA who was ousted last summer, for a general sense of danger in the city. Boudin was one of the more high profile and promising figures in a wave of progressive district attorneys who ran on platforms of criminal justice reform. But he became associated with lawlessness and disorder, leading to his eventual recall. Where has that left the progressive prosecutor movement? You're listening to the Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt, a senior editor at the New Yorker. Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer at the New Yorker who lives in the Bay Area and has written extensively about race and politics. You'll hear from him today about the narratives around crime and homelessness and about the stop and start attempts to fix a broken system. So Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App, was recently stabbed to death in San Francisco, which kicked off. You know yet another news cycle about violent crime in progressive cities. Jay what exactly happened to Lee and how does his murder either fit into or complicate the existing narratives about San Francisco being a lawless hellhole?

[C]

You know, what happened to him was that it seems, or at least this is what the story from the police is and also the story in the press was that he got involved with somebody that he knew, you know, like somebody within that community of tech founders and people who work in, I guess like the financial world of, of tech, which he was part of. They had a late night encounter and it ended up with the one man stabbing Bob Lee, and that he died tragically because of that. I live here in the Bay Area and there had been about a week in which the San Francisco Police Department and the prosecutor's office did not really give out any information on what had happened. Like it was real radio silence in a way that was unusual. And to me, or I think to people who might have some more experience with crime reporting, like that generally means that they're kind of looking for a person, you know, like a specific person, and they don't want that person, you know, to run away basically. And that generally when they don't know that much, that's when they release all the info that they know because they're hoping that somebody can help them. Right? But when they generally know what's happening, then they don't release that much information. Now that isn't something that people in the public should know at any point, and it's not something that you would expect the public to know. But here in San Francisco, I think what it was was that that dearth of information that was put out opened up this gigantic vacuum in everybody's feelings about crime in San Francisco, regardless of what side they were on. Right. They all came flooding into that breach. And because it was a high profile murder, you know, like this was a, you know, this well known tech executive in a city where those people are, you know, de facto the celebrities. I think that that sort of made it such a huge story and made it much bigger of a story than one would expect from just, you know, one murder in a city where, you know, like all American cities, there are a lot of them.

[B]

What were people speculating had happened to Lee? I mean, was it was the theory that was being promoted of his murder just, you know, this was a random act of violence and, you know, indicative of the kind of violence that happens on the streets of San Francisco all the time?

[C]

Well, I think it depended on who you ask, but I think within the tech founder community, especially somebody like David Sacks, for example, who's a big VC investor and a big figure here in the Bay Area. He was speculating that it would have been a deranged homeless person. Those are his words. Right. And I think that that's what most people thought because they couldn't think of why at 3am this man would be stabbed unless it was random. I think that people, somewhat, justifiably, are scared of going out because there is quite a bit of homelessness in San Francisco. If you walk in downtown San Francisco, you walk in the Tenderloin, you walk in parts of the Mission, you will see people who are not healthy, not mentally healthy, but the level to which the public fears that specific population of people, like, far outpaces the actual violent crimes that that population of people do. The reason why they're scared of it is because it feels totally random. Right. It's not something that you can really control if you're just walking by somebody and they just decide to stab you. And I think all of that sort of came together and made this particularly toxic and full of speculation.

[B]

How long have you lived in the Bay Area?

[C]

I lived in San Francisco from 2004, I believe, to 2011 or 2010, and then I recently moved back in 2020, right before the pandemic. So much of my adult life has been here. Yeah.

[B]

Basically, I'm wondering if homelessness and crime have gotten worse since you've been in San Francisco. Like, does it seem like there's both been an increase in crime and an increase in homelessness, and people are kind of conflating these two things and assuming that it's all of the homeless people who are committing the crimes, or has there mostly just been an increase in homelessness and that has change the way that people view the city and just general perceptions of safety.

