District Attorney Brooke Jenkins speaks at a press conference outside City Hall in San Francisco on June 8. Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins is trying to transfer two children, both 16 years old, to adult court. The case comes just over a month before voters will decide whether to keep Jenkins in office, and marks the first time in at least several years that the city’s prosecutors have attempted to move a kid out of the juvenile system, which is supposed to be more rehabilitative than the adult one.
Jenkins may also be considering moving a third child to adult court—the 17-year-old who shot 49ers receiver Ricky Pearsall near Union Square in August. The shooting attracted national media attention. In early September, Jenkins said at a press conference that her team had not made a decision about whether to request that transfer.
For every white child prosecuted in adult court in California from 2010 to 2016, there were about 12 Black kids prosecuted there.
The teens Jenkins’ office sought to transfer today, who I am not naming because they are minors, are accused of murder. At least one of them has a history of being abused and neglected. On Thursday at a hearing in juvenile court, Judge Roger Chan said he received the prosecutors’ motion for the transfer but did not yet make a decision. One of the teens, who is Black and wore a green T-shirt, appeared in the courtroom with his attorney, Brian Ford.
“My client does not meet the factors required to transfer to adult jurisdiction under the law,” Ford told me before the hearing. “Brooke Jenkins’ decision to seek adult treatment is emblematic of her ongoing inclination to attack the most vulnerable persons in society,” he........