Brooke Jenkins (born 1981/1982)[1] is an American lawyer serving as the 30th District Attorney of San Francisco. On July 8, 2022, Jenkins was appointed interim district attorney by Mayor London Breed following the successful recallofChesa Boudin, for which she actively campaigned.[2] She was elected in her own right to fill the unexpired term the following November.[3]
Jenkins was admitted to the California State Bar in 2011.[8] Prior to becoming a prosecutor, she worked for two years in corporate law, defending foreign and domestic automakers and manufacturers.[4] Her firm's clients included Honda and Takata.
Jenkins worked in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office for seven years from 2014 to mid-2021,[9] where she started as an attorney handling misdemeanor cases and later served as a hate crimes prosecutor.[4] She resigned in October 2021 to support the recall campaign against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.[10]
Mayor London Breed announced on July 7, 2022 the appointment of Jenkins to serve in the interim until an election is held on November 8, 2022 to elect a District Attorney to serve the rest of Boudin's term through 2023.[9] She was sworn into office on July 8.[10] Her first act within the office was to hold a meeting with senior staff, where she was accompanied by Andrea Bruss, the deputy chief of staff of the Mayor's Office.[11] A week later, she fired 15 attorneys, as well as top Boudin advisors like his chief of staff, director of communications and policy advisor, and director of data, research and analytics.[12]
Between her appointment and August 2022, Jenkins instituted policies such as allowing her attorneys to seek gang enhancements, allowing the conditional prosecution of minors as adults, and making drug dealers ineligible for community courts.[13][14] Under her term, convictions rose 5% from 2022 to 2023.[15] She supported Proposition E in 2022, which aimed to expand the use of police surveillance through the use of live cameras.[16] It will first be implemented in the Mission.[17] Proposition E was criticized by organizations like the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, among others for privacy concerns and potential for the suppression of dissent.[16]
Jenkins ran in the November 2022 special election to serve the remainder of Boudin's term through 2023.[18] She won with 53.7% of the vote.
On October 13, 2022, retired Superior Court Judge Martha Goldin filed a State Bar complaint against Jenkins, outlining multiple misconduct allegations.[19][20] Jenkins was paid a six-figure consulting fee by the nonprofit Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, which shares a name and an office with the Chesa Boudin recall campaign. Jenkins had not previously disclosed these payments was registered as a volunteer.[21][22] In October 2022, an anonymous complaint was filed with San Francisco's Ethics Commission and the California Fair Political Practices Commission accusing Jenkins of failing to register as a campaign consultant. The complaint alleged that the $153,000 salary Jenkins received from the nonprofit was intended for partisan purposes.[22]
In October 2022, reporter Joe Eskenazi revealed that just before leaving the District Attorney's Office, Jenkins had sent sensitive files, including a rap sheet, from the District Attorney's office to Assistant District Attorney Don DuBain's personal email and used those materials in the campaign to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin. In California, disseminating a rap sheet to a person who is unauthorized to receive it is a misdemeanor.[23] Jenkins claimed that she accidentally sent the email to DuBain's personal email.[24]
In August 2023, the California Court of Appeal, First District, found that Brooke Jenkins committed prosecutorial misconduct in a homicide case she prosecuted in 2021 by making improper arguments about the defense attorney in violation of ethical rules. This is the second time a court has found that Jenkins committed misconduct.[25] In 2016, the California Court of Appeal overturned a conviction after finding that Jenkins committed prosecutorial misconduct by improperly commenting on a defendant's exercise of his right to remain silent and thereby interfering with a defendant's constitutional rights.[26]
