It was late afternoon on New Year's Eve in 2020, and Troy McAlister was high on drugs and tearing through downtown San Francisco in a stolen car. The career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to the mid-90s had just stolen the cash register from a local bakery.

Driving fast, McAlister ran a red light, lost control of the car, and struck two women on the sidewalk. The women, Hanako Abe and Elizabeth Platt, were killed. McAlister ran, but he was chased by San Francisco police officers and arrested.

Critics of San Francisco's progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin – who is facing a recall election on Tuesday – say that McAlister should have been in jail at the time of the crash. Abe and Platt should be alive, they say. Boudin's criminal-friendly policies are to blame.

McAlister was already behind bars awaiting trial on armed robbery charges when a plurality of San Francisco voters elected Boudin to be the city's next district attorney in November 2019. Boudin, the son of Weather Underground terrorists, campaigned as a progressive criminal justice reformer and against "the notion that to be free, we must cage others."

Once in office, Boudin’s team decided against using California's "three strikes" law to keep McAlister in a cage for decades, negotiating instead a plea deal that allowed him to be released on parole.

But back on the streets of San Francisco, McAlister didn't stay out of trouble. He was arrested five times in 2020 for a variety of crimes, including carjacking, possession of burglary tools, and possession of methamphetamines. Boudin's office declined to file charges each time.

"Ultimately, that ended in the deaths of two innocent women," said Richie Greenberg, a San Francisco community activist, political independent, and one-time candidate for mayor who has helped to lead the effort to oust Boudin from office.

Regarding the McAlister case, Boudin has said "hindsight is 20-20," and of course he wishes his office had handled it differently, but "the reality is we don't have a crystal ball."

In an interview with National Review, Greenberg called Boudin, a former public defender, a "rogue DA" who "really doesn't even deserve to be called a DA." He said red flags started going up immediately after Boudin was sworn into office in January 2020, including when he fired seven veteran prosecutors, part of an effort Boudin said was to "put in place a management team that will help me accomplish the work I committed to do for San Francisco." Over the last two years he's developed a notably toxic relationship with local law enforcement leaders.

For Greenberg the deaths of Abe and Platt "became the last straw," he said. He launched a Change.org petition in January 2021 calling for Boudin to resign, and he had about 15,000 signatures in about ten days. Over the last 13 months, Greenberg has headed the Recall Chesa Boudin committee, and has worked in parallel with a second pro-recall committee, Safer SF without Boudin, to get the recall on the ballot and to encourage voters to give Boudin the boot.

Even before McAlister killed Abe and Platt, "things were already spiraling downward fast" under Boudin, Greenberg said. "A lot of people were mad and upset, and already moving out of the city."

Buyer's Remorse

Boudin campaigned in 2019 as an unabashed reformer, a supporter of "decarceration" and "restorative justice." He was one of four candidates for district attorney, and the only non-prosecutor in the bunch. Part of a wave of progressive activists who have taken over big city district attorneys offices, Boudin ended up winning with only 36 percent of first-place votes in the ranked-choice system. But he has run his office as if he'd won a mandate.

In office, Boudin ended cash bail, stopped prosecuting drug possession cases stemming from "pretextual" traffic stops, and stopped using "enhancements" to extend prison sentences for convicted gang members. He also stopped prosecuting so-called "quality-of-life crimes," things like prostitution, public camping, public defecation, and open-air drug use, that have become ubiquitous in some parts of the city, where used needles litter the sidewalks, graffiti stains walls, and many storefronts remain empty or boarded.

Greenberg said Boudin sent a message that San Francisco was a consequence-free place to engage in low-level crimes, and that further encouraged crime in the city generally. Some parts of San Francisco have become "no-go zones" at night, Greenberg said.

"When Boudin says he's not going to prosecute a quality-of-life crime, this is saying he doesn't give a crap about what San Francisco's quality of life is," Greenberg said.

During Boudin's term, San Francisco has made headlines as a national hotspot for retail theft and looting. Walgreens and CVS have been shuttering stores in the city, with CVS calling San Francisco "one of the epicenters of organized retail crime." Last summer, Target announced it was cutting hours at its San Francisco stores because of rampant shoplifting. Last November, viral videos showed a flash mob looting a Louis Vuitton store in the city.

Drugs also are increasingly a problem. The San Francisco Standard reported last month that in 2021, a year that saw nearly 500 people in the city killed in a surging fentanyl crisis, Boudin's office didn't convict anyone for dealing the drug. Instead, they've emphasized diversion programs and pursuing lower-level "accessory after the fact" charges, in part to protect immigrant drug dealers from deportation.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, San Francisco also was the setting for a string of violent anti-Asian hate crimes, including the January 2021 killing of 84-year-old Vichar Ratanapakdee, who was attacked when he was out for a walk, and the February 2020 assault of 84-year-old Rong Xin Liao, who was waiting for the bus on his seated walker when he was jump-kicked by a 23-year-old stranger. There were at least 60 Asian hate crime victims in San Francisco last year, according to police records, a 567 percent increase over 2020.

Leanna Louie, a Chinese-American founder of the volunteer patrol group United Peace Collaborative, is campaigning for the recall in part because of the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes.

"I couldn't sit down and relax anymore after seeing videos, videos after videos of Asian elders being beat and mugged," said Louie, as she stood in a downtown San Francisco street with a sign encouraging voters to vote for the recall, known officially as Proposition H.

Regarding Boudin, she said, "there's lots of buyer's remorse."

Ending the Reign of Criminals

In interviews, Boudin defends his record, saying he's increased charging rates for sexual assaults, homicides, and drug sales, and targeted fencing operations. He told a local TV station that "We're clearing the backlog of old cases languishing under my predecessor." He told the Atlantic that crime "is a pressing issue," and that "it's my office's priority," because "We want to make San Francisco safer."

Supporters question whether San Francisco is really suffering from a crimewave at all.

According to San Francisco Police Department data, Part 1 crimes – the most serious crimes – are actually down under Boudin's watch, dropping from 57,843 in 2019 to 50,582 last year. Rapes, robberies, assaults, and larcenies are all down since Boudin took office.

"We're experiencing somewhat of a disconnect between what the data shows us and what people feel," Boudin told the Atlantic.

But homicides are up under Boudin's watch, jumping from 41 in 2019 to 56 last year, a 37 percent increase, similar to the increases seen in other big cities in recent years.

Burglaries also rose from 4,963 in 2019 to 7,315 last year (a 47 percent increase), and motor vehicle thefts jumped from 4,449 in 2019 to 6,072 last year (a 36 percent increase). Those are the types of crimes that impact the day-to-day lives of residents and business owners.

Regardless of the police data, San Franciscans clearly believe things have gotten worse. A Chamber of Commerce poll last year found that 70 percent of residents believe quality of life in the city has declined, and 88 percent said homelessness is increasingly a problem.

In December, San Francisco's Democratic mayor London Breed called for more "aggressive" policing in the city, noting the brazen smash-and-grab robberies that made headlines last winter as well as the vehicle break-ins and regular drug dealing in the city's Tenderloin district.

"It's time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end," Breed said at a press conference. "And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city."

Greenberg and Louie said they don't trust the police data as an accurate representation of crime in the city. The data may show fewer crimes, Louie said, but she believes that's because fewer people are reporting crimes, because they don't expect anything will happen if they do.

Greenberg said he believes Boudin and his supporters are cherry picking data to make him look good.

"Everyone, every San Francisco resident or business owner or tourist has either themselves been a victim or knows someone who's been a victim of crime. It's gotten to that point," Greenberg said. "We see it. We breathe it. We know it. We live it."

Moving on Early from a Four-Year Experiment

If polling is any indication of what Tuesday's results will be, Boudin should probably get his resume in order.

In March, a poll paid for by the pro-recall Safer SF without Boudin, found that 68 percent of likely San Francisco voters said they intended to vote to oust Boudin. A San Francisco Standard poll last month found 57 percent support for the recall, including a whopping 67 percent support from the city's Asian-American and Pacific Islander community.

"I think we're just so tired of being victimized," Louie said of the Asian-American support for the recall. "We're so tired of being silent. We're so tired of being brutalized, all these crimes happening to us, and nobody's doing anything about it. And we're just expected to take it."

Even a poll commissioned by Boudin's anti-recall campaign showed him 10 points behind.

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Opponents of the recall say San Francisco's crime problems pre-date Boudin. In an editorial, the San Francisco Chronicle said voters knew what they were getting when they elected Boudin over two tough-on-crime prosecutors. Boudin's efforts are a "work in progress," according to the paper. "San Francisco voters signed up for a four-year experiment. We should have the courage of our conviction to wait for the results."

Yoel Haile, director of the criminal justice program for the ACLU of Northern California, said in a written statement that the recall campaign is a "cynical attempt to slam the door on progress."

Greenberg said he's not against criminal justice reform, nor are the voters of San Francisco. But he said Boudin has "thrown a monkey wrench into the works" of real reform by emboldening criminals and leaving every San Francisco resident, business owner, and tourist vulnerable.

"He is not a prosecutor, never was," Greenberg said of Boudin, who "had no business running for DA. Had no business getting into the DA's office and wreaking havoc."

Taking a page from the playbook of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who survived his own recall last year, and three San Francisco school board members who were ousted from their seats in February, opponents of the recall have attempted to paint it as a Republican effort, noting large donations from Republican billionaire William Oberndorf, a philanthropist and charter school advocate. But Greenberg said that's hypocritical, pointing out that Boudin has received money from tech billionaire Chris Larsen, a Democrat, who supported Boudin's opponent in 2019 and also has a history of donating to Republicans.

Trying to blame the recall on Republicans in a city where they make up less than seven percent of the electorate is "lazy politics," Greenberg said. He noted that even if each of the 33,393 registered Republicans in San Francisco signed the petition to get the recall on the ballot, that is far fewer than the more than 51,000 signatures they needed and the more than 83,000 signatures that were eventually turned in.

"Republicans can't win any seats or any propositions or anything in San Francisco, period," said Louie, a lifelong Democrat. She said she expects Boudin will be recalled "by a landslide."

Greenberg said he isn't assuming a landslide vote to recall Boudin, but he expects that his side will be victorious on Tuesday. If that's true, it will be bitter-sweet, said Greenberg, who believes only experienced prosecutors should be allowed to run for district attorney.

"It is something that we should not really be celebrating," he said, "because it's an issue that we should not have ever had to deal with in the first place."