[C]

There has definitely been an increase in visible homelessness since I first moved to San Francisco in 2004. It's bad, right? The problem is real. The amount of homelessness you see in underpasses, you know, under the freeway, the amount you see on the side of the road, it has exploded in a way that is shocking to people who have lived here for a long time, but also extremely shocking to people who have just moved here. Right. Because they haven't seen, especially they come from the east coast, where they haven't seen really seen anything like this before. And I do think for people, it is a traumatic thing to behold. Like, I don't think that the response is exclusively one of, like, revulsion and, like, go get a job. I don't think that's it. Right. Like, I think that a lot of it does come out of a compassion and a bewilderment for. Well, how is this possible? Right? I don't know. I just think a lot of people are in that space, right? Especially if they're younger, maybe especially if they, you know, are wealthy and they sort of see San Francisco or like, what they think the potential for the city is. And they, they feel like the city government isn't doing enough to address these problems. There's just a huge frustration that's built up about that. And, you know, there are many strategies or ways in which sort of progressive lawmakers try and deal with that type of frustration. One is just flat out denial, which I, you know, think is silly and misguided. And the other is to try and present, like, facts as they come. But I think the facts are always going to lose out over the sort of anecdotal or even visceral personal experience of seeing somebody on the street in a state where you wonder if they're going to live through the night. That's a powerful experience. And people in the Bay Area, like, if they live in certain neighborhoods in San Francisco, they do see it every day. Like, there's, there's no way to deny that that's true.

[B]

I mean, there were a lot of, like, high profile individuals who were, you know, speculating certain things about Bob Lee's murder in the aftermath before the information came out of, you know, who had actually killed him. And the fact that this was another person in the tech world. Were those people. I mean, is there a sense that they're genuinely concerned about safety and anxious about crime and encounters with crime, or does it seem like they had a political agenda to push? I, I noticed a lot of people invoking, you know, Chesa Boudin, for example, when, when talking about the, you know, Bob Lee's murder, but also just crime in general.

[C]

I think that there's a, it's a mix of both. Right. Like, I think that if you really, I don't know, we're somehow able to plumb deep into their hearts. There is a sincere concern about crime in the city and there is a sincere desire to do something about the homeless population. Right now. I don't know if you would find much compassion for the homeless population there. But like, I don't think that this is all like some way to do electoral politics, nor do I think it's a way to sort of move in some sort of revanchist, like libertarian politics. Right. The Frustration. And the reason why it all centers around Chesa is because I think that he, for whatever reason, became sort of the centerpiece for all progressive politics around crime, and that he became a very convenient punching bag for almost everybody in the city. Talking about Asian populations, you're talking about Latino populations, talking about black populations, you're talking about white populations who have lived in the Bay Area for a long time, you're talking about white and Asian populations that generally work in the tech industry, right? Everybody had a certain grievance with the way that the city got through Covid, right? And some of the conditions of homelessness that got worse. And, you know, the city officials in San Francisco are very savvy. London Breed is a very smart person. You know, the mayor of San Francisco is very smart. And every politician in the area dumped it all on Chesa, right? Stuff that wasn't even his fault. Like, there would be a crime in Marin county, for example, right, which is across the Golden Gate Bridge, and people would be blaming it on Chesa. You know, he's like, oh, he's created, like, a Bay Area wide fog of permissibility, right? And his response is, you know, his responses to all that were very poor. You know, like, he was always dismissive. His way of dealing with people was always like, oh, you're bad, you know, and I'm the smart one and I'm the good one. And. And, like, you don't know what you're talking about. And, like, that just doesn't work. Right? Like, especially when you're talking about, like, murders and stuff like that. And that just accelerated it. And then it ended in his recall. You know, I think that it probably created a lot of problems, honestly, for, you know, the broader movement of these progressive prosecutors, of which he is one, you know, and certainly the most talked about.

[B]

So obviously, like, the optics were not great. He wasn't very good at responding to these critiques, as you said. But in terms of, like, his actual policies, did he do anything that conflicted with what he promised or that went beyond the progressive policies that he was sort of known for when he was brought into the job?

[C]

Oh, no. I mean, I think that one thing that he can always hang his hat on is that he did basically exactly what he said he was gonna do. The conditions around how those were accepted or how those were perceived, that's what changed. But he didn't really change much. I mean, one of the things I think that the progressive prosecutor movement should think about is that. And this was something that Chase would sometimes say to defend himself, which is that they don't really have that much power to change anything. What they can do is on a case by case, individual basis, let's say that there's 100 people in front of them in any given month or something like that, Right. They can make 100 separate decisions on how to go ahead and prosecute these hundred people. That's the impact that they have. They can't really change the laws around any of this stuff, you know, like, they can just make suggestions and they can just do their sort of thing on an individual, case by case basis. And when you think of it in that way, yeah, he basically did what he said.

[B]

It does seem like people are still blaming him for things, even though he is no longer the da. How does that work?

[C]

Well, you saw that when Bob Lee was murdered, and people thought that it was a random attack by a homeless person. Right. You saw that. People say stuff like, these are the conditions that Chesa Boudin created. Like, this is the chaos that he created. San Francisco, I do think in terms of property crime, in terms of homelessness, in terms of just kind of like, when you walk around, you're just like, wow, this is not great. It has gotten worse. But almost none of that has anything to do with Chesa, you know, and you can disagree with all of his policies, but, like, you know, the Tenderloin was the tenderloin when it was the Tenderloin, right? Like, it didn't start three years ago. I don't know. I find that a lot of the blaming to be pretty specious. And I honestly think that it's distracting in a way where I do think there is, like, a very good critique to be made of the progressive prosecutor movement. But when the spray on the attacks is so wide, it just feels ridiculous. And that I think that it's actually a kind of ineffective way to critique this movement. Because I think other than people who are always already predisposed to hate this guy, Right. Like, they're just gonna find that explanation to be kind of ridiculous.

[B]

I mean, let's. Yeah. So just in general, the progressive prosecutor movement, I mean, obviously Boudin has become kind of the face of it in a way, even though he's no longer the DA of San Francisco. Who are the other major figures? Obviously, there's Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, but who are the other ones and how have they been doing? Have they managed to sort of avoid the backlash that Boudin saw, or are they all kind of experiencing the same thing now?

[C]

Well, there's Kim Fox, who is in Chicago. Right. Cook County. And then, yeah, like you said, there's Krasner, who is in Philadelphia. Those are the two big ones. Outside of Chase, I think Fox and Krasner are very popular. I think they both won reelection. They are supported by the population. And even though there are little, little bits of backlash in a similar way that there was to Chase, it to Krasner sort of quickly died down. Like it was like a two month thing instead of like a multi year thing. Right now, I think the person who is emerging as somebody who is going to go through a lot of the same things that Chase went through is across the bay in Oakland and Alameda County. That's where I live. Pamela Price. And Pamela Price is a career civil rights attorney. She was a public defender. And there's already grumblings of recalls. There are judges that are rejecting her, what they see to be very lenient plea deals that she's striking with people. A lot of people from her office are quitting. These are like sort of career prosecutors who, you know, regardless who gets elected, DA are going to stay in the prosecutor's office. A lot of those people have quit. And what they've done is that they've all started talking to the local media and the local media knowing, I think that Chaser was like a huge story for them. Right. And crime is a huge story because local news is basically just crime reporting. Yeah, they really picked it up. And so Pamela Price right now, if you live in the East Bay, she is in the news constantly and you can sort of see the discontent rising. And I don't know, I find it very interesting that the two people in this supposedly extremely progressive part of the country are the ones that were in trouble all the time. Right. And then people like Kim Fox or in Chicago, where obviously Chicago is like what, the last 10 years that anyone nationally talks about Chicago, they're probably talking about crime, right? Yeah. And in Philadelphia, like those ones are pretty popular. Right. And so there's a mixed bag of how these prosecutors are regarded by the public they serve.

[B]

I mean, do you think that it's because the media is just reporting on these people so negatively that then the public, you know, is kind of forced to change their minds about these people who they, they voted in? Or do you think that people are voting in progressive prosecutors because, you know, they run on platform that sounds good. But then in practice, I mean, do you think that voters just don't really know what they're getting into when they elect a progressive prosecutor? Or is there just something else that's happening there?

[C]

