Lee Heidhues 5.23.2023
Are you kidding me? I am trying to wrap my arms around this breaking news story in Mission Local. The story does a deep dive into Walgreens trade group ALTO and its cozy relationship with SF DA Brooke Jenkins.
It’s a well known story now that DA Jenkins is not going to prosecute the Walgreens rent a cop who murdered Banko Brown, an alleged shoplifter of $14 worth of candy, on April 27.
The following comment in Mission Local jumped out at me.
“A former prosecutor with the DA’s office said that a guilty criminal verdict against the guard would leave him “salivating,” he said. A subsequent civil victory against Walgreens, he explained, would be almost guaranteed.“
Where are the SF Chronicle and The Standard on this breaking news story?
Excerpted from Mission Local 5.23.2023
The relationship between the San Francisco DA’s office and Walgreens trade group ALTO USA is particularly close now, because a lead attorney for the trade group is a personal friend, ally and former colleague of Jenkins.
Xóchitl Carrion, a lead San Francisco attorney for ALTO since November, 2021, and Jenkins were both hired as assistant district attorneys under former District Attorney George Gascón — Jenkins in 2014, Carrion in 2015 — and came up in the office at the same time.
Carrion was also one of several prosecutors, including Jenkins, who left the District Attorney’s Office publicly in 2021, under its predecessor, Boudin. Like Jenkins, she spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle in October 2021, criticizing Boudin’s performance.
“She’s very close personally with Brooke, and with other people in decision-making capacities [at the DA’s office],” said a former prosecutor.
Walgreens, where alleged shoplifter Banko Brown was shot and killed by a security guard last month, has a direct line to District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and her senior staff through the trade group ALTO USA, according to interviews with half-a-dozen former prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, and others close to the DA’s office.
They described ALTO as closely involved in shoplifting cases in San Francisco, particularly those involving Walgreens.
The anti-retail-theft trade group, which counts national stores like Walgreens, Target, and Whole Foods as members, first began its relationship with the San Francisco district attorney’s office in November, 2020, under Jenkins’s predecessor, Chesa Boudin.
Top photo – Walgreens at 4th and Market in San Francisco where Banko Brown was murdered by a rent a cop on April 27, 2023.
Lee's Perspective 