Lee Heidhues 5.25.2023

Reality L. Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor was the first person prosecuted during the Trump administration on charges of leaking classified information. She served three years in Federal prison.

Liz encouraged me to watch the segment on Reality Winner broadcast on Amanpour & Company this afternoon.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2023/05/24/amanpour-reality-satter.cnn

Until now I had no idea who this woman is and why she is the subject of so much media attention.

Reality Winner was sentenced to five years in Federal prison in 2018.

Reality Winner, now 30, lives in her childhood home on the edge of a cattle ranch less than 100 miles north of the Mexican border. She came here after she was released from prison in summer 2021, now living alongside her mom and step-dad and a collection of stray animals.

A feature film “Reality” on HBO is being released today.

Earlier a documentary film “United States vs. Reality Winner” received critical acclaim.

Now I know more about the harsh treatment meted out to Reality Winner by the Federal government. And the catastrophic effect it has had on her life.

Reality Winner was also subject of a 60 Minutes interview in 2021.

The online publication The Intercept released documents which led to her arrest, charging, conviction and imprisonment. This was not one of the finest moments for The Intercept. Which, in hindsight, it failed to protect its source, Ms. Winner.

Excerpted from Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#:~:text=On%20June%202%2C%202021%2C%20Winner,not%20because%20of%20compassionate%20release.

The Intercept sent copies of the documents to the NSA on May 30, 2017 to confirm their veracity, and the NSA notified the FBI. According to Vice magazine, an FBI report said the documents “appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space.” Through an internal audit, the NSA determined that Winner was one of six workers who had accessed the particular documents on its classified system, but only Winner’s computer had been in contact with The Intercept using a personal email account. On June 3, the FBI obtained a warrant to search Winner’s electronic devices, and she was arrested. Both journalists and security experts have suggested that The Intercept‘s handling of the reporting, which included publishing the documents unredacted and including the printer tracking dots, was used to identify Winner as the leaker. In October 2020, The Intercept‘s co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald wrote that Winner had sent her documents to The Intercept‘s New York newsroom with no request that any specific journalist work on them. He called her exposure a “deeply embarrassing newsroom failure” resulting from “speed and recklessness” for which he was publicly blamed “despite having no role in it.” He said editor-in-chief Betsy Reed “oversaw, edited and controlled that story.” An internal review conducted by The Intercept into its handling of the document provided by Winner found that its “practices fell short of the standards to which we hold ourselves”.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/reality-winner-interview-prison-nsa-1261844/

Lee Heidhues 5.24.2023

Climate change activism is no laughing matter in Germany.

Last Generation, the German climate activist group, has literally glued their bodies to the street.

Gluing themselves to major urban thoroughfares. Disrupting commuter traffic.

Sending a message to a public which may believe climate change is a problem.

But doesn’t want to take meaningful action to combat it.

It’s obvious the German authorities are concerned about Last Generation whose activities, in the mind of the authorities at least, has moved beyond simple guerilla theater.

These People represent a threat to the State and must be eliminated from the public debate.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.24.2023

German police have conducted searches of the homes of climate activists from the Last Generation environmental group. They are charged with having organized a fundraising campaign to finance criminal actions.

Two of the suspects allegedly planned to sabotage an oil pipeline linking the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt to the port of Trieste in Italy. The pipeline is considered to be a critical piece of infrastructure in Bavaria.

Police on Wednesday said they had searched 15 properties linked to members of the Last Generation climate group who are suspected of helping finance a criminal enterprise.

The raids were connected to a string of charges filed against activists from the group since the middle of last year, authorities said.

Police said the internet homepage for Last Generation in Germany had also been shut down on the instructions of the prosecutor’s office.

The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (BLKA)  and the Munich General Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that officers had conducted searches of properties in seven states across Germany from 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT/UTC) on Wednesday.

Seven suspects between 22 and 38 years of age are accused of forming or supporting a criminal organization, although officials said no arrests had yet taken place.

The suspects are accused of collecting at least €1.4 million ($1.5 million) to finance criminal activities.

The police raids took place in the states of Hesse, Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Bavaria, Berlin, and Schleswig-Holstein. Some 170 police officers were deployed nationwide for the operation.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-swoop-on-last-generation-climate-activists/a-65715954

Top photo-Last Generation activist becomes unglued

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. 

Walgreens trade group cozy with SF district attorney’s office

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 Heidhues 5.22.2023

My neighbor Joseph Grovers is a dedicated long distance runner.

