- By Marcus White | Examiner staff writer |
- May 16, 2023 Updated 22 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)
San Francisco lawmakers are calling on state and federal officials to review evidence in last month’s killing of Banko Brown after The City’s top prosecutor decided not to file charges.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin on Tuesday introduced a resolution that would call upon California Attorney General Rob Bonta or the U.S. Department of Justice to reexamine the case. The board will vote on the proposal on May 23.
Peskin did so hours after San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced she would not press charges against Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, the 33-year-old who shot and killed Brown after the latter was allegedly shoplifting. Anthony said he acted in self-defense during the April 27 shooting.
Jenkins’ office also released video footage of the killing, which Peskin said in a statement “appears, at a minimum, to be an unjustified shooting.”
Supervisor Shamann Walton said in a statement he would support Peskin’s resolution on Tuesday and that the footage showed that Brown, a transgender Black man, was “executed.”
“This is not who we are,” Peskin said in a statement. “Stealing a bag of candy does not warrant the death penalty. I understand people are afraid of crime, a fear being stoked by too many politicians and their political allies. But this is not a choice between justice and safety — we can have both. And allowing what appears, at a minimum, to be an unjustified shooting does not make us safer. It does not make us better. It should make us ashamed.”
The California Attorney General’s Office told The Examiner in a statement Tuesday that it “is not currently involved in the matter” and suggested we reach out to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office on the case.
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment to The Examiner.
Jenkins announced on May 1 that she would not file murder charges against Anthony. She later said that this was because of a 72-hour charging deadline following Anthony’s arrest.
As calls from the public and politicians for her to reexamine that decision intensified, Jenkins said she couldn’t release footage of Brown’s death because the case was still under investigation. She said she would release footage if prosecutors didn’t charge Anthony, a decision that was announced Monday.
Peskin’s resolution is not the first piece of legislative pressure on Jenkins. The board last week passed a resolution urging her to release evidence and security footage from the killing.
Walton said Monday he watched the footage “several times,” during which “Banko Brown was clearly walking backwards, after being thrown to the ground, punched and abused by the security guard for several seconds.”
“The security guard had the upper hand the entire time and even told Banko that he was letting him go, as stated in the transcript released by the DA,” Walton said. “Where is the perceived threat? DA Jenkins’ decision to not charge gives every armed security guard in San Francisco a license to have an open season to shoot and kill Black and transgender people for alleged shoplifting.”
The case is the third in recent months in which Jenkins has dropped or declined to pursue charges against an armed officer or guard in an on-duty shooting. Last week, Jenkins moved to dismiss charges against officer Christopher Flores for shooting and injuring an assault suspect. In February, she dismissed charges against Christopher Samayoa for shooting and killing a carjacking suspect in 2017.
The family of Sean Moore, who died of wounds he sustained in a 2017 police shooting, has said they are worried Jenkins will drop charges against Kenneth Cha.
Jenkins said some of the aforementioned prosecutions were “politically motivated” under her predecessor, progressive DA Chesa Boudin, whose recall she championed last year.
“Prosecuting police officers is not the kind of thing that’s high on her agenda,” John Burris, the civil rights attorney representing Banko Brown’s family who says he is working on a wrongful death lawsuit, said of Jenkins’ charging decisions.
“Those are political decisions and a political philosophy that she’s adopted, and there’s not much I can do about that,” he said.
Marcus White
Marcus White is a senior digital writer and producer for the San Francisco Examiner.
