City Hall Digest: Banko Brown Shooting Highlights City Failures and Nordstrom Departure Worsens Downtown Woes

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

Banko Brown Shooting Highlights City Failures

The recent killing of Banko Brown, a young Black trans man, by Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, a Walgreens security guard, sparked intense backlash and difficult conversations about the state of San Francisco. It also highlights the fact that the city has failed the most vulnerable people it has repeatedly promised to protect. 

Although Anthony, who is also Black, was initially presented to the District Attorney by police on suspicion of murder, the DA said she would not pursue that charge, sparking controversy. This is by no means the end of the investigation. A statement by DA Jenkins explains that she had a deadline to determine charges while Anthony was being held in custody—and that at the time, she did not have enough evidence to press murder charges. However, the case is still being investigated. 

Only time and further investigation can reveal the full scope of the facts, which are rarely clear-cut. The truth certainly isn’t yet clear in this case. However, the lack of clarity on details hasn’t reduced the public outcry or the demands to see the video of the shooting. Many feel that the video will prove a point one way or another but it’s only one piece of evidence in the case. Releasing the video in an ongoing criminal investigation due to external pressure can have consequences for the outcome of the case, either by creating bias in a potential jury pool or by feeding peoples’ ideas of what they want to see. 

At this point, what is clear is how badly the city has failed both parties. Brown, who was homeless, had repeatedly tried and failed to secure a spot in the city’s supply of permanent housing—a frustrating fact most likely driven by arbitrary bureaucracy around housing placements. Shelter, especially for vulnerable populations, should be accessible with wraparound services on demand. Likewise, Anthony was failed by the city because retail store security guards in San Francisco routinely face attacks with little training, and recently one was killed on the job.  Armed security at retailers have become a common sight in San Francisco because the social contract has been broken. Residents and businesses' sense of trust in government to provide these basic services has diminished and we are now facing the consequences. 

Another piece of this story to untangle is the hyperbolic reaction to the shooting—with some wildly over-the-line people saying that Brown’s alleged act of shoplifting was a capital crime, deserving of death. Any reasonable person would take offense to that suggestion, but unfortunately, these incendiary takes reflect how viscerally some people feel about petty crime in the city. With the amplifying power of digital echo chambers, the ones making these claims feel emboldened to continue to do so, as it becomes their version of truth. 

Truth in this case will be difficult to decipher, but it’s up to our elected officials—namely the District Attorney and her office—to tune out the noise and do the work. DA Jenkins has said as much. In a statement, she said that her office will “follow the law and the evidence, wherever it leads” and that her office will not “make decisions based on emotions or what may be politically expedient.” DA Jenkins has also said the investigation is ongoing and that she is committed to releasing a complete accounting of the evidence if she decides not to pursue charges. If she does, though, the tape and other evidence will be presented in court.

Nordstrom Departure Worsens Downtown Woes

Downtown retail closures are occurring more and more frequently, and last week the Westfield mall was dealt a critical hit by the announcement that Nordstrom, which occupies five floors in the mall, is leaving. Like many other companies downsizing their presence in downtown, Nordstrom is claiming that petty crime combined with declining foot traffic were the driving factors of their decision. 

A statement by Nordstrom sparked a round of finger-pointing, as the company claims that the city has not done enough to make customers feel safe, while the city fired back by saying the company never brought them a completed plan to reduce the store’s footprint while also potentially allowing for housing, in a move to redevelop the mall similar to proposals to reshape Stonestown. All the petty bickering aside, this closure is not good for the city and comes at a terrible time as Nordstrom is the latest of at least 20 major retailers to have left the downtown core.

The notion that these companies that are leaving are just big, billion-dollar corporations who have zero bearing on everyday life is reductive—as the city’s property tax revenues decline, so does the city’s ability to provide social services. The city is already facing a budget deficit exceeding $700 million over the next two years driven in part by high office vacancy rates and losses on pension investments, and city departments are preparing to tighten their belts as much as possible. 

There has also been messaging that this is about retail landscape changing and not about safety. Both can be true—that the retail landscape is changing, and that there are safety issues making the landscape for retail even worse. Regardless, we have not yet seen a plan from City Hall about what’s going to happen to these massive, now-vacant buildings that are the heart of downtown.

TogetherSF Action is making advocating for an end to the drug epidemic in San Francisco a top priority this year. Our first step? Flooding inboxes at City Hall. We need thousands of concerned San Franciscans to send letters to their leaders demanding they end open-air drug markets in 2023. Are you in?