A years long runner in high school, college and now an active competitive runner. His latest exploit was being part of a “Centipede” team in this year’s Bay to Breakers. His team finished third in the competition with a sub 40 minute time in the nearly eight mile race across San Francisco. A link to a video clip of Joseph’s team climbing “Hellish Hayes Street” is attached.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1660705795405914112

Joseph Grovers 5.22.2023 – Special to Lee’s Perspective

The members of our Centipede line-up:

Zach Litoff, Josh Rosenkranz, Simon Ricci, Jonathan Charlesworth, Richard Skogsberg, Tristan Santos, Brody Barkan, Joseph Grovers, Franklin Rice, Ben Eversole, Quinn Todzo, Michael Roberts, Jason Karbelk, Ryan Somerfield, Will Goodness.

We’re all runners who ran collegiately to some extent, whether club cross country / track, or NCAA team. And we all now reside in San Francisco, practice with & compete for West Valley Track Club.

WVTC had a B Centipede on the men’s side, a centipede for the women(dressed in a Doggy Diner theme, paying homage to the dog heads on JFK and former SF restaurant chain)

I’m a Bay Area native, from Newark specifically. I ran while at Newark Memorial, then continued competing in cross country and track at UC Davis, for the club team.

After Davis, I returned home to the Bay Area and trained independently. After a few years, I joined West Valley Track Club in San Francisco.

Top photo. Joseph’s Centipede team cruises down JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park near the DeYoung Museum

Lee Heidhues 5.21.2023

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been wrongfully, and for no reason, imprisoned in Russia nearly two months.

It’s obvious that Putin is blithely ignoring the worldwide protests by journalism organizations, governments, NGOs and thousands of individuals who are protesting this outrage.

Evan Gershkovich is only one of several Americans who have been unjustly arrested and detained by Putin. Paul Whelan has been incarcerated for five years. Falsely accused of espionage. Brittney Griner was arrested and held captive for 10 months in 2022. Falsely accused of bringing marijuana into Russia.

All these arrests and incarcerations are political blackmail to harass the American government. Criminally using American citizens as a bullying and intimidation tactic.

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 5.19.2023

WASHINGTON—The Russian government has rejected for a second time a request from U.S. officials to visit detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in a Moscow prison.

Gershkovich was confined to a prison in Moscow. On April 18 he appeared before a judge, who denied his appeal to lift his pretrial detention.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry linked the move to a complaint that its journalists didn’t get U.S. visas to travel with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the United Nations in New York last month. The ministry had rejected an earlier request for a consular visit over the same complaint. Russian reporters aren’t behind bars in the U.S.

The State Department said it had sought a meeting with Gershkovich on May 25. “We strongly object to Russia’s ongoing failure to comply with its obligations under the Consular Convention to provide us consular access to detained U.S. citizens,” a State Department spokeswoman said. “Regardless of the hurdles, our team is focused on ensuring timely consular access to all U.S. nationals detained abroad.”

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy visited Gershkovich a month ago in the first access provided to U.S. officials since his detention in March.

Gershkovich, 31 years old, was detained on March 29 by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, while he was on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg and held on an allegation of espionage that The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-again-denies-consular-visit-for-wsj-reporter-103a90bb?mod=evan_gershkovich_latest_stories_pos1

Lee Heidhues 5.19.2023

Fox News is being sued again. This time by Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) who briefly ran the short lived Disinformation Governance Board, responsible for monitoring disinformation campaigns by other nations.

On May 2, 2022, the The Department of Homeland Security released a statement which said that the board would monitor disinformation spread by “foreign states such as Russia, China, and Iran” and “transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations”

The Board was disbanded in August 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Board

What is most alarming about Ms. Jankowicz’ experience is the vicious manner in which she was attacked and harassed by Fox News. Exposing her to hate all too typically displayed by the shallow minded and ready to believe anything Fox audience.

Attached is a link to an interview with Ms. Jankowicz after her resignation on Amanpour and Company.

https://www.pbs.org/video/why-biden-admins-disinformation-chief-stepped-down-uiw35g/

Excerpted from The Guardian 5.19.2023

The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.

Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.

“Every time they talked about me on Fox, a new wave of harassment would start. I would get a spike especially when (Tucker) Carlson and (Sean)Hannity mentioned me.”

The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.

Jankowicz resigned from the federal post on 18 May 2022, barely three weeks into the job.

In an interview with the Guardian, she said her motive in suing Fox was to ensure accountability for what she alleged was a campaign of lies against her that undermined American democracy. “There needs to be consequences,” she said.

“It was lies, very personal and very vitriolic lies. And I don’t think that is democratic.”

She added that what she claimed was Fox’s reckless disregard for the truth had implications for the future of the country. “If we can’t agree on statements of fact, how can you live in a democracy?”

As an authority on disinformation campaigns, Jankowicz said she could predict the cycle of events that unfolded. Whenever Fox hosts attacked her on air, a swarm of online hate would be directed at her culminating in multiple death threats.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/19/fox-news-lawsuit-nina-jankowicz

Lee Heidhues 5.18.2023

I confess to be genuinely shocked and dismayed when I read this investigative piece in The Jewish News of California.

At least in California there are laws on the books which can be utilized to convict and imprison those who engage in these hate crimes.

The California penal code section 11411 classifies as a misdemeanor the placing or displaying of a swastika on “private and nonprivate property… with the intent to terrorize a person.” Updated in the 2021-22 legislative session, the crime now carries a prison sentence of one to three years.

It is almost beyond belief that such Nazi like behavior is common place in America nearly 80 years after Hitler’s demonic genocidal regime was crushed to rubble in May 1945.

Horrifically this repulsive ideology has survived and even more scary is the fact it is alive and well in America in 2023. The authorities need to stop dancing around with all this free speech rhetoric. The people and their hate mongering must be put down and crushed by any means necessary.

These are the same people, encouraged by closet fascist Donald Trump who brought us the January 6, 2021 attempted Coup d’etat.

Excerpted from The Jewish News of Northern California 4.28.2023

They’ve hit big cities and small towns. Elementary schools and college campuses. City parks and the front yards of suburban homes.

Even in San Francisco with its large Jewish community.

Flyers claiming Covid is a Jewish plot, which hit San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood in January 2022, were discovered by a father and daughter on their weekly Sunday morning walk. Rivka, 13, had just had her bat mitzvah.

“It was an opportunity to teach [her] to never take anything for granted,” her father, Joe Staenberg, told J. at the time. “We should not ever think for a moment, even living in Pacific Heights, that antisemitism doesn’t exist.”

In live, near daily video streams, Goyim TV ringleader Jon Minadeo Jr.,  until recently a resident of Petaluma, directs his viewers to a website featuring online, printable PDFs of the antisemitic flyers. He encourages viewers to print, pack and drop as many as they can, wherever they may be, and offers rewards — like free antisemitic T-shirts — to those whose propaganda campaign successfully generates coverage on TV news.

They’re carefully designed and pop with color. Most are folded and stuffed into plastic sandwich bags, weighed down with rice or pebbles so they won’t blow away.

They are flyers that blame Jews for Covid, deny the Holocaust and claim Jewish control of the media.

Hate crime charges in these cases are unlikely, a police spokesman told the Palm Beach Post, as perpetrators  have not technically committed a crime.

All are the work of Goyim TV, also known as the Goyim Defense League, a virulent white supremacist network that for years was based in Petaluma. It lurks in dark corners of the internet — and its followers emerge in the dead of night with stacks of hateful leaflets.

A new national data mapping project by J., based on media reports, shows the breadth of the group’s activity going back to August 2019, when the first flyer drop in Novato was recorded by J.

J.’s analysis, which concluded in March 2023, comes as jurisdictions large and small, particularly in Florida where Goyim TV is now headquartered, are wrestling with what to do about the proliferation of flyer drops and other activity. Lawmakers in Florida are even trying to make the acts a felony.

Keeping its focus on incidents that were covered by news outlets, J.’s review found 233 reports of Goyim TV flyer drops across the country over the past 3½ years, covering 177 cities and towns in 36 states. Based on even higher ADL numbers, it is evident there are many more incidents that do not make the news.

The Anti-Defamation League’s recent annual audit of antisemitic incidents reported a dramatic increase in all incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault against Jews in 2022. The organization counted 3,697 reported incidents, a 36% increase over 2021.

Of the ADL’s 2022 total, the distribution of antisemitic flyers accounted for 852 incidents, well over half of them attributed to Goyim TV. It was a major uptick from 2021 “largely due to the growth of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and its accelerated tempo of antisemitic propaganda campaigns,” the ADL audit said.

Yet Goyim TV’s activities are not limited to dropping antisemitic literature.

In several instances, Minadeo and others have embarked on so-called “Name the Nose” tours, on which they distribute propaganda and drive through cities harassing passersby and shouting slurs from their car windows.