Well, I think that the answer is partially demographic in nature. This is how I guess I personally think about some of these problems. And so I could be wrong, but this is my sense of it, which is that these prosecutors, progressive politicians kind of in general tend to do best among black voters and then younger college educated white voters who are very progressive. It's basically the gentrifying neighborhoods is where they do the best. Right? Entire left electoral strategies are hashed around this. San Francisco does not have a large black population, and the younger white population is pretty progressive. And. And the older white population is very progressive. Much more so, I think, than the younger population. And I just think that he kind of ran out of support at some point for people who are going to always support him. San Francisco also is one third Asian, which is unusual for large cities. And that his handling of the Asian attacks, two of which the most high profile sort of nationwide viral attacks against Asian people were, Were in San Francisco. His sort of tone deafness in talking about some of that stuff, right? His sort of quickness to blame parts of the community for being mad and for not sort of understanding what the whole point of his whole thing was. Just as somebody who politics generally aligns somewhat with Chase's, like, I don't know, like, I think he just did a poor job communicating in that sort of way. And that what he didn't realize is that, like, these groups are organized. They've been organized for decades, right? There's longstanding political organizing within the Chinese American community, especially in San Francisco, and that they mobilize very quickly and help lead his recall. Oakland, of course, has a much longer standing and much more large black population than San Francisco. But over the past 30 years, it has been declining rapidly in number. And what has replaced it, much like San Francisco, is Latino and Asian immigrants. Asian immigrants are the fastest growing population in Alameda County. And I think that Pamela Price is sort of coming up against the same thing. Her big case, the one that is causing her the most problem, is a murder of a kid who is about 2 years old in a freeway shooting, right? And much like Bob Lee, like the terrifying thing about a freeway shooting, which is when two guys just start shooting each other and you get caught in a crossfire, is that it's random and it's terrifying. It's horrible tragedy that this kid died in this way. And so her slowness in bringing charges against the three men that they caught for this crime, the idea and the perception amongst people within the Chinese American community. That she would be lenient against these people, I think has driven a ton of discontent. And because it happened literally just crossed the bridge from San Francisco where all these same people are part of the same organizations, that media outlets are exactly the same. It's not like Oakland has its own TV network. We're just seeing a repeat of it. And I think that it's probably going to end in the same result. Right. With a recall election. I don't know if it'll be successful or not, but I think it's definitely going to happen.

[B]

So do you think that if both of these DAs had sort of handled these high profile incidents of violence against Asian Americans more elegantly or with more compassion, that, you know, maybe there would be less backlash against them? Like, does there seem to be an issue with specifically with them dealing with certain communities and responding to them or dealing with like these really high profile incidents that blow up and then those are just the things that cause it to all come crashing down.

[C]

I think for Chesa, absolutely. I think maybe Pamela Price was kind of done in by what the perception was of Chesa and his handling of crime, like within immigrant communities who are much more conservative, I think, than the black communities and black voters in the Bay Area. And I think that maybe her fate was already sealed even though she won her election. Right? It was a very close election. I think the second there was a crime like this, it was going to be handled in the same way unless she came out and immediately was like, I'm throwing the book at these, at these people. And I guess the question that I had was just like, okay, well if she just does that, right? High profile murders are generally in the Bay Area. It's the same thing as everywhere else. Like if the assailant is black and the victim is black, it is not a high profile murder most of the time. Right? If there is any type of crossover between races, then it's a high profile murder. That's why these Asian attacks are high profile murder. Then are you really being progressive at that point? You're just like, well, I'm only gonna throw the book at murderers who kill non black people. Right? Or I'm only gonna do it when it's like, when it's these specific demographics and if it's like a white guy who works in tech killing another white guy who works in tech, then that doesn't count. It only counts when it's this specific thing. It seems horrible to do that. And so I do sympathize with them on that account. Right. Where I just don't think that you can create a tiered system where you're just like, always thinking about public relations and the way that you handle your job. And yet if you don't, I think you're sort of doomed.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, maybe this is. Has always been the case and I'm just new to this conversation, but the idea of like, a DA having just like a really strong public presence and needing to be kind of charismatic or to deal with certain communities a way that, you know, like a governor would need to is. That feels new to me. Or at least it feels newer in the past few years.

[C]

Yeah. I find it also to be extremely weird. You know, it's like, who are you.

[B]

Voting for for da? I mean, was that.

[C]

Yeah. When I was growing up in North Carolina, I knew who the district attorney was because he lives like two houses down from me. He was like our neighbor. But that was the only reason. Right. Like, it's not like these are high profile elected officials. Like, you generally don't know who it is unless you've committed a crime. And I think that that is one of the unintended consequences of this national progressive prosecutor movement is that all these people turn into huge political figures in their city in ways that their predecessors were not. Right. I mean, Chase had how many magazine profiles written about him nationally? How much of a national name was the District Attorney of San Francisco compared to, say, the mayor of San Francisco? And I think it's strange to have this much attention on a prosecutor's office because as I mentioned before, on a lot of this stuff, their hands are tied. And yet I think the size of their profile makes people think that they have powers that they don't. And I think that they get blamed for things that they shouldn't get blamed for. But then at the same time, it's just like, well, you've willingly created these celebrities, right? Like, you can say no to doing national media profiles. You can ward off this idea that you're like this merry band of Yale educated super lawyers who have decided to commit their lives to, like, changing the world. Like, those are all narratives they put forward. So in that way, I do think they should bear some of the brunt of that. Right. It's not like this all happened to them. Like, they pushed a lot, too.

