Letters to the Editor: Blame Banko Brown’s death on the breakdown of law and order in San Francisco
To the editor: Clearly the shooting death of Banko Brown by a store security guard in San Francisco was a tragedy for both the shooter and the victim, as columnist Anita Chabria explains.
However, assigning blame for what happened is not as simple as she claims. Using corporate guilt on the part of Walgreens (where the shooter was a security guard and where the apparent shoplifting took place) or racism in society sidesteps a closer look at what is happening.
What Chabria described in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district is a clear breakdown in law and order. The poor security guards don’t know what to do when customers steal from the stores. As we’ve seen in San Francisco and in other big cities, big corporations will leave and the cities will be the poorer for it.
Once we start second-guessing whether laws should be obeyed or not based on one’s race, it’s a slippery slope to dysfunction. That’s why in some big cities, leaders who understand this and the importance of enforcing laws have been elected.
Robert Newman, West Hills
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To the editor: A Black security guard shot and killed a Black man suspected of shoplifting $14 worth of snacks from a drugstore in San Francisco. What happened next?
The district attorney’s office was criticized for declining to criminally charge the security guard. A private attorney who is expected to file a civil suit on behalf of the decedent’s family asked the state attorney general to review the case. The security guard criticized his supervisors for giving him conflicting instructions on how to handle suspected shoplifters.
Chabria asks the critical question: What is the responsibility of the drugstore that hired the security guard? When a clergyman was asked what he thought of the drugstore, he said he believes there is “corporate guilt for what happened.”
Blame everybody? According to the district attorney, this was a case of self-defense. Case closed.
Bill Gravlin, Rancho Palos Verdes
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