Special Episode: A Conference on Crime, Keynote – Brooke Jenkins

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: This Special Episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast was recorded live at Capitol Weekly’s Conference on Crime, which was held in Sacramento on Thursday, March 21, 2024

This is the KEYNOTE – SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT ATTORNEY BROOKE JENKINS

Introduction by Rich Ehisen, Capitol Weekly

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

 RICH EHISEN: All right, everybody, I know everyone’s enjoying your lunch, but it is time for our Keynote address. We’re really thrilled today in this conference on dealing with issues around crime to have San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins here as our Keynote address presenter. She has been in office since July of 2022. If you pay any attention to what’s going on in Northern California, you are quite familiar with DA Jenkins. She’s been a very strong voice on a lot of issues related to our subject matter today, so I’m really thrilled to introduce her. I’m going to go sit down…. So it may be 20 minutes or so and I’ll be back up here and we will take some questions. So, without further ado, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

BROOKE JENKINS: Thank you. Public safety, as we know, has risen as the top issue of concern for San Franciscans, for Californians across our state and in major cities across our country. Viral videos of looting and theft in our retail stores, ever increasing hate crimes, high robbery and car theft rates, and the overwhelming Fentanyl Crisis are just some of the most pressing crime issues facing most of our major cities in the United States.

While every day people are mostly concerned about their personal safety and the well-being of the environments where they are trying to live and raise their families, we cannot ignore the impact of crime that is… that it is having on our economy. The impacts of high crime rates impact our economy in a number of ways:

Loss of jobs in San Francisco. We are seeing announcement after announcement of retail stores closing, of small businesses closing. And while many people would say, ‘who cares about big business?’ the thousands of people that those stores employ lose their jobs, they have to be transferred to other areas in order to find work… that impacts their ability to take their children to school and do other things. We lose important access to goods. One of the main issues with losing Walgreens stores across our city is that it is one of the the main pharmacies that accepts Medicare and Medicaid. That is losing a valuable resource to our elderly community and to our low income communities who need access to those goods and resources that these stores can provide.

Underserved communities who have lacked for decades, resources in those communities are watching stores leave and is putting their communities in peril.

Loss of tax revenue… when you’re talking about retail tax revenue, when you’re talking about downtown areas where commercial real estate values have plummeted, means that our cities and our jurisdictions lose valuable tax revenue resources that are used to fund the very social programs that most of us would say are necessary to serve those who are most vulnerable in our communities.

It also impacts places like my office, where I would love to be able to ask for social workers to come and work in my office; mental health clinicians who we need to be able to assess defendants and what perhaps they need in order to rebound out of their justice situation. But because of the looming deficit over our city and our state. We are told, ‘no,’ that there is not enough funding to get those valuable resources because of the fact that crime has overwhelmingly impacted the economy of our city and our state, as more and more businesses and people leave.

“Everyone wants to feel safe. Republican, Democrat, independents, all races, ethnicities and religions. They all want and are demanding increased public safety up and down our state” 

These are issues that cannot be ignored. This is not a political issue. It’s a human rights issue. Safety is not a privilege. It is a human right. Thus, it is incumbent upon those in government to provide clean and safe streets and neighborhoods for people to live. If we cannot provide that most basic necessity, we are failing to do our jobs.

Over the past several years, much like politics more generally in our country, I have watched the debate over criminal justice and crime and safety become more and more polarized. If I’m being totally frank, the pendulum has begun to swing between radical extremes. Either you are pro-reform or you are pro mass incarceration. Either you believe in defunding the police or you don’t believe in police accountability.

In my beloved city of San Francisco, if you believe in accountability for crime, you’re easily deemed a racist… or a Republican, which in San Francisco is most certainly used as an insult. But what I’ve learned over the past two years, which I instinctively already knew even before that from my own experience, is that everyone wants to feel safe. Republican, Democrat, independents, all races, ethnicities and religions. They all want and are demanding increased public safety up and down our state.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly

As I go into communities across San Francisco. The common thread among them is that they wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system must be reformed, and the function of law enforcement must be improved. They embrace, support and will champion efforts to improve these systems. They recognize, and many of them, like myself, have experienced the inequities within these systems, and want change. But they want it done responsibly. They want it done in a manner that does not compromise their safety. Thus, it is incumbent upon us as policy makers and elected leaders to strike this balance – not simply appeal to the shifting political winds, but rather engage in responsible governance, even when it may not be the most popular thing in an emotional time in history.