[B]

You'll hear more from Jay Caspian King in just a moment. America is changing, and so is the world.

[C]

But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[B]

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So earlier this week, Jim Jordan and House Republicans held a field hearing about violent crime in New York City directed at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA who recently indicted Trump. And, you know, a lot of the narratives of, you know, violent crime in San Francisco also kind of apply to New York. There's this question of, you know, is there a crime epidemic here? Is it just the fact that the city hasn't really recovered since the pandemic and everything feels worse and there are more homeless people? But it does seem like, you know, House Republicans are sort of seizing on crime as like this perfect partisan wedge. And I'm wondering if you feel like this is like crime has always kind of functioned in that way and served that purpose, especially, you know, given all your years in San Francisco, like, if it's something that, you know, politicians there have long talked about and used to bring their opponents down or whether the focus on crime, you know, almost feels new or renewed, you know, in the past few years, I don't think it's.

[C]

Always a centerpiece of the way that people are talking. I think that what happened was that there was an actual pretty significant murder increase during the years of the pandemic that is now going down. And I think that if it continues to go down, I do think that it will become a much less central part of local and national discourse and politics. I don't think it is making the political hay that people thought it was. You had these second and third biggest city and the country's mayoral elections just took place in the past six months, Right. And Rick Caruso, who was the tough on crime candidate, lost to Karen Bass and Paul Vallis in Chicago, who was a tough on crime candidate, lost to Brandon Johnson. And in both of those cases, the national media and a lot of the local media was convinced that Rick Caruso and Vallis were going to win because everyone was sick of crime. Right. And both turned out to be not true. I think those types of lessons really resonate both with progressives and with the people who would run a tough on crime candidate. And I just don't think it is as politically powerful as it was a year or two ago or even when Eric Adams won office. Perhaps it was much more powerful then. But right now I think that we're in a time of receding importance of the crime question, perhaps. Except here in the Bay Area, where it's still going strong.

[B]

It seems like, you know, a lot of people are kind of in agreement about how drug crime should be dealt with or not dealt with, just in the sense that I think we all agree that someone shouldn't, you know, go to prison for life for being caught with a dime bag. But it's violent crime that really seems to divide people. Even, you know, on the left, people are divided on how to, how to deal with that. You know, when we talk about progressive prosecutors, I feel like, or just prosecutors in general, it's either like you're tough on crime or you're a progressive prosecutor. But do you think that there is like, I guess, like room for nuance in the same way that there's room for nuance in just like normal conservative and liberal politics where, you know, you have, you know, senators who are, you know, further to the left than others?

[C]

I think that in cities where progressive prosecutors run, that that's difficult because one of the things that they do to get elected is that they take people who I think very fairly could be called middle of the road type of prosecutors, and they make them seem like they're sort of revanchist, you know, law and order, lock em up type of people. And so I do think there's a lot of bad faith tarring of the progressive prosecutors. But I also think that, you know, they give as good as they take. And so in those districts, I think it's very difficult to try and figure out what that would even look like or how the person could sort of talk about themselves in that sort of way. What also is happening is that in terms of the drug question is that fentanyl really is a problem here. Right. People are dying of overdoses at a very high rate. And I do think there's a lot of genuine public concern about that. And nobody has figured out what to do about it from a sentencing and law enforcement perspective, like how to deal.

[B]

With the people who are dealing the fentanyl and.

[C]

Yeah, right. And so the range of political opinions range from like, let's start a war with Mexico. And you know, that's Vivek Ramaswamy. Who. Another person in the period, you know, like, that's his idea. I don't know, it seems kind of crazy to me. And then there are people who are like, well, let's do just harm reduction and let's sort of make sure that people who are going to take this drug get the care that they need. And that's very unsatisfying to the public as well, you know, And I think that between that and meth specifically, people are kind of trying to carve out some sort of specifics for those two drugs while still maintaining, like, look, if you get caught with weed or if you get caught with like any other drug, then like, let's not be too harsh about it. But I don't know what that would look like. Right. I mean, like, how could you have a two tiered drug system where only these two drugs that happen to be politicized highly and also are very destructive are dealt with completely differently than everything else. Right. Like, I think that that's, that's tricky, you know, like that is probably a case where like doing more sort of root causes type of work might be more effective. But I always sort of worry when people try and downplay the effect of fentanyl in some of these cities just because the body counts are the body counts, you know, and they're high.

