Community reacts to DA decision not to prosecute security guard in Banko Brown case
SAN FRANCISCO -- Five days after Banko Brown was shot dead by a security guard at a downtown Walgreens, family and friends keep asking for justice.
Especially after District Attorney Brooke Jenkins confirmed on Monday evening that the security guard had been released and will not face any charges.
UPDATE: San Francisco District Attorney's Office releases surveillance video in Banko Brown shooting
"Conflicted. Conflicted," Tory Sprague from the Center for Young Women Development said. "I don't know how you can present charges and later take them away."
Brown's family and community members are not alone in their outrage. Social media has been flooded with messages of support and calls for justice.
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A group of community activists gathered outside City Hall Tuesday afternoon.
"It's just disgusting and a letdown, not only for Black Trans youth but for Black youth in San Francisco," Sprague added.
Police arrested the guard, 33-year-old Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, following the shooting in Market and Fourth streets last Thursday evening.
Jenkins said the guard acted in self-defense and used reasonable force in response to a perceived threat.
"In this particular instance, this was a shoplifting that really -- based on the facts, escalated into a robbery," Jenkins explained.
Jenkins said that the security guard used lethal force, firing a single shot from his firearm that ultimately killed Banko Brown.
"The guard's subjective assessment about whether they were in danger is insufficient to provide credible self-defense. You also have to show that any reasonable person in the guard's shoes would have felt the same way," UC Law San Francisco Professor Hadar Aviram said.
Aviram said prosecutors must weigh the evidence and how the jury may see it.
"The thing is if the strongest evidence they have is this video, and they are looking at the video, and they don't think what they have is going to be enough to refute the claim of self-defense, then that's the conclusion they've come to is they just don't want to do it," Aviram added.
But, the question the community asks is, where do we go from here?
"What the community would want is less policing, more advocacy about how to help folks in crisis," Yenia Jimenez, a community activist, said.