In October 2022, followers hung a banner reading “Kanye is right about the Jews” over Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, after the rapper tweeted antisemitic comments. In February of this year, Goyim TV members went to NASCAR’s Daytona 500 race in Florida and hung a banner reading “Henry Ford was right about the Jews” over the speedway. Later, they used a laser projector to cast “Hitler was right” on the track wall.

How an antisemitic flyer campaign that began in the Bay Area went national

Top photo – American Nazis on the march.

Lee Heidhues 5.18.2023

I confess to be genuinely shocked and dismayed when I read this investigative piece in The Jewish News of California.

At least in California there are laws on the books which can be utilized to convict and imprison those who engage in these hate crimes.

The California penal code section 11411classifies as a misdemeanor the placing or displaying of a swastika on “private and nonprivate property… with the intent to terrorize a person.” Updated in the 2021-22 legislative session, the crime now carries a prison sentence of one to three years.

It is almost beyond belief that such Nazi like behavior is common place in America nearly 80 years after Hitler’s demonic genocidal regime was crushed to rubble in May 1945.

Horrifically this repulsive ideology has survived and even more scary is the fact it is alive and well in America in 2023. The authorities need to stop dancing around with all this free speech rhetoric. The people and their hate mongering must be put down and crushed by any means necessary.

These are the same people, encouraged by closet fascist Donald Trump who brought us the January 6, 2021 attempted Coup d’etat.

Excerpted from The Jewish News of Northern California 4.28.2023

They’ve hit big cities and small towns. Elementary schools and college campuses. City parks and the front yards of suburban homes.

Even in San Francisco with its large Jewish community.

Flyers claiming Covid is a Jewish plot, which hit San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood in January 2022, were discovered by a father and daughter on their weekly Sunday morning walk. Rivka, 13, had just had her bat mitzvah.

“It was an opportunity to teach [her] to never take anything for granted,” her father, Joe Staenberg, told J. at the time. “We should not ever think for a moment, even living in Pacific Heights, that antisemitism doesn’t exist.”

In live, near daily video streams, Goyim TV ringleader Jon Minadeo Jr.,  until recently a resident of Petaluma, directs his viewers to a website featuring online, printable PDFs of the antisemitic flyers. He encourages viewers to print, pack and drop as many as they can, wherever they may be, and offers rewards — like free antisemitic T-shirts — to those whose propaganda campaign successfully generates coverage on TV news.

They’re carefully designed and pop with color. Most are folded and stuffed into plastic sandwich bags, weighed down with rice or pebbles so they won’t blow away.

They are flyers that blame Jews for Covid, deny the Holocaust and claim Jewish control of the media.

Hate crime charges in these cases are unlikely, a police spokesman told the Palm Beach Post, as perpetrators  have not technically committed a crime.

All are the work of Goyim TV, also known as the Goyim Defense League, a virulent white supremacist network that for years was based in Petaluma. It lurks in dark corners of the internet — and its followers emerge in the dead of night with stacks of hateful leaflets.

A new national data mapping project by J., based on media reports, shows the breadth of the group’s activity going back to August 2019, when the first flyer drop in Novato was recorded by J.

J.’s analysis, which concluded in March 2023, comes as jurisdictions large and small, particularly in Florida where Goyim TV is now headquartered, are wrestling with what to do about the proliferation of flyer drops and other activity. Lawmakers in Florida are even trying to make the acts a felony.

Keeping its focus on incidents that were covered by news outlets, J.’s review found 233 reports of Goyim TV flyer drops across the country over the past 3½ years, covering 177 cities and towns in 36 states. Based on even higher ADL numbers, it is evident there are many more incidents that do not make the news.

The Anti-Defamation League’s recent annual audit of antisemitic incidents reported a dramatic increase in all incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault against Jews in 2022. The organization counted 3,697 reported incidents, a 36% increase over 2021.

Of the ADL’s 2022 total, the distribution of antisemitic flyers accounted for 852 incidents, well over half of them attributed to Goyim TV. It was a major uptick from 2021 “largely due to the growth of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and its accelerated tempo of antisemitic propaganda campaigns,” the ADL audit said.

Yet Goyim TV’s activities are not limited to dropping antisemitic literature.

In several instances, Minadeo and others have embarked on so-called “Name the Nose” tours, on which they distribute propaganda and drive through cities harassing passersby and shouting slurs from their car windows.

In October 2022, followers hung a banner reading “Kanye is right about the Jews” over Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, after the rapper tweeted antisemitic comments. In February of this year, Goyim TV members went to NASCAR’s Daytona 500 race in Florida and hung a banner reading “Henry Ford was right about the Jews” over the speedway. Later, they used a laser projector to cast “Hitler was right” on the track wall.

