Too Many Factual Discrepancies with Chronicle’s Heather Knight’s Vanishing Power Saw Fable
Her expert tells me, “It sounds like there is more to the story.”
This story originated from a lengthy post on Nextdoor. To add clarity to misperceptions, I am asking readers to please add my article to the Nextdoor conversation. Thank you.
As a police officer arriving at a fresh vehicle accident or shooting, I learned quickly to discern who was a viable witness and who was playing armchair detective.
I heard the shots and the guy in the blue shirt ran west and one in the green shirt ran south. So, the blue shirt must have been the shooter.
or
I heard the two cars collide. I ran around the corner to see that the white car must have run the red light.
These are not eyewitnesses to an actual event, as they can only provide context to the aftermath. Similarly, in the Chronicle’s Heather Knight’s most recent hit piece on SFPD, she seems to confuse actual observations with conjecture. Her story completely conflicts with witnesses’ statements on Nextdoor, transcripts of 9-1-1 calls, and SFPD’s interviews with witnesses.
Discrepancies between witnesses’ accounts and Knight’s coverage
On the social media site, Nextdoor, Richmond residents, Lauren Lindsay and Morgan Heller wrote they awoke at 3 am to the sound of power tools on metal. They called 9-1-1. Per Knight’s column, a suspicious Jeep fled before SFPD arrived, leaving only one suspect, Victor Sanchez, present at the scene.
Knight writes, “Lindsay, from her bedroom window, had her eyes on the thief the entire time.” Per Knight, SFPD found Sanchez with a (car) jack next to him. Thus, in her opinion column that Knight titled, “Caught red-handed,” Sanchez was actually caught empty-handed. I am not saying Sanchez is innocent, but the further divergence of Knight’s coverage and the witnesses’ statements raise issues of what crime Sanchez was actually observed committing, other than being at the scene of a crime.
1. From the angle of Lindsay’s window how could Knight confirm Lindsay could see Sanchez underneath the belly of the Honda Accord, let alone sawing with a power tool?
2. On Nextdoor, the women posted that a “group of people were actively stealing a catalytic convertor.” Did Knight reduce the “group” to just two individuals to make the remaining suspect look more guilty and SFPD appear more inept?
3. If Sanchez only had a tire jack near him when SFPD arrived, how could that jack have cut the catalytic converter?
4. Why did Knight not specifically inform her readers that no power saw was ever found. That means the smoking gun--the tool used to murder the catalytic converter--the most important element of the crime, went unaccounted for. But Knight kept her readers completely in the dark about this crucial fact.
5. Knight’s article is literally titled, “man sawing off a catalytic converter,” and further added, “Lindsay said she looked out her bedroom window to see a man…. using power tools to slice the catalytic converter.”
· Despite Knight quoting Lindsay, no witness told SFPD they saw Sanchez either sawing or with a power tool.
· On Nextdoor, Heller was vague, saying her roommate saw a group of “people actively stealing a catalytic converter.” There was no mention of Sanchez with a power saw in hand in Heller’s post.
· In the incident report (#220 548 557) Officer Baker wrote, “Lindsay did not see Sanchez inside of the vehicle or in possession of burglary tools.”
How can Knight fault SFPD, when the version the witnesses provided SFPD is so different from what Knight claims they told her? Or perhaps Knight added a little of her own conjecture?
6. Additionally, Knight describes Lindsay and Heller “kept their eyes on the person the entire time.” So, how did the power saw disappear from Sanchez’ hands? The answer can only be:
a) Lindsay and Heller took their eyes off the suspect, possibly confusing him with others in the “group,” or
b) they never actually observed the saw in the suspect’s hands.
Either answer dramatically weakens the case against Sanchez and the integrity of Knight’s presentation.
7. On Nextdoor, the witnesses stated the SFPD officers explained to them the significance of the missing power saw as their rationale not to arrest Sanchez. Again, Knight withheld from her readers that SFPD provided this information to the witnesses, apparently to color the SFPD officers in a bad light for arbitrarily not arresting Sanchez.
8. Knight also never told her story’s expert, retired SFPD homicide inspector Frank Falzon, that the power saw had disappeared. In her article, Knight quoted Falzon as saying the suspect should have been arrested. I analogized to Falzon what would he have done if he found a suspect with a squirt gun[1] in his hand, just abandoned by his friends, standing over a dead body. Considering that a tire jack is to sawing, what a squirt gun is to killing, Falzon said, “If he didn’t have the saw in his hand, it sounds like there is more to this story. I was never told (by Knight) the saw was not at the crime scene.”
Heather, from the above points, it appears you wrote a story where no witness is willing to testify what they Sanchez with the power tool in his hand and then explain what happened to it. Like my initial examples of a shooting or car accident that was heard but not seen, are you sure your witnesses didn’t merge what they saw and heard?
Lindsay and Heller, please allow me to convey what SFPD has failed to communicate:
Morgan and Lauren:
Thank you for reporting this crime. Citizens, like yourselves, are an essential tool to reducing crimes in the city that I also reside in. I am both sorry that you feel unsafe, and that no one from my former employer has relayed the following information to you.
Like your perception, many of my friends have read Heather Knight’s column and believe that Sanchez should have been arrested because he was at the scene of a crime and because he is on probation. He was under the car, that’s enough. No, it’s not. Being under the car is suspicious, but without more eyewitness evidence, it is not a crime.
Eighteenth Century English jurist, William Blackstone, famously said, “It is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than one innocent suffers (convicted).” And while I agree that a crime, or attempted crime had been committed, I am not convinced of Victor Sanchez’s role in this crime.
