Discussion: San Francisco Defends Sanctuary City Status As Backlash Mounts

The murder rate in Anchorage, Alaska is 8.6 compared to 6.1 in San Francisco.

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What a Twitter feed backlash? Please let’s get serious, or if we are then we are screwed!

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Who cares what Trump thinks, or the Russian bots that have proven to be so prevalent on social media? What TPM and other should be investigating is how true is said backlash. Does anyone here care what the batshit crazy hateful right-wingers have to say? I mean, seriously!

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Not much of a boycott. Those folks never wanted to come to SF in the first place.

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Those who do - and there are plenty, actually - seem to enjoy being “disgusted” by [whatever] as they chow down on our worst culinary ‘treats’ at Fisherman’s Wharf or visit Union Square in their sweatpants and shower shoes. To them we are a carny sideshow.

I would just as soon they stay home. I don’t think we are THAT hard up for tourist dollars…

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Backlash from people who can’t be bothered to read details and learn facts. Very tired of all the outrage from people who voted Republicans into office, people whose votes will end up killing more people and visiting more misery on more people than this man could ever imagine doing.

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For an AP story, this isn’t awful (includes the argument for sanctuary cities, debunks Trump’s lie that the defendant had been violent, eg); pleasantly surprised. But can any lawyers explain/speculate why, while the prosecution’s being criticized for not including second-degree murder among the charges, the jury wouldn’t have found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, which was included? In my ignorance I’d have thought that would’ve been even more plausible than second-degree murder, and maybe even than the gun-possession charge, given the claim that he found the gun (perhaps supported by the fact that the bullet ricocheted, suggesting careless/uncertain handling). I’m puzzled…

ETA: Correction, prosecution did include second-degree murder, just ultimately didn’t focus on it in the push for first-degree (thanks for the link below, @seedoubleyou). But I’m still puzzled about involuntary manslaughter…

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Backlash? What backlash? From conservatives on Twitter? Who CARES? This verdict and San Francisco’s sanctuary city status have nothing to do with each other.

BESIDES, months ago legal experts who had looked at this case said the evidence against Zarate was extremely thin. Prosecutors argued that he supposedly shot Steinle “purposely” from across the street with a shot that had first ricocheted off the pavement. Either Zarate was the greatest shot since the trick shooters in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, or it was --as the defense argued successfully-- a complete accident.

Lastly: When these same conservatives, including Trump himself, argue all day that local gun shops cannot be compelled by Federal agencies to turn over the purchase records of criminals who have committed assaults and murders, why aren’t they arguing the same for San Francisco’s right to not enforce a Federal agency’s mandates to turn over immigrants who have committed only minor crimes?


“You have to prosecute a case with the evidence you have, and that’s what the prosecution did,” said Hadar Aviram, a criminal law professor at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. “I think in this case, there just wasn’t the evidence.”
– Kate Steinle murder trial: How the prosecution’s case fell apart

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