San Francisco supervisor under fire for proposal

AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File

The city of San Francisco is pretty picturesque. Between the hilly Victorian neighborhoods and the Golden Gate Bridge, it was a beautiful city that I really wanted to visit.

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It appears to be far less so these days. Sure, the bridge and houses still exist, but so do dirty needles and poop-covered sidewalks, among other things.

There’s also a definite crime problem there, as has been noted on numerous news outlets.

So there was never any doubt that at some point, a bad guy was going to get shot. When it happened, one supervisor decided the answer wasn’t to try and address crime so this thing wouldn’t happen again. Instead, he wanted to restrict what security guards could do.

Well, that San Francisco supervisor is facing some pushback.

One San Francisco Democrat garnered stark backlash after proposing a law that would ban security guards from drawing their weapons for property crimes at a time when retailers and residents alike are fleeing the city over public safety concerns.

Former San Francisco police officer Joel Aylworth slammed San Francisco’s District 5 County Supervisor Dean Preston for the proposal during “Fox & Friends First,” calling the idea “ridiculous” as crime continues to run rampant.

“They [criminals] don’t respect security guards at all,” Aylworth told co-host Ashley Strohmier Thursday. “SFPD, many times often gets hired to work overtime gigs at Target, Walgreens, Safeway, supermarkets. I’ve worked many of these overtime shifts over the years, and they will not listen to me. They will fight me… so what do you think they’re going to do with the security guard?”

“If you tell security guards, ‘Hey, in only this situation, if he grabs you, you can only use a headlock, or you could only use this move,’ it’s the most ridiculous thing,” he continued.

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Now, most security guards in San Francisco–and other places, really–are unarmed due to liability concerns. However, there are times when they need a firearm and they need to be able to use it.

The truth is that this guard in question was interviewed by police and allowed to go about his business. Even the DA initially found he acted in self-defense, though that’s changing due to public pressure.

Had this been unjustified, the guard would and should be prosecuted for that action.

From what we can tell, though, it’s not. Instead, it was the eventual outcome of the anti-sanity practices of decriminalizing criminal behavior. It’s one thing to decriminalize a victimless crime or something like that, but even thefts weren’t being dealt with by the authorities.

Yet we also know that small crimes enable bigger crimes down the road. That meant sooner or later, someone was going to get shot and here we are.

It’s bad that a San Francisco supervisor thought this was the warranted action, but I’m glad to see people pushing back on this particular flavor of stupidity.

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Should this go anywhere, it won’t really reduce the odds of someone being killed. It’ll just make sure it’s the guy getting paid way too little to take a bullet rather than the bad guy willing to murder someone over their thefts.

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