Not much love at present in the city of Saint Francis

If you are into that sort of thing, there are multiple options for watching video of Banko Brown being shot by a Walgreens rent-a-cop after a shoplifting episode on San Francisco's Market Street. There followed an altercation in which Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony pummels and chokes the young man, then fires on him after Brown goes out the door. Our D.A. thinks there's no provable crime in that execution. Here's a succinct report:

It has come out that the Walgreen's security contractor, Kingdom Group Protective Services which employed the guard, had recently changed its policy: 

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.”

Anthony told the police officer interrogating him after the shooting that “we can ask for receipts if we suspect if somebody’s steals or something. I was in my right to ask that individual … um, if they paid for those items. In fact, I seen ’em stealing, so …”

So this was more than an untrained cosplay cop jacked up from a scuffle, turning his gun on a mouthy perp. Anthony had been ordered to play the badass. There's one heck of a wrongful death civil suit coming here. Brown's family has hired attorney John Burris who has spent a career fighting these cases.

In the Guardian, we learn who was lost when Banko Brown was killed: 

In a statement released through the Young Women’s Freedom Center, a local non-profit group where Brown was a volunteer organizer, they argued: “In a city like San Francisco, where so many have to make tough decisions to meet their basic needs, arming stores with the pass to use armed force will result in much more tragedy.

Julia Arroyo, co-executive director of the group, which has demanded an end to armed guards at retail stores and increased investments in housing and resources for trans and queer youth, said in a statement on Monday: “We do not need to see the video to know that Banko Brown’s killing was unjustified. Armed force is not a justified response to poverty. Young people, especially Black and trans youth who experience poverty, deserve love, care and the resources they need to survive and thrive. Banko deserved to live. He deserved to be protected and cherished. He deserved housing and to have his basic needs met.”

This city can do better. Better than responding in frustration about a Downtown economic cycle in the doldrums, increased misery on the streets, assertive young transfolks, and an incompetent political D.A. who excuses a vigilante death sentence for shoplifting.