[B]

Just thinking about gun violence discourse in general, I mean, it's something, you know, obviously an issue that both people on the left and the right, you know, feel very strongly about. But especially when looking at people who sort of lean more progressive, there's almost this tension right. Where it's like you have this, you know, there are all these calls to create new gun laws. And then I almost feel like some of those same people who were calling for more legislation are also getting angry at progressive DAs who aren't enforcing the current gun laws that are on the books and who, you know, are angry about, you know, how violent crime is being dealt with or not being dealt with. And I wonder if you think that there's like some way to, I don't know, some way to solve this. Progressive prosecutors are being elected all over the country, but like, how do you be progressive when it comes to guns?

[C]

Yeah, I think that for them to be consistent, they will have to be somewhat lenient on some of these gun charges because a lot of the ways in which the gun charges work is that they're uses accelerators for existing charges, which may or may not be fair. And that I think in the places where these progressive prosecutors do their work, a lot of the times the people who are brought with these types of gun charges on top of them are black and Latino. Right. And that if one stated mission is to stop sort of train of incarceration within those neighborhoods, then I do think that like you can't just say, I'm gonna just do the gun charge thing because there's a lot of guns, right? And that a lot of times they're found, sometimes they're planted, but you know, a lot of times they're found. A lot of times those guns have characteristics about them that explode the, you know, the sentencing charges, right. Like if they're unregistered, if they are ghost guns, if they're whatever, like the charges are much higher. And so I think that these progressive prosecutors will most likely have to. And I think a lot of them do, right? I think they're much more lenient around gun charges.

[B]

Before this conversation I was looking at this basically this graph of like the state prison population, just like how many people in America are in prison. I mean it's, it's a staggering number. But just in terms of state prisons alone, it's like a little over a million people are in prison. And if you look at the breakdown of why they're there, more than 650,000 of those people have been locked up for incidents of violent crime. So murder, manslaughter, rape, assault, robberies, the kind of thing that even, you know, people on the left or a lot of people on the left would, you know, probably expect their DA to want to prosecute. And so it seems really difficult. Like if you want to solve the problem of mass incarceration. I don't think that not charging people for being found with weed is really, you know, it's just a very small dental. Really.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's almost non existent at this point. Right. Like people getting like they do get charged. But the fantasy that people have of, you know, what these prosecutors are generally doing, they're not processing all low grade crimes, right? Like most of those are gonna, they're gonna figure out a way to either get a plea deal or, you know, some sort of way out of it. And then there's also this idea, like I think that when people are thinking or you know, sort of advocating for progressive prosecutors that everybody's innocent. And so like, why would you have these crooked hard on crime prosecutors who are going to put innocent people in jail too? And I think one of the things to their credit that the progressive prosecutors will tell you is that you can't base your politics around crime based on just innocent people and low grade like weed offenders, right? Those are the easy ones. Like the real hey comes from, well, how do you deal with somebody that you're pretty sure is guilty of doing something bad, you know, and I don't know. It's not something that I really, I don't wish to be in their shoes in any sort of way because it is a difficult conversation and it's always going to lead to public backlash, right? Almost always when one of these cases get slightly prosecuted or lightly sentenced. And, you know, I've been thinking about these prosecutors for years now. And one of the questions, I guess that I've had is that like, is this really the best way to pass reform in the criminal justice system? Like, is this movement really, like, is it really going to yield more good than it causes, you know, negative backlash? Is there something intrinsic about the position of the progressive prosecutor that is going to lead to public revolt in a lot of ways? And the answers to those questions are mixed. As we said, Krasner and Kim Fox are very popular. So there are examples of it not being, but I think in a lot of places, maybe you can't avoid the type of fate that befell Chasa Boudin.

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Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer at the New Yorker. You can read his column bob Lee's Murder and San Francisco's so Called crime epidemic on newyorker.com now this has been the political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt. The show is produced by Michelle Moses with help from Sidney Cobb. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next week.

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Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlemagne, the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts from prx.