That is what I promised San Francisco. That is what I have been delivering to San Francisco. A balanced approach that recognizes the need for criminal accountability, but works also to address inequities in our system, works to create system change, and in the many different areas of the criminal justice system, makes sure that we are creating positive outcomes for the people that we deal with.

You might ask what informs my specific experience? I’m not standing before you having lived a life of racial or socioeconomic privilege. I’m not standing before you having had to read about inequality or inequity in a textbook.

I was born to a 21 year old mother… Single Black mother. My father, who was 23 at the time, was here on student visa from El Salvador. Brought all of his parents’ life savings in order to flee that war torn country, to come here and get an education. After obtaining his degree, he left and returned back home to El Salvador, leaving my mother to raise me along with the help of my grandmother. My grandmother taught me early on that we were not equal in this country. She recounted stories of growing up in the segregated South, having attended and graduated from a segregated all Black school. She being one of 11 children, only her two youngest siblings graduated from integrated high schools.

She told me the stories about how her second oldest brother died in police custody. The police telling their family that it was because of his own conduct that he died, them, all the while believing and knowing that that was not true, and that it was far more likely that the police had killed him. But being, again in this segregated town, there was no opportunity for justice.

As I got older, I began to see how my uncle and other cousins were stopped by the police while being told they, quote, fit the description. I never grew up liking police or seeing them as my ally. Like most Black people in America, your heart rate became elevated, and you watched them suspiciously, hoping they would just leave you and those around you alone.

“The largest population of victims that my office serves are Black and Latino people”

But what I also understood from life experience was that they served a necessary function, and there were certainly occasions where they had to be called, and I expected them to do their jobs and take care of very dangerous people. So every day as I do this work, I do it through that lens. I do it knowing that while there is valid distrust in this system and the players in it, that there are things that must be done to improve the way law enforcement does its job and to create equity in our criminal justice outcomes. But that we must do it in a way that still ensures that law enforcement continues to have the tools necessary to protect the public.

So often, legislators and policy activists speak in a way that subconsciously embraces negative stereotypes about people of color, particularly Black and Latino people. When they speak of the criminal justice system. Black and Latino people are only ever referenced when it comes to discussions about reforming the system as it relates to the perpetrators of crime. We are only ever seen as the accused.

Think about that for a moment.

Has there been any time where you have sat and thought about reforming the system as it relates to victims and thought about people of color. If not, that means that you have bought in to this portrayal that we are all criminals. Never are we referenced when it comes to the need for increased victims’ rights. Never are we mentioned when it comes to the increased need for additional victim services.

The largest population of victims that my office serves are Black and Latino people. The ZIP code that has the largest percentage of victims in San Francisco is 94124, which is the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. And for anybody familiar with San Francisco, you would know that that is a predominantly Black neighborhood. And one of our most underserved communities. When we talk about overdose, and I just sat through the panel that discussed that… The majority of the people in San Francisco that have died in last year we had 806 overdose deaths, were Black.

So if we’re going to have a discussion about the impact of the criminal justice system, we must remember who the majority of our victims are. If you’re going to discuss or initiate or even influence criminal justice policy, there must be a consideration and regard for the impact that what you are doing will have on victims of crime.

For far too long, victims of color have been denied justice in the United States. They’ve been denied adequate representation in the criminal justice system. And I don’t just mean as defendants. When you look back at the Jim Crow South, and you think about what took place at that time. I want to force you to remember that each and every day across this country, Black people were lynched, their homes were firebombed, their churches were bombed. Lives were lost every day. It was a routine occurrence.

And despite appealing to law enforcement, most often the perpetrators of those crimes weren’t even arrested, even when there were mass appeals. When the perpetrators were known for those people to be arrested and prosecuted, they weren’t. When a family or a community was lucky enough to have a prosecution take place, all-white juries acquitted those individuals. The KKK infiltrated police departments infiltrated judgeships, infiltrated jury pools. And as a result, Black America rarely saw accountability for those who committed crimes against it. That is the history that we must remember when we are talking about criminal justice reform and the needs to make sure that we serve people in this system.

Every single day that I come to work, I come in to serve the mothers whose sons have been shot and killed. The mothers who have had to bury their children, both from overdose and from gun violence. Every day that I come in, I come to serve those who live in neighborhoods that are riddled with gun violence; Those who simply want to make sure that the person who stole their car – the one asset that they had to get to and from work – Are held accountable for what they’ve done. To serve the Asian families whose elders for the last three years have been senselessly attacked over and over again, walking down the street.

If we want to actually make a difference in this system, we have to balance the interests of serving victims while we ensure that we increase equity and fairness on the other side. We shouldn’t be left holding the feeling that the only way to receive justice is through street justice. We shouldn’t leave people to hold the bag of trauma while we fail to do our jobs because our hands have been so tied that we cannot.

When you talk about benefiting communities of color, you must include in the conversation the immigrant families who have often fled crime-ridden, war torn countries and come to America to pursue the American dream. Many of them, coming here, starting small businesses, hoping just to have a better life. But who are being forced, as it stands right now in San Francisco, to live in a containment zone of an open air drug market of crime, of shootings, of stabbings.

When do we fight for them to? We still have a job to do, and if we wouldn’t accept it for our own, then we should not accept it for them. And if we are going to talk about serving the diverse communities in this system, then we must, again ,leave as a part of the conversation the people who are having to suffer through that existence.

“We still have a long way to go when it comes to improving treatment and outcomes in the criminal justice system”

The 12 year old girl that I spoke to who goes to school in the Tenderloin in San Francisco and catches a bus with her four year old and two year old siblings, who she’s responsible for bringing to a daycare that is around the corner from her charter school. Who said each and every morning what she has to endure as she walks through drug dealers, as they walk through people slumped over who are high, people who are mentally ill acting out. All amongst the other things that go on. And how fearful she is every day just coming to school.

When we talk about legislation, when we talk about policy, it has to keep those people in mind, because that was a little Latino girl just trying to get to school who deserves to be seen and heard and to go to school safely in our city and in our country.

You must not ignore this reality or be derelict in the very goal that we all purport to want to achieve, which again, is equity and fairness, and at the end of the day, what is a productive life for everybody that touches the criminal justice system.  To enact the repairs in the system that we need, we must look at it in its entirety. You must consider again how any policy or legislative act practically impacts and affects all of these communities in various different ways.

And yes, we still have a long way to go when it comes to improving treatment and outcomes in the criminal justice system. We must continue to focus on addressing disparities in sentencing across our state. I was recently at San Quentin talking with residents there. And as they all went around a circle and introduced themselves and the crimes that they had been convicted of committing and the sentences that they were serving I quickly noticed the level of disparity that exists for the same crime across counties all over California. If there’s going to be a focus area that must be addressed, it is that. We must ensure that it’s not about where you are born or happen to commit your crime that will determine whether you serve a life sentence or ten years for the same act. There has to be something that we can do together.

We still must push forward prison reform. Can we abolish prisons? In my view, no, we cannot. I’ve prosecuted murderers, child molesters, rapists, domestic abusers. We must, sometimes segregate people from society. But we must make sure that we’re doing it humanely. And when you walk into a cell at San Quentin, you quickly see how inhumane the size of it is. You quickly see that we need to do more to make sure that when we do have to segregate somebody, that we are putting people in a position to actually be rehabilitated, for those that will come back to us.

We must also focus on a reform of the reentry system. It is not working. I’ve always told the people that I prosecuted that I didn’t want to see them back at 850 Bryant, which is the address to the San Francisco Hall of Justice. And when I said that, I meant that I wanted to see their lives propelled forward in a productive way so that they never came back to that hall unless they were being summoned as a juror, but certainly not with a new case. But we can’t just say that it can’t be empty words. It has to be that we create an infrastructure that allows those who are reentering, who have paid their dues to society, to successfully move forward with their lives.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly

I was recently talking to someone who was just released after serving a considerable sentence at San Quentin who said, ‘I’ve got six months of transitional housing,’ meaning I have six months to find a job, to save money and to find somewhere to live.

Most of us who don’t have criminal convictions would find it difficult, if you were placed in a new city with no job, to find one, to save the money and to get somewhere new to live, let alone with the structural barriers that we know exist for those who have convictions, certainly for violent crime. And so we must make sure that there are resources in place, and that there’s an infrastructure in place so that these individuals don’t feel desperate, and therefore then go commit other crimes in order to figure out a way to stabilize themselves.

We need to draft and pass legislation that allows those who have been crime-free for significant periods of time, who have, again, paid their dues to society for something that they did in the past to be restored to their full citizenship. And when I say that, I mean their full ability to move forward and move on with their lives. As it stands now, if you’ve got a felony conviction, you don’t get to become a police officer. You don’t get to become a firefighter.

Again, there’s a box that you check that often prevents you from moving forward. How do we craft legislation that doesn’t just say that you can have a clean slate? That doesn’t make it an onerous process that requires you to hire a lawyer that you can’t afford, but that actually makes it easy for those who deserve it to continue to move forward with their lives and leave behind mistakes of the past.

