After Boudin’s Release, Career Criminal Brings Gun to Kids’ School
And the details missing from SF Chronicle’s Coverage
In a September 3, 2021, San Francisco Chronicle columnHeather Knight described two people that had been recently arrested. One person had stripped naked and thrown heavy objects off the Castro Theater roof. The other person, Brandon Paillett, brought a concealed loaded firearm to an elementary school. While Chronicle readers can appreciate that these crimes were at least reported, a perspective on the gravity of each offense was missing.
Context to Chronicle’s
presentation:
First, a person throwing heavy objects off a theater roof in the middle of the day cannot be equated to a person bringing a concealed, loaded firearm to an elementary school—the later incident had far greater tragic potential. Second, Knight’s comment, “why such a wealthy, compassionate and innovative city can’t do better by its sickest residents and those who happen to cross their paths in the darkest moments,” misplaces the blame on the public and the mental health system while ignoring Paillett’s 20+ year career of committing violent havoc on our city. It was also inaccurate for her to say that when Paillett voluntarily brought a loaded firearm onto the elementary school campus, the children just “happened to cross his path”— Paillett chose to cross the innocent children’s path.
As law abiding citizens, it is naturally difficult for us to comprehend why a person would commit crimes. But our inability to relate to the criminal mind doesn’t rule out the fact that the offender still could have recognized the difference between right and wrong.
Paillett’s extensive violent criminal history:
Early in his criminal career, while on federal probation, Paillett stabbed a man in the city. Around that time, when I was in SFPD’s Narcotics unit, an undercover officer bought drugs from Paillett and was threatened, “You better not be a cop, because if you are, I’m going to f..kin kill you.” The officer, who has made hundreds of purchases, remembered Paillett as being eerie and violently intimidating.
In 2019, KPIX here detailed Paillett’s involvement in a carjacking where the car owners interpreted that Paillett had a gun, and he then led CHP on a 16-mile chase to Oakland where he crashed the Tesla. In her recent column, Heather Knight selected KTVU’s 2019 tamer description of Paillett “stealing a Tesla and leading police on a high-speed chase.” Knight’s “stealing a car” versus a violent “carjacking” feeds the Chronicle’s skewed narrative that career criminals mainly commit property crimes and only need more counseling. It also prevents the public from knowing the increased degree of violence that now permeates our city.
In just the past 18-months under DA Boudin:
· In 2020, Paillett was arrested for a felony assault with a deadly weapon and robbery (per KTVU). Boudin released Paillett back into the public under “supervised probation.”
· In March 2021, Paillett was arrested for a hot prowl burglary. Boudin released Paillett back on the streets.
· In June 2021, he was arrested for an attempted carjacking of a pet grooming van, while the employee was still inside the van. Per Paillett’s own words, he was released from custody the next month.
· In July 2021, after only a week back on the streets, Paillett was creeping around Ashbury Heights just before midnight. He found an unlocked front door and intruded into the home of an elderly woman in a wheelchair who suffers from multiple sclerosis. The woman said, “I thought he had something evil intended. I thought he was here to harm me.” When SFPD arrived, he blocked the door from officers’ entry which delayed their rescue of the homeowner. One officer was injured during the rescue.
Paillett told KTVU Evan Sernosffsky that he is not mentally ill and was of sound mind. At the end of the interview, he made a hand gesture indicating that he wanted Sernosffsky to pay him for the interview—evidence not of mental health issues, but clearly the competence to conduct financial transactions. here One month after the burglary, and only two months after the attempted carjacking, Boudin had Paillett back again on the streets.
· In the August 2021 covered by Heather Knight, Paillett made several attempts to enter the side entrance to a school on Grove Street, however a parent blocked his path by repeatedly shutting the door on him. Next, Paillett approached several children and random parents. When a teacher observed him make a concealed hand simulation at a parent, the teacher called 9-1-1. SFPD arrived and after Paillett lied that he wasn’t carrying a firearm, took the loaded gun off him. Think of how lucky the children were that there wasn’t a more tragic school mass shooting when Paillett crossed their paths.
Boudin’s nontransparent administration and his use of “Negotiated Settlements”
It is hard to track whether Boudin originally filed any of these recent cases as felonies before he pleaded them down to infractions or behavioral therapy. Boudin’s office has not updated the data on “Arrests Presentations and Prosecutions” for months. While he has time to promote his political podcast on the District Attorney’s government website, Boudin can’t ensure the same website discloses current data on his disposition of cases?
But the real problem with Boudin’s nontransparent disposition of cases is his “negotiated settlements.” A negotiated settlement is often a private phone call made by Boudin, frequently after hours, to the public defenders he formerly worked with. In these calls that his own prosecutors are not privy to, Boudin positions himself to cut deals on behalf of the public defenders’ clients. If you wonder how or why Paillett was released so soon after the hot prowl of the elder woman in July 2021, it was a “negotiated settlement.”
These unmonitored conversations violate established internal control procedures and invite corruption. While Paillett probably does not have the connections to influence Boudin’s office, hypothetically substitute an accused billionaire techie—one that finds himself vulnerable to prison term because of a sexual assault allegation. During Boudin’s private calls to his former coworkers at the public defender’s office, what is to prevent the billionaire techie from floating money around to influence his case? This is not an accusation that Boudin has collected payoff’s, but it is an assertion that his the-rules-don’t-apply-to-me attitude and his opaque management style have created the appearance of impropriety.
Imagine……if Boudin prosecuted?
Despite what Boudin claims about decreasing crime, SFPD Dashboard establishes that both total crime and violent crime have increased under his watch. If we compare SF under Covid (March 17 to Sept 19), violent crime is up 14% and total crime is up 17%— a per capita surge despite the City’s shriveled population, and absent tourists and homebound commuters.
Had Boudin tried to make the public safe after SFPD delivered Paillett’s robbery case to the DA’s office in 2020, there would have been no March 2021 hot prowl. If Boudin had prosecuted the March hot prowl, there would have been no June 2021 attempted carjacking…… and so on and so on. Add in the crimes that Paillett committed for which he was not caught, and then multiply Paillett’s total crime damage with the thousands of other Boudin’s out-of-custodies’ crimes, and you arrive at the present crime spike.
Last year, Covid was Boudin’s subterfuge to reduce the jail population. This year, Boudin is cutting clandestine deals to get criminals into “behavioral programs” in lieu of jail time. Paillett is just another example that illuminates why we shouldn’t be fooled by Boudin’s or the legacy media’s portrayal of professional criminals as just one therapy session away from virtue.
Author’s update: This article was published on September 21, 2021. The prior day the Feds took Paillett away from Boudin to prosecute him federally. Paillett was booked at Santa Rita jail.