9-1-1 transcripts established that at 2:59 am, Eric described two Latin males cutting a catalytic converter. At 3:00 am, Eric said the suspects fled in a vehicle towards the beach. Within the same minute, Eric said the vehicle returned and the suspects were trying to tamper with a different vehicle. Though, curiously, Eric clarified he was not able to see the suspects from his vantage point, at 3:02 am, he said the vehicle departed Anza Street again.
At 3:04 am, Marin (perhaps this was a typo for “Morgan.”) called 9-1-1 to confirm the vehicle, now described as a Jeep drove off towards 25th Street.
These are fluid and extremely convoluted crime descriptions with a potential shell game of suspects coming and going and a possible attempt to tamper with an additional car. No witness stepped forward to specifically claim they observed Sanchez, with a power saw in his hand, or actually saw him cutting the catalytic converter. Placing Sanchez at the scene of the crime is suspicious, but not a crime itself. Factoring in Judge Blackstone’s words, no witnesses stepping forward, and no power tool found, all support a deficiency of facts to justify arresting Sanchez.
There was room for Sanchez to have been arrested for being in the vicinity of a car jack, which is a burglary tool. But possession of a car jack is only a misdemeanor for which SFPD would not be able to book him. He would have received a citation and walked away just as he did that night, except he would have had a piece of paper in his hand. I don’t know if that would have made you feel any safer. Good SFPD cops know that criminals will always get caught again, and for an officer’s credibility on the stand, it’s better to put a good case on someone than to manufacture a weak one.
Sanchez was on probation out of Contra Costa County for being in possession of stolen property (CPC 496a)-- not for theft. SFPD cannot put a probation hold on an arrestee for an out-of-county crime. If SFPD’s computers were up, and Sanchez’s probation officer’s phone number was accessed, and he answered his phone at 3 am in the morning, SFPD might have received approval to hold Sanchez for a probation violation.
Because SFPD did not arrest Sanchez does not mean this case is closed. There are two options to still immediately put a felony catalytic converter theft charge on Sanchez: 1) video must surface to irrefutably link Sanchez to the sawing or handing the power saw off to someone else, or 2) either of you can prepare a written statement, under penalty of perjury, that you actually observed Sanchez under the Honda Accord sawing the catalytic converter—as Knight describes.
Police officers powers of arrest require a much higher standard than an opinion writer’s desire to create a story. Please take into consideration the Chronicle’s track record of censoring out crimes while publishing statistically nonsensical stories:
1) Susie Nielson calculated that only 6 shopliftings occur within the entire 49 square miles city of San Francisco on a daily basis,
2) Dustin Gardiner recently wrote about the epidemic of elementary school children getting arrested for driving cars, and
3) Heather Knight demonized SFPD because in 2021, they only arrested 500 drug dealers in the Tenderloin and only seized about a kilo of drugs per week (half the seizures were deadly fentanyl). Despite SFPD’s prodigious production, Knight kept her blinders on that DA Boudin achieved no felony drug convictions, and immediately released every arrested drug dealer on a misdemeanor traffic ticket. Here, Knight is similarly oblivious to the significance of the magically evaporating power saw.
So, SFPD officers expect the Chronicle to mislead their readers. My concern is that the newspaper’s propagandizing has had a discouraging effect on SFPD officers being more proactive to protect the public.
For Knight’s recent article, her gratuitous slight about SFPD’s quick arrival to your 9-1-1 call: So much for the department’s understaffing claim, huh? was extremely inaccurate.
SFPD is seriously understaffed and while the law still handcuffs officers from making Casablanca round-up-the-usual-suspects that some of my friends expect; the Department’s thin ranks prevent the fielding of undercover officers. Richmond Station had no plainclothes assigned on the night of this in. Had plainclothes officers been deployed:
· those officers would have arrived in a stealth fashion instead of tipping off this thieving crew by uniformed officers driving with lights and sirens,
· uniformed officers could have baited Sanchez by letting him go immediately, and then had undercovers follow him to a potential regrouping with his friends. (That’s the tactics my partners and I would have employed.)
You should also know that had SFPD officers arrived to see the Jeep with 50 catalytic converters in plain view, all the Jeep driver had to do was drive away above the speed limit, and the SFPD officers would have had to terminate following him. This policy was codified by the San Francisco Police Commission, which is dictated by commissioners’ Chronicle-type agendas instead of driven by people with law enforcement backgrounds.
Morgan, like the City department you work for, SFPD is extremely imperfect.
Morgan and Lauren, the problem in your incident was not the absence of a felony arrest, it was SFPD’s failure to communicate to you the a) magnitude of the missing power saw, b) that no witness was willing to testify they observed Sanchez actually sawing, c) the difference between reporting a crime to SFPD and being a complete eyewitness to the actual crime, and d) the still potential avenues plainclothes officers could have employed to make the Richmond District safer. The power saw’s whereabouts creates too many doubts for former inspector Falzon, the officers on the scene, assistant DA’s that have reviewed this article, and me.
Read some of my hyperlinks, evaluate my technical analysis here, and ask yourself who is more accurate? Opinion writer Heather Knight and her agenda, or me?
Be safe and thank you for reading this.
Lou
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[1] For non- armchair investigators, this is an analogy, so I suspended the gunshot residue argument.
Thank you, Lou, for providing clarification on a confusing case.
Witnesses; “He was a tall White fat guy who looked like a short skinny Asian woman.”
“My cousin’s uncle’s friend heard it from a guy in a bar.”