How an antisemitic flyer campaign that began in the Bay Area went national

Top photo – American Nazis on the march.

Lee Heidhues 5.16.2023

Are the trains still running on time? Not all the time these days.

Liz and I have spent time riding the trains in Germany going back to the early 1970’s.

The once vaunted German rail system Deutsche Bahn is in the crisis mode. Aging infrastructure has severely impacted the efficiency of the German transportation network.

Now the German government appears to be pouring resources into the transit system. It remains to be seen whether the investment will pay off in the near future.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.16.2023

It remains one of the most enduring cliches about Germany for those who don’t live there: the trains run on time.

Except they don’t, and haven’t for quite some time. Last year, one-third of trains from Deutsche Bahn (DB) — Germany’s state-owned rail company — were late. That figure has been steadily rising for years.

It’s not just passengers who are affected. Some of Europe’s biggest logistics companies have repeatedly called out DB’s freight and cargo business in recent years for its persistent delays.

Tardiness is not the only problem. The company has been consistently posting losses in recent years and is currently more than €30 billion ($32.6 billion) in debt. Passengers routinely complain of overcrowded trains and expensive tickets. 

The company has also been beset by industrial disputes. A 50-hour strike by railway workers, due to begin on May 14, was called off at the last minute the day before. EVG, the union behind the strike, says negotiations on wage increases are ongoing. Strikes in March and April already caused significant disruption.

The company itself has no illusions about the scale of the problem. “The current operational situation is not acceptable for us, travelers or railway companies,” a DB spokesperson told DW.

Jon Worth, a railway transport analyst resident in Berlin, says Germany’s railways are in a “delicate situation.” He says the main problem is widely acknowledged: a lack of investment in infrastructure.

“Railways in Germany are at the limit,” he told DW. “Germany runs a lot of trains on very old and decrepit infrastructure and has simply not been investing in the tracks, the bridges and the signals as much as would be necessary in order to manage to run things with a stable and reliable service.”

Karl-Peter Naumann, the honorary chairman of the public transport advocacy group PRO Bahn, agrees that outdated infrastructure is the main problem. “For customers, that means punctuality and, as a direct result, missed connecting trains,” he told DW.

Responsibility for the lack of investment goes back a few decades, according to Worth. “Ultimately the problems stem from decisions made a good 20 years ago,” he said. Naumann agrees: “Too little has been invested in the expansion and maintenance of the rail infrastructure in the last 30 years.”

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-deutsche-bahn-battles-crisis-amid-49-ticket-launch/a-65628256

Photos – Lee Heidhues

Top photo – Liz at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof – October 2018

Lee Heidhues 5.15.2023

The Walgreens security guard was just following orders.

Now that D.A. Brooke Jenkins has decided not to prosecute the Walgreens Rent a cop who murdered Banko Brown the local media is flooding readers and viewers with the grisly video of the crime.

I cannot bear to watch the Video. It smacks of voyeurism to watch Banko Brown shot down In Cold Blood by the Walgreens Rent a Cop.

The Cop Shop DA Brooke Jenkins is, predictably and negligently, going to do nothing.

Watching the video will only infuriate and depress me further. The stills are dispositive enough that this was Murder. The Feds need to step up and prosecute this civil rights violation. Walgreens engages in inter-state commerce. The Feds have “standing”. Just do It.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.15.2023

A security guard who shot and killed a suspected shoplifter at a Walgreens store last month had been directed by his employer to engage in “hands-on” recovery of stolen items, which the guard said compelled him to confront the man, according to documents released Monday that added new layers to the debate over how to handle retail theft in San Francisco.

According to the D.A.’s report released Monday, on the date of the Walgreens confrontation, the company that employed Anthony — Kingdom Group Protective Services — “had recently changed the policy concerning what their guard-employees were to do in the way of active recovery of property from persons seen stealing merchandise from the Walgreens.”

Guards were instructed “to engage in ‘hands-on’ recovery of merchandise,” according to the report. “The guards … were to actively work to retrieve or recover any stolen items once it was clear that the individual who concealed the items intended to leave the store without paying.”

Banko Brown, 24, died April 27 outside the store after a confrontation captured on surveillance video also released Monday. The video showed guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony shoot Brown as he stepped backward onto the sidewalk, moments after he turned and made a slight movement toward Anthony. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Monday she would not charge Anthony. 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/walgrreens-shooting-banko-brown-security-18100148.php

Top photo – A dying Banko Brown on the mean streets of San Francisco