Throughout an annual Chinatown group occasion hosted by the police division in September, interim San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins moved by the group like a rock star, stopping to oblige selfie requests and chat with locals gathered at Portsmouth Sq. for a dialogue on public security and crime.

Jenkins, 41, is incessantly acknowledged on San Francisco’s streets as of late — at a family-friendly NoPa block get together, throughout an artwork stroll on Clement Road or a Noe Valley pumpkin-carving contest judged by drag queens.

The political newcomer surged to superstar in July as Mayor London Breed’s choose to exchange progressive Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin after voters ousted him from office a month earlier. However very like her predecessor, Jenkins has turn out to be one of many metropolis’s most controversial political figures.

For some, Jenkins has ushered in a essential crackdown on crime in a metropolis battling drug overdoses and violent attacks in opposition to Asian People and weak populations. For others, she’s a political pawn with questionable ethics, intent on dragging town again to a failed tough-on-crime period of a long time previous.

Jenkins ascended to energy roughly 9 months after she give up Boudin’s workplace and joined the marketing campaign to recall him amid a surge in frustration over crime and homelessness. Since then, she’s been accused of getting a too-cozy relationship with the mayor, sharply rebuked by the felony justice reform motion and criticized for being paid greater than $100,000 as a marketing consultant to a nonprofit group carefully related to the recall marketing campaign.

Jenkins is now working within the Nov. 8 election to serve the rest of Boudin’s time period by 2023. She’s favored to win, in accordance with two recent polls, in opposition to a longshot candidate to her proper and two different Democrats who’ve earned the party’s endorsement within the metropolis’s ranked-choice election.

Whoever succeeds will take official cost of an embattled workplace that’s typically blamed for town’s most pervasive issues, pretty or not.

Jenkins Mentioned she’s as much as the duty.

“[San Franciscans] are completely happy about what I’ve carried out up to now. They’re fed up with the drug dealing,” she mentioned. “They’re fed up with San Francisco being a spot that’s now made enjoyable of within the information throughout the nation, due to the crime state of affairs. They’re uninterested in their companies struggling.”

Jenkins took over the prosecutor’s workplace amid deep political polarization in San Francisco, a favourite punching bag of Republicans and ring-wing media retailers. To its critics, town is a liberal haven the place homeless folks defecate within the streets and the place even Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband isn’t safe from a violent attack.

Native politics typically devolve into ideological discord, not between Republicans and Democrats, however between moderates and far-left progressives. Earlier this 12 months, voters recalled three school board members over issues with classroom closures throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, amongst different points.

“She was immediately elevated to probably the most high-profile places of work in San Francisco, in probably the most hyper-political cities within the nation,” mentioned Max Szabo, a former assistant district lawyer and spokesman for then-San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascón. “It’s type of like going from peewee soccer to quarterbacking the Tremendous Bowl.”

Jenkins promised to revive legislation and order in San Francisco as town’s prime cop, largely by strengthening penalties for repeat fentanyl sellers and mitigating the drug disaster in beleaguered neighborhoods. However throughout a latest two-hour ride-along with a metropolis disaster response staff, Jenkins realized “how a lot work we have to do.”

One name got here for a homeless man exterior a grocery retailer who gave the impression to be injured. One other for an inebriated lady who bartered with the disaster intervention staff for extra booze earlier than accepting a blanket. The third name was for a person on his arms and knees on the sidewalk who obtained a medical verify and a ready-made meal of rice and beef.

And in between every cease, the van zipped previous numerous homeless people asleep on the sidewalks or utilizing medication.

“We actually aren’t going to prosecute our means out of this case,” she mentioned after the journey ended.

It was in San Francisco and underneath Gascón that Jenkins discovered find out how to be her model of a “progressive prosecutor.”

“George Gascón in San Francisco took violent crime extraordinarily severely, but in addition was very clear with us that he wished to advertise options to incarceration,” Jenkins mentioned. Gascón was elected Los Angeles County district lawyer in 2020.

That stability shifted underneath Boudin, she argued, in a means that deserted accountability in favor of “blanket insurance policies.” Boudin didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Jenkins mentioned she agreed with the “spirit” of Boudin’s ambition to reform the felony justice system. She considers remedy packages and commerce work alternatives in sure circumstances, she mentioned, together with psychological well being providers.

To a degree.

One in all Jenkins’ new insurance policies modified Boudin’s ban in opposition to charging 16- and 17-year-olds as adults to permit it for a restricted variety of “heinous crimes,” akin to homicide, forcible sexual assault or mass shootings. She additionally revoked more than 30 open plea offers for repeat fentanyl sellers, and introduced that she would permit her prosecutors to pursue doable homicide prices in opposition to alleged fentanyl sellers whose merchandise brought on an overdose dying.

“It’s not sufficient to say, ‘I simply don’t consider in incarceration.’ Actually folks can name that progressive,” Jenkins mentioned. “However in case you’re going to place ‘prosecutor’ behind it, you really have to be prepared to prosecute crime.”

The adjustments have ignited swift opposition.

Emily Lee, co-director of San Francisco Rising, an advocacy group that promotes civic engagement in communities of shade, mentioned Jenkins’ choice to permit for juveniles to be charged as adults contradicts science and information on teenage mind improvement. She mentioned the brand new coverage has disenchanted youth organizations and households of incarcerated individuals who “really feel like that’s throwing away the lives of people that deserve a second likelihood and want extra alternative.”

Lee additionally mentioned households of people killed by police officers have raised issues with how the district lawyer’s workplace is dealing with their circumstances, and he or she questioned whether or not Jenkins’ new insurance policies have carried out a lot to cut back crime. Lee mentioned it’s going to take multiple elected official to deal with the basis causes of town’s most vexing issues.

