EDUCATION
Ocean Beach isn’t the only place in San Francisco that is shrouded in fog year round. Step into the halls of San Francisco Superior Court and you’ll wade through bureaucratic layers of procedural inefficiencies that will make your head spin faster than a botched exorcism. As a court watch volunteer for Stop Crime Action, it’s very difficult to find any information about court hearings, either in-person or online.
Take Marcos Smith-Pequeno, accused of pilfering over $16,000 in Walgreens loot. A judge cut him loose pretrial, defying District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’s plea to hold him. Public backlash on X erupted, irked that the San Francisco Standard’s first report omitted the judge’s name. After much public clamor, Judge Gerardo Sandoval emerged as the presiding judge in a corrected piece.
Want to know what judge presided over a hearing? Good luck — requests can languish for weeks, demanding a litany of details aimed at the right court recorder. Transcripts come with a fee which only that recorder can materialize, unless you trek in-person, DMV-style, to eyeball transcripts under a court employee’s watchful gaze. If this labyrinth is meant to deter, it’s a masterclass in obstruction
San Francisco’s 2024 election was a head-scratcher. Two incumbent Superior Court judges, Michael Begert and Patrick Thompson, glided to reelection despite Stop Crime Court Watch marking them with failing grades on curbing recidivism. In a 2023 citywide survey, two-thirds of San Francisco residents said public safety was worse, and three-quarters point fingers at judges for spiking crime rates. So why did San Francisco voters reward judges tagged as soft on crime? We surveyed registered San Francisco voters in March 2025 to unpack this paradox.
Judicial transparency: A cry in the dark
Our survey chart shows voters are fed up. A whopping 90 percent (Top 3 Box) demand more sunlight on judges who keep releasing repeat offenders back onto San Francisco’s streets. Over two-thirds (69 percent) are adamant — strongly agreeing or agreeing — they want the lowdown on judges whose rulings fuel recidivism among serial crooks.