A year ago, local media widely reported a press release from newly-seated Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price that she had created a new “District Attorney’s Mental Health Commission.” The announcement stated the MHC would “advise the [DA’s] office on how to better respond to criminal justice cases involving people with serious mental illnesses. The hope is to provide care and new pathways, rather than punishment, to the families and loved ones of those with mental health challenges, according to the district attorney’s office.”

Back in June, 2020, California Highway Patrol officers cruising in Oakland spotted a suspicious Dodge Challenger Hellcat that was later determined to have been stolen from a San Leandro Dodge dealership. The vehicle also sported a stolen license plate. CHP pursued the car, which tried to get away. Eventually, they boxed it in. Then, according to media reports, the driver, Eric Salgado, “revved the engine and began spinning the tires, burning rubber [and] rammed into several CHP cars.” At that point, the cops, fearing for their own safety and that of their follow officers, fired their weapons. Salgado was killed.

I’m sorry, but seeing Sheng Thao at her news conference shed crocodile tears for Officer Tuan Le’s murder disgusted me. It was on the 5 o’clock news Friday afternoon. I didn’t buy her performance for one lousy second.

Somebody wrote to the S.F. Chronicle expressing her “disgust” for Brooke Jenkins, the wonderful District Attorney of San Francisco County. This was after Jenkins said that homeless people “have to be made to be uncomfortable,” a reference to the idea that regularly sweeping encampments encourages unhoused people to accept offers of shelter. “As the descendent of a German Jewish family that was nearly eradicated by the Nazis,” she wrote, “I…am disgusted, once again by our district attorney.”

I for one wasn’t surprised when Thao rejected all three candidates for Police Chief the Police Commission had recommended to her. Thao had her reasons. One, none of the candidates was woke enough. Thao is looking for someone who’s as committed to “social justice” as she claims to be. She’s not interested in a good cop who fights crime; she wants a sort of Nikki Bas in blue uniform, someone obsessed with racial grievance and leftist ideology.