“If D.A. Jenkins is a progressive prosecutor, the time period has misplaced all which means,” mentioned former San Francisco Police Commissioner John Hamasaki, who’s working to Jenkins’ left within the race for district lawyer. “Restarting the drug battle, restarting the prosecution of kids, prosecuting low-level drug customers as a substitute of providing them remedy, I feel all of these issues are objectively regressive.”

Hamasaki earned the first-choice endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Celebration, whereas civil rights lawyer Joe Alioto Veronese was advisable because the get together’s second alternative. Hamasaki mentioned he’s working to convey administration expertise to the district lawyer’s workplace and to root out corruption in metropolis authorities, together with the prosecutor’s workplace, the place he mentioned Jenkins is beholden to the mayor.

Jenkins has strongly denied the allegation. However she’s additionally discovered herself on the defensive over the six figures in fees she earned as a marketing consultant for the nonprofit group Neighbors for a Higher San Francisco whereas publicly portraying herself as a volunteer for the equally named Neighbors for a Higher San Francisco Advocacy, a political group that labored to take away Boudin. The 2 teams reported the identical San Rafael tackle and billionaire William Oberndorf, who helped finance the recall, is listed as a director or president in official information.

Jenkins mentioned she handled the roles as “two separate issues,” however acknowledged she might have disclosed her function as a paid marketing consultant sooner.

On Wednesday, Jenkins once more confronted a wave of criticism after the nonprofit information website Mission Native reported that proper earlier than she left the district lawyer’s workplace final 12 months underneath Boudin, Jenkins emailed copies of sensitive police reports to the non-public e-mail account of a colleague who additionally resigned to affix the recall marketing campaign.

The confidential data included the prolonged felony historical past of a a vehicular manslaughter suspect who was featured in the recall campaign as an alleged instance of Boudin’s soft-on-crime insurance policies.

Jenkins discovered in a short time that, in a metropolis recognized for gleefully devouring its personal leaders, possessing each deft political instincts and a thick pores and skin is obligatory for achievement. That toughness, although, ran within the household and have become a driving drive in her life.

Jenkins, who’s Black and Latina, was raised in Fremont and Union Metropolis by a single mother who labored two jobs and attended faculty night time courses to turn out to be a highschool counselor. Jenkins didn’t meet her dad, an immigrant from El Salvador who now lives in Germany, till she was 21.

“I really feel like being raised by my mother solely made me rather a lot stronger in lots of methods, and I wouldn’t change something about my circumstances,” she mentioned. “However my dad and I, fortunately, have been in a position to actually forge a powerful relationship and a powerful bond.”

Jenkins competed within the 400-meter hurdles on the observe and discipline staff at UC Berkeley, then graduated from the College of Chicago Regulation College. She labored in personal observe,then served because the assistant director of enforcement for the Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Assn. earlier than she was employed in 2014 by the San Francisco prosecutor’s workplace.

She labored because the division’s designated hate crimes prosecutor and was later promoted to the sexual assault unit. In 2020, Boudin elevated her to the murder unit.

Jenkins mentioned she was uniquely certified to deal with homicide circumstances. She might relate to victims’ grieving households, she mentioned, as a result of she and her husband’s first child, a son they named Justice, died of pure causes quickly after he was born.

“I feel that stems from being a guardian who has needed to bury my very own little one and actually recognizing that excessive degree of loss when any individual takes the lifetime of your little one and also you’re left with nothing,” mentioned Jenkins, who now has two younger youngsters, a son and daughter.

Forrest Myers, an actual property developer who met Jenkins in center faculty, mentioned Jenkins is a “lawyer by coronary heart,” however was additionally raised in a group that valued collaboration, variety and arduous work.

“She is tremendous right down to earth,” Myers added, describing Jenkins as a “hamburger-chicken-wing-Sunday-on-the-couch-football-East-Bay lady.”

In California, Jenkins might be thought-about a reasonable, even liberal on some factors.

She mentioned she helps overdose prevention packages, generally known as secure injection websites, given the fentanyl disaster on San Francisco’s streets. In contrast to a few of her fellow district attorneys, Jenkins hasn’t known as for the repeal of Propositions 47 and 57, two controversial voter-approved initiatives that aimed to decrease California’s jail inhabitants. She mentioned the insurance policies have labored as anticipated.

“I feel she will get caricatured as by some means being conservative, and he or she’s not,” mentioned state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who endorsed her marketing campaign. “It’s clear to me that she’s much more progressive than folks assume on felony justice points. She additionally believes in accountability, which is necessary. I feel she’ll strike that stability.”

However she won’t have a lot time.

Jenkins has put herself in a “tough place,” Szabo mentioned, after she grew to become “the general public face of a recall that blamed D.A. Boudin for town’s ills.”

“Now she has the reins, and she will be able to plead endurance all she desires, however that is an voters that threw D.A. Boudin out simply two years into his first time period when total crime was down,” Szabo mentioned. “On this city, on this local weather and particularly in that job, she doesn’t have lengthy.”

Jenkins mentioned she’s centered on why she was appointed. San Franciscans are feeling increasingly discouraged with the direction of the city, in accordance with a latest San Francisco Chronicle survey of greater than 1,600 residents.

Forty-five p.c mentioned they’d been a sufferer of theft within the final 5 years, whereas almost 1 / 4 mentioned they’d been threatened or bodily attacked.

“I feel folks have reached the tipping level,” Jenkins mentioned, “that this will’t be the id of our metropolis.”