Friday News Roundup: DA charges SFPD officer with homicide and Giants Buster Posey retires
Photo of DA Chesa Boudin from San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. Photo of Buster Posey from Byron Chin.
Hey there, San Francisco.
Happy Friday. It was a busy news week across the city, from a Giants’ star announcing his retirement to a certain law school making moves to change its name. If you want to receive these news roundups every weekday, I’d love for you to sign up for my newsletter, The SF Minute.
For now, here’s a quick recap of this week’s top headlines:
DA charges SFPD officer with homicide
On Tuesday, District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed homicide charges against San Francisco police officer Kenneth Cha, who shot an unarmed man outside his Ocean View neighborhood home in 2017. The man, Sean Moore, died in 2020 as a result of the shooting.
As the Chronicle reports, “It is only the second time in San Francisco that a police officer has been charged with homicide while on duty — the first case was also charged by Boudin, who has pledged to prosecute bad police officers.”
“We rely on officers to follow their training and to deescalate situations; instead, in just eight minutes, Officer Cha elevated a nonviolent encounter to one that took Sean Moore’s life,” Boudin said in a statement on Tuesday. Body cam footage of the incident can be seen here.
In response, Officer Cha’s defense attorney called the prosecution politically motivated, since Boudin faces a potential recall election next year.
Giants’ Buster Posey announces retirement
After 12 seasons and three World Series championships with the Giants, catcher Buster Posey announced his retirement on Thursday. At 34, Posey had one of his best years ever in 2021, helping the Giants win more games than any other team in baseball during the regular season.
After the team’s loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first round of the playoffs though, Posey mentioned looking forward to becoming a “full-time dad” to his four children.
“I want to do more stuff from February to November with family,” Posey said at his press conference on Thursday. “Physically, it’s much harder now…It was getting to the point that things that I was enjoying were not as joyful anymore.”
Kids in SF will soon need to show proof of vaccination
Children in San Francisco between the ages of 5 and 11 will need to present proof of vaccination sometime in the near future to enter indoor spaces, like restaurants, city Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip confirmed during a town hall on Tuesday. The news came on the same day that the CDC officially recommended the Pfizer vaccine for children in that age group.
Meanwhile, SFUSD students of any age are still not required to receive the Covid vaccine, though as the Examiner reported in September, “that’s in large part due to the district’s high vaccination rate among students already.”
Another shooting on Haight Street
A shooting on Haight Street (near Masonic Avenue) on Thursday afternoon around 1 pm left one person dead and another injured, according to the SFPD. It’s the third shooting incident on Haight Street in recent weeks.
After the second shooting in late October, Police Lieutenant Bassey Obot told residents in a virtual town hall meeting that his department believed the incidents were “gang related.”
“I know that sometimes doesn’t make us feel any safer, but you can know it wasn’t someone just showing up out of nowhere and shooting the first person that they see,” Obot said.
Castro Safeway closes early due to crime
The Safeway grocery store near the corner of Church and Market Street in the Castro will now close at 9 pm instead of operating 24/7. Safeway spokesperson Wendy Gutshall told Hoodline late last week that the new hours, along with the recent removal of the store’s self-checkout stands, are intended to reduce shoplifting and theft at the store, which District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman described on Twitter on Friday as being “out of control.”
The Chronicle reports that the Castro-area store now closes the earliest of all San Francisco Safeway locations, most of which lock their doors at midnight.
UC Hastings set to change its name
On Tuesday, the governing board of the San Francisco-based UC Hastings College of the Law voted to start working with state lawmakers to remove “Hastings” from its name. As Chronicle reporter Nanette Asimov writes: “The ugly truth about its founder, Serranus Clinton Hastings, a wealthy 19th century rancher and former chief justice of the California Supreme Court who sponsored massacres of Native people in Mendocino County, has come increasingly to light in recent years.”
It’s unclear what the law school’s new official name might be.
City employees head back to the office
Starting on Monday, all San Francisco city employees, including those working at City Hall and other Civic Center area buildings, were required to return to work in their offices at least two days a week. Some departments, the Chronicle reports, may ask their employees to come back more frequently as well.
Monday also marked the deadline for city employees to get vaccinated. As the Chronicle reports, nearly 98% have been gotten their shots, while those who haven’t “could eventually be terminated.”
Mission Local publishes interactive map of SF corruption scandal
The corruption scandals across San Francisco’s city government can be incredibly difficult to follow. And that’s why this interactive map released by Mission Local on Wednesday is so great.
Based on the reporting of Mission Local’s Joe Eskenazi and put together by data intern Will Jarrett, the map (or, web) lets you quickly see how different city leaders are interconnected. It also calls out why those connections are problematic.
And finally…Trick Dog reopens
After 20 months, and a stint as a burger pop-up, the beloved Mission-bar Trick Dog has reopened. Its current menu theme, SