New reporting on the DA's Office raid on a Tenderloin Quickly shop earlier this month alleges that police said “they were too busy” to assist in the bust, and that DA Boudin had to rent his own U-Haul to carry out the operation.
After the surprising bust two weeks ago of a Tenderloin boba shop accused of being a front for selling stolen goods, there was a very interesting omission in SF District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s press release about the operation. There is no mention of the SF Police Department. The release acknowledges “investigators from the District Attorney’s Office,” it thanks “Homeland Security Investigators and the United States Postal Service Inspectors" for their assistance, and also mentions contributions for the “American Car Rental Association, SF Safe, and community leaders.” It’s almost as if police weren’t even involved in this bust.
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It turns out they may not have been, and Boudin is apparently alleging they refused to participate, according to a report today from Mission Local. While that piece is mostly an op-ed on the current state of Boudin’s recall race, it has the stunning allegation, and an on-the-record quote from Boudin at the beginning of the article.
“We can arrest somebody,” Boudin told Mission Local. “We can put handcuffs on them. How do we transport them to the county jail without a car? How do we seize the evidence without a truck to move evidence? Usually what we do is ask the police to come to assist at that stage of the process. And we did here. I was shocked they said no… They were too busy.”
And so as such, Boudin’s office was apparently forced to rent their own U-Haul to carry out the bust, the haul from which Mission Local describes as “130 bankers boxes of electronics,” and what Boudin’s office describes as “about 1,000 stolen electronics items.” The alleged ringleader of the fencing operation, 41-year-old Quoc Le, was apparently transported into custody “by officials from the United States Postal Inspector and Homeland Security Investigations,” not the cops.
SFPD “have not yet returned an inquiry” into Boudin’s version of events, per Mission Local.
We already had an emerging narrative of San Francisco police seemingly doing nothing with crimes unfolding before their eyes. If true, this latest allegation takes it even further, with a flat-out refusal to cooperate with other sectors of law enforcement. They can claim it’s because of “serious morale issues,” but this would seem more of a case where they didn’t want to help Boudin get a PR win within a month of the recall election. Either way, we seem past the point whether the local police department and district attorney’s office can work together as professionals.
Image: UHaul