That is what I urge, not just this group, but the people who work in this city and do the legislation, to be focused on if we’re truly about reforming this system. It’s about the reform of individuals, it’s about the reform of mindsets, and it’s about making sure that we do, yes, have accountability, but that when somebody’s form of accountability is complete, whatever that is, be it a treatment program, be it a time of incarceration, that they get to move forward with their lives and have a chance in our society.

California is known as a leader in this country. It’s seen that way. We’ve always been that. We’re always on the cutting edge, be it Silicon Valley and our technology, be it movies coming out of Hollywood, whatever you want to pick. We are a leader and we have to lead in this area.

We cannot continue to buy in to this notion that the pendulum has to swing from extremes. It does not. We do not have to engage in what we see going on in Florida and elsewhere. That is a level of extreme thought that is unacceptable. In my view and in my desire, what I’ve tried to bring to San Francisco is a push towards the center that allows that pendulum just to hover somewhere in the center, so that, as a practical matter, we in government are meeting our obligation to provide a functioning safe society to the people that we serve. But that at the same time recognizes historical injustice and does what we need to, in a responsible manner, to make sure that we create and push for system change.

If we don’t get it right, we compromise the reform movement. And I’ve been clear about that for years. To the extent that reform has to compromise our safety, people will reject it. They will reject it. Not just here, they will reject it across this country. And we can’t afford for that to happen. Because if we think the systems need change here, trust me, they need change elsewhere in this country. I don’t know that I could be a prosecutor in some of the other states across America, because the laws are so antiquated.

And so if we are going to lead this movement, we have one opportunity to get this right, and it requires that we all be practical and that we balance the interests of those who have been victimized with those who have victimized others. And we make sure that we do everything in our power to again propel those who need it, down a different path. I’m always clear accountability, like I said, has many different forms, and we have to create those offramps for each individual person and their needs. But we must do it responsibly, and we cannot absolve ourselves of the obligation to create safe communities for those around us. And that’s it.

RE: Thank you. Thank you very much. So yes, we are going to take some questions, so wave a hand, get my attention and I will walk over and give you a microphone.

SIGRID BATHEN: Sigrid Bathen, Capitol Weekly. I cover mental health issues for Capitol Weekly and other publications, and Prop 1 finally just passed and San Francisco has already begun the Care Act implementation and the Grave Disability SB 43 implementation, before a lot of other counties. How do you think that the funding that will be made available through Prop. 1, how will that affect? Because substance abuse and crime and mental mental illness are very closely linked.

BJ: Yes. I’m very excited. I was excited to see that Prop. 1 passed yesterday. As most people know, San Francisco is a place where you know, the folks, the number of people struggling with mental health issues is, is overwhelming. And many of those people have a dual diagnosis issue, right, that they both struggle with mental health issues and substance abuse disorder. What we lack right now is a adequate infrastructure to address those needs. Oftentimes as a Line Prosecutor, I was put in a position where if I was prosecuting someone who had a clear mental health issue when we were trying to get them into treatment, we were being told it would take weeks, if not months for a bed to become available. That cannot happen. We cannot be in a position anymore where we are looking at a judge and saying, ‘do we let them out in this compromised state where they could harm someone else? Or do we keep them in a jail facility that we know isn’t really fair, right, given their situation?’

And so that’s why I was a big proponent for Prop 1. What I believe it will do is allow us to invest and create more facilities for treatment beds both for mental health issues, but also dual diagnosis facilities, which we certainly need more of.

What we’re also lacking in San Francisco is treatment on demand. We’ve got to have more facilities that are open 24 seven to for referrals. This is not a 9 to 5 crisis. This is a 24-7 crisis. And so my belief is that that’s what the funding will allow for us to create.

RE: DA, we have one right here.

ANTONIO HARVEY: Oh, good afternoon, DA Jenkins. Antonio Harvey, capitol correspondent for California Black Media. As well as, you know, this this conference has been a lot of discussions around, you know, property crimes, retail theft, the fentanyl crisis, etc…. Just want to get your your perspective on Prop. 47, because down at the Capitol, Senator Pro Tem Mike McGuire has just introduced a package of bills trying to combat, you know, all three of these issues that I just mentioned as well as Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas was kind of lukewarm on the Proposition 47 side. But just want to get your perspective on, you know, reforming, as you had mentioned in your discussion about certain reform form, your perspective on reforming and rehabbing or what can we do to improve it or eradicate proposition 47? Anything that you can offer?

