To prepare for the streets, recruits in the SFPD Academy must pass periodic “simulations,” whereby current SFPD officers act as role players imitating real world situations, like pretending to be a crazy person. Recruits do have the underlying security that simulations are scripted, and the SFPD role players are really rational people that won’t physically harm them. The simulations are only intense because failure equates to the recruit being released from SFPD.
However, what driving a video racecar is to driving a real racecar; similarly, simulations are a weak imitation of uncontrollable street encounters. San Francisco is a magnet for people with Mental health problems, Users of drugs, and Crazies (hereafter “MUC”), where the political leaders, the courts, and the former district attorney demonstrated little resolve to make the citizens and police safer.
Rookie officers hit the streets
Upon passing the SFPD Academy, recruits are sworn in as officers and spend the next quarter of the year in a field training program where they are graded daily by a supervising officer (FTO). In this environment that is already volatile and unpredictable, failing grades for a rookie officer translates to unemployment. In September 2020, Officer O’Shea was such a rookie in her field training phase.
On a Sunday afternoon, SFPD dispatchers broadcast to the officers in the Bayview that a 30-year-old, 6-foot male was running around in his underwear and bleeding from his head. Not an unusual call for service in San Francisco.
The first officers arriving at the scene watched as Charles Short vomited a gray substance. (It is difficult to simulate foul-spelling puke in the SFPD Academy.) The officers told Short to sit and wait for an ambulance to medically assess his self-inflicted injuries. Short sat down briefly and then got up and walked away. Officer O’Shea followed Short and told him to return. Short responded with a surprise fist to her face.
O’Shea suffered a fractured face and a broken nose.
The 850 Bryant Court Circus
SFPD arrested Short for aggravated assault on a police officer.
Under DA Boudin, Short was out of custody within a month. His case dragged on and he failed to show up for court on November 13, 2020- a bench warrant was issued. In June of 2022, Short was back in custody. Superior Court Department 11 determined that Short was eligible for “mental health diversion,” a conclusion that would have erased the assault on Officer O’Shea from Short’s record. No objection from Boudin.
Still out of custody on August 11, 2022, Short failed to show up to court and another bench warrant was issued.
Charles Short strikes again
As the sun rose on November 1, 2022, the country was trying to digest how an MUC could have broken into the San Francisco home of the third most powerful leader in our country. Meanwhile, crazy Charles Short was dragging a man inside the Visitation Valley 7-Eleven on Bayshore Boulevard. A 70-year-old, 40-year employee of the 7-Eleven went to protect the kidnapped victim and was struck three times in the face by Short.
The employee was able to get Short out of the store, but Short proceeded to the sidewalk and randomly selected 77-year-old Richard Owens as his next victim. Short literally stomped Owens to death. Really! Here’s the video.
Progressives will claim this story is an anomaly. In May 2020, I wrote a similar frightening article on an MUC that punched one Tenderloin police officer and kicked his partner. Within the next ten hours:
· SFPD brought the MUC to the St. Francis Hospital for a 72-hour psych evaluation,
· The hospital released the MUC to the streets 70 hours short of the 72-hours allowed,
· The MUC picked up a two-by-four and fractured an unsuspecting dog walker’s face,
· The MUC fled to and destroyed the lobby of a homeless hotel with the same two-by-four,
· The MUC attacked SFPD with the same two-by-four, triggering SFPD to fire shots,
· The MUC fled to another homeless establishment, barricaded himself, and held SFPD at bay for the next 15 hours.
Similar to how the courts could have prevented Owens’ death, St. Francis Hospital could have thwarted the domino effect of subsequent injuries in the 2020 incident. But in both cases, the trustees for ensuring the public’s safety, kissed off their responsibilities.
The SF Exodus
Officer O’Shea departed SFPD for unknown reasons, or the obvious reason. And in this environment that is physically dangerous, politically hostile, and dominated by propagandizing legacy media, citizens somehow expect SFPD to reach full staffing and replace O’Shea? What rational human would take this job? It’s not going to happen.
The 40-year employee of 7-Eleven immediately retired, and somehow the company is supposed to find a replacement to work in a retail store in a city that welcomes thieving?
The pandemic started a mass exodus from San Francisco, which is now being exacerbated by mass layoffs in the tech industry. How is our city going to be able to replace the outmigration of our citizens if our court system and hospitals fumble opportunities to protect us from the Charles Shorts of this world?
Is there no exit plan for the City’s spiral?
.
Sucker Punch a Cop Today, Kill a Citizen Tomorrow
Hi Lou - I didn't realize this Mr. Short was that connected by experience, but its not shocking. He seems like he's in the top tier of violent offenders, and needs to be removed from polite society. I'm
sure he has lots of company.
Mayor Breed to her credit, has done a little personal recon in the streets of San Francisco when she was first elected Mayor. Though she and the S.F. BOS have not been willing to employ the tough love strategy to the homeless, she has apparently committed some funds to creating a new poop patrol.
How sick is a city that can't provide free toilets for tourists and shoppers, and expects wacked out homeless people to bother to use a toilet if one is even available?
Just as we have all earned our personal reputations by the way we live and behave, so it is for our city.
San Francisco is the tale of two cities - one the fantasy playground for rich and famous where anything is possible, and they can afford any price to get what they want. And the other being the real would where working people, retired people, and criminals live. The working people just want to survive, the retired people want to enjoy their golden years, and the criminals target both of these groups as the ones most easy to prey on daily.
One the most basic level the solutions are always clear and easy; stop the insanity. Then why hasn't that happened in decades? The answer to that is the root of our problems. San Francisco politicians reflect the values of San Francisco voters; confusing compassion with enabling anti-social behaviors, refusing to harshly judge others perhaps because because they fear being judged themselves, kind and generous to a fault, refusing to accept that the more they give, the more the feed the beast of anti social street life criminals. And then there are the gangs who's primary business is selling drugs.
Their spill over activity is shooting and killing people.
What does it take to put a STOP to all of the above? A Mayor who is just as tough as he/she is compassionate, a BOS that backs tough policies rather than road blocking them, an expansion of SFPD services, facilities, training, and equipment so they are state of the art in every area, an expansion of mental health rooms. beds, and high security wards, and mental health doctors and courts that work together to isolate dangerous violent people from normal society.
That doesn't seem like it should be too difficult, but with the prevailing attitudes up and down the line, the reality is nothing but more and more of the same exercises in futility. Soylent Green - here we come!
Oddly enough, Speaker Pelosi's house is located in one of those fantasy areas where the commoners can only walk by and wonder which rich people live there, and what they did to be able to afford property taxes higher than many people's annual income. A break in that is common in low and middle income neighborhoods is a rarity here. Here homes are commonly monitored by sophisticated alarm systems, and public figures may have personal security personnel as well. For some reason, Mr. Pelosi seems to have not taken full advantage of his ample resources to protect himself. Does getting your head cracked make you one of us, someone who actually gives a damn
about those who have to live in fear every day of what you sadly experienced once in a lifetime? Or does it mean nothing more than a reason to be glad that you also have multi million dollar home in the wine country, and can also afford to drive or jet off to any location in the world anytime you wish to, and just leave all of the dirty details of your base camp for the working poor to deal with? Nancy! Nancy! Where's Nancy? Don't ask me. She's most likely in Washington D.C. thinking up new schemes take money from everyone, and get more for herself.
I'm really curious to know how often defendants fail to appear given that there is no bail. I assume that if defendants don't appear, our shorthanded PD is not going out to find and enforce the warrant. Back when we had bail, the bondsman had an incentive to go find the defendant and get him to appear and none of that was at taxpayer expense.