A pleasant landing.

Ousted San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced his new job Wednesday: He’s spearheading a criminal justice center at UC Berkeley’s School of Law. https://t.co/dak0k2ZHo0

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) May 31, 2023

"Start with the fact that Asians are the fastest-growing racial group in the country and Democrats have viewed their vote..."

"... as an uncomplicated and burgeoning asset for them. However, starting in 2020 there were troubling signs of attrition in Asian support for Democrats.... One problem has been that Asians are worried about public safety and leery of a Democratic party that has become associated with 'defund the police' and a soft approach to containing crime. Another has been that Asians, like Hispanics, are a constituency that does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and how it must be remade to cleanse it of intrinsic racism and white supremacy.... They are far more interested in how they and their families can get ahead in actually-existing American society. Finally... Asian voters... see [education] as the key tool for upward mobility.... But Democrats have become increasingly associated with an approach to schooling that seems anti-meritocratic, oriented away from standardized tests, gifted and talented programs and test-in elite schools.... This of course was a huge issue in San Francisco, where the School Board pushed this approach up to and including replacing the rigorous entrance test for the famed Lowell School with a lottery. That move, combined with the School Board’s bizarre obsession with an 'anti-racist' school renaming project even as schools remained closed and students suffered, angered Asian parents and others so much that they took the lead in successfully recalling three of the ringleaders of this approach, a clear precursor to the current recall."

Writes Ruy Teixeira, in "Time for the Democrats’ Chesa Boudin Moment! If Not Now, When? If Not Him, Who?" (Substack).

"In the 1980s and ’90s, the Democratic Party embraced big increases in police funding, longer prison sentences and greater use of the death penalty."

"Part of the rationale was a well-intentioned effort to fight crime. But part of it was also an electoral one — a desire to appease the conservative and anti-Black sentiments of some White swing voters.... In the 1990s, Democrats didn’t have the evidence that has since accumulated suggesting that many punitive criminal justice policies don’t reliably reduce crime, nor did they have a stream of videos displaying horrible incidents of police brutality. And back then, the political rationale was largely about keeping Republicans out of office. Now, some centrist Democrats are using alarmist rhetoric hyping America’s crime rates and misleading statements about progressive policies to undercut the party’s emergent left wing....  It’s clear, though, that two things did not cause this increase: 'reform prosecutors' like [Chesa] Boudin and the 'defund the police' movement. Few cities have actually reduced their police budgets, and homicide rate increases happened in many cities that increased spending. There is no correlation between more progressive prosecutors and homicide rates."

From "Centrists’ new war on crime is also a war on the left" by Perry Bacon Jr. (WaPo).

"Eighty looters ransacked a Nordstrom store in California's Bay Area on Saturday night, injuring at least three employees in a raid that lasted less than a minute."

"The large group,wearing ski masks and carrying crowbars, rushed the Walnut Creek store, stole an undetermined amount of merchandise and fled in their vehicles. During the theft, two Nordstrom workers were punched and kicked, while another was sprayed with pepper spray. All three individuals were treated for their injuries on scene.... The brazen robbery comes as Bay Area businesses reduce their hours due to a spate of brazen shoplifting incidents. Locals are also slamming woke San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin over his failure to prosecute thefts. San Francisco has also seen an uptick in property theft since a local law downgraded the theft of property less than $950 in value from a felony charge to a misdemeanor in 2014. Store staff and security now tend not to pursue or stop thieves who have taken anything worth less than $1,000.... Although most of the raiders managed to flee, police managed to arrest at least two of the suspected looters...." 

The Daily Mail reports. 

ADDED: Jeff Bezos looks on warily....