BJ: Yes, absolutely. It’s a topic that comes up quite frequently in San Francisco, as you can imagine. So going back to the spirit of Prop. 47, back when it was passed certainly there was an appropriate desire to end saddling people with felonies who were committing what we would consider lower level nonviolent crimes. Right? And not to leave them in a position where, if they were convicted, that they could not, like I was talking about earlier, move forward with their lives productively. So the spirit and the intent was pure and was noble.

I think what we have seen are a few unintended consequences, particularly when it comes to retail theft. But I don’t want to blame that on Prop. 47 alone. I think there were a number of factors that played into it that that came, even one that came after Prop. 47. So, you know, most people you know, most of the conversation is around the threshold of being raised from 450 to 950 to constitute a felony for retail theft.

I’ve been very clear that that to me is not the largest issue. While it is a larger issue for some of our stores that sell lower value items, like a grocery store, where perhaps it would take three carts of groceries – maybe with inflation two as we sit here now – that’s never going to happen. Right? And so, stores like Safeway just constantly have misdemeanor theft over and over again.

But for the most part, in my view, the main part of of the act that that has had the worst unintended consequence is that we no longer can graduate consequences for repeat offenders. We used to have a statute that allowed us, after somebody had been convicted more than twice of a misdemeanor petty theft, that we had the discretion to say, okay, we can charge you with a misdemeanor again if we feel it’s fit or, you know, we might have to elevate your charge to a felony. We can’t do that anymore.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. Photo by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly

And when I say that it’s not just that alone. There used to be some level of teeth, as I will call it, in our consequences for misdemeanors. But in 2021, we had a statute passed legislatively, or a legislative bill passed that statutorily made almost every misdemeanor in the state of California eligible for diversion. Now, diversion is a term that I think gets misused often. A lot of people don’t understand what it necessarily means. It sounds great, but what does it mean in practical application in the San Francisco Hall of Justice, what it often means is a judge gets to say, well, for you just don’t get arrested over the next three months, and I will deem that your diversion and send you on your way.

For others, it’s take ten theft classes and that’s it. For some, it’s take ten AA classes. It can be anything that the court or the prosecutors desire. But right now the court has the ability to make that offer and to enter into that agreement whether or not the prosecutors object or not.

So, when you couple a rise in misdemeanor offenses, right, an overwhelming rise in misdemeanor offenses with now an inability to actually kind of hang that carrot and the stick, right, to hang the stick over somebody to get them to engage in treatment or whatever else they need. We now have watered it down to the point that misdemeanor crimes are basically legalized when it comes to retail theft.

There’s just not much that we can do. And so from my vantage point, again, unintended consequence. Right. I just I think there are just some adjustments that have to be made in order to get us to a point where we have something that will incentivize people to engage in the change that they need for their lives. But right now we have a system where it’s a revolving door for many of these folks. They just come back with a new case, some some of them 20 times. And there’s nothing that we have to sort of usher them in a different direction.

RE: DA Jenkins, can I follow up on that for just real quickly? Because there is a ballot measure in the work that works that would address a lot of what you’re talking about. Can you weigh in on that just a little bit, please?

BJ: I would imagine you’re specifically referring to the ballot measure being sponsored by the California DA’s Association.

RE: That is correct.

BJ: Yes. So I have not issued any sort of, or made any public position, or taken a public position on that initiative. It will in part restore that ability, that discretion when it comes to the third offense for retail theft. It will also create the same type of situation for drug possession for use, which is also a misdemeanor. And so that is the ballot initiative that is currently being worked on by the DA’s association.

RE: But you haven’t taken a position on that yet?

BJ: I have not.

RE: You plan to?

BJ: We’ll see.

CAITLIN O’NEIL: Hi, Caitlin O’Neil with the Legislative Analyst’s Office. As we heard on the last panel, there’s two sides to the question of whether drugs… when to or whether whether it’s appropriate to prosecute drug distribution as murder or some kind of flavor of that.

I’m wondering …and I understand that at least from some news reports, San Francisco is starting to look at that option, and there’s been some state resources or assisting with a task force to help in some investigations to identify who actually provided the drugs to the person who passed away. So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you are striking the balance, if you see it as a balance between those two perspectives and when you feel that it’s appropriate or that that type of approach makes sense, and why, and kind of how, what level of work it is to do those investigations if that’s something you’re able to share. Thank you.

BJ: Yes. So we are we have formed a task force. They are being trained right now in order to get started, which we believe will happen later in the spring. Look, in my view, I see I see two sides to the issue, right? Which is, one: addressing those who are addicted, and those addressing those who are selling. And I fundamentally believe that we have to enforce all of our laws.

We don’t get to as prosecutors decide to ignore laws that are on the books. And when I walked through the Tenderloin, sadly, you know, what I’m told is, you know, I’m the first DA that’s actually spent as much time as I have in the Tenderloin in a long time, because it’s…  those people deserve to have government leaders walk through what they walk through every day, experience what they experience every day. And it’s an issue that I cannot ignore, and will not ignore for many of the reasons that I already highlighted.

“We must have consequences. People have to understand that your behavior is not something we as a society are going to accept”

For me, again, it’s not about incarcerating the world. That’s not the solution. But we have to do our jobs so that hopefully we begin to function as a deterrent. When you create an environment where people believe there are no consequences and that their conduct is acceptable, then they will continue to engage in that conduct.

I use the analogy that I’m a mother of two, a four year old and a seven year old. If I come in the house every day and I say, you’re not allowed to do whatever it is, jump off the dinner table and I and every day they jump off the dinner table repeatedly and I just walk by and I say, ‘hey, did you? I thought I said you weren’t supposed to do that,’ and then I just keep going, each and every day. They’re going to continue to do it, right? If I never, ever have a consequence, they’re going to continue to do it.

Now, the consequence doesn’t have to be extreme, right? As a mother constantly trying to figure out, like, how do I use the least-harshest penalty to get you to understand you can’t do what you’re doing? Same thing as a prosecutor. But if it wouldn’t work in my house not to have a consequence for bad behavior, how do I think it’s going to work out in society?

We must have consequences. People have to understand that your behavior is not something we as a society are going to accept. Now, we are happy to provide you with a whole host of options for ways to make money. We will work with you to do that. And the biggest, I think, deficit right now with the population that we have in San Francisco that is selling, is we have a vast number of folks who are undocumented. And so it’s very difficult to, In the system that we have now in this country, just give them legal employment. And until we find a way to do that, until we create a pathway, a larger pathway, I should say, to do that meaningfully, I think we’re going to continue to have some issues. But I still can’t signal to them that what they’re doing is okay.

And so for that reason, I am I’m very vocal that what I see is, I’m unapologetically going to address because the people and the businesses and the families… the largest concentration of children in San Francisco live in the containment zone for this conduct. They deserve better. They deserve better.

And so, you know, a lot of our jobs is figuring out, okay, well, if what do we do to get you to engage in lawful behavior? Like what… how do we how do we send you down that path? I’ve been talking to, you know, community folks about what, again, we can build to sort of have an infrastructure of alternatives. When it comes to the task force, again, my, my goal is not to prosecute hundreds of people for murder. I don’t want that to be the case.

I hope that if there are two or three, and we end up there, that that’s enough to signal: don’t bring that here. Because we had 806 people die. We had 63 people die just last month.

Those are people’s loved ones. Those aren’t throwaway lives. That’s somebody’s brother. Sister, son. Daughter. Mother. And I have to say that what you’re doing by selling a substance that you know is likely to kill them… If you’re standing there with Narcan in your pocket as a dealer, you’re going to tell me you didn’t know. No. You knew. You didn’t care. Your bottom line was more important than that life.

And so, no, I’m not going to sit by and tell you that that’s okay. I’m glad to help you make a better choice. But I think we’ve got to have deterrence. We’ve got to stop this acceptance that people get to do what they want. Because unless it’s in your backyard… I mean, I don’t think anybody in here would raise their hand and say they would like to go live on Hyde Street in the Tenderloin right now. And if it’s not what you’re willing to live in, don’t force somebody else to live in it. If you don’t want your kid to die, don’t make it okay for somebody else’s to die.

RE: Well, on that note… we could take questions all day, I’m sure. But we we do have to wrap it up because we have another panel coming up. DA Jenkins, thank you so much. This was a very interesting and enlightening presentation. Thank you so much. Thank all of you.

Thanks to our Conference on Crime sponsors: THE TRIBAL ALLIANCE OF SOVEREIGN INDIAN NATIONS, WESTERN STATES PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION, PHYSICIAN ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA; KP PUBLIC AFFAIRS, PERRY COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITOL ADVOCACY, THE WEIDEMAN GROUP, LANG, HANSEN, GIROUX & KIDANE and CALIFORNIA PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTERS