I Fought the Law and I Won

There's a big story in the Chron this morning over the conflict between the SFPD and the DA's office over prosecuting crime in the city. Basically, the cops are frustrated because the DA's office rarely prosecutes anything. The result is a lot of repeat offenders out there repeating offenses. In the story, the Chron even details how some of the shootings we've seen recently are done by people who have been in-and-out of jail and got off relatively easy.

Here comes the numbers:

-San Francisco sent 436 people to prison in 2005, the same number as Sonoma County which has 300,000 fewer people. It is also 300 fewer than were sent to prison in Ventura County which has the same population as San Francisco does.

-San Francisco sends only 4% of the people they arrest to prison. Alameda sends 12.8% to prison, Sacramento County 14.4%, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties 21%, and well, you get the point

-Way over 50% who are involved in the shootings were people who had been arrested before and most of them were on some sort of probation.

Kamala Harris has been criticized throughout her tenure as DA for doing enough prosecuting so this can be seen as just how she rolls. As for Harris, she's claiming that a lot of this is just how the system work and that she's doing all that she can, captain, but police and other critics are saying she's not tightening things up fast enough. It also appears that the same issues are seen in not only "quality of life" issues (thus the reason for community courts), GleeGate, and from today's M&R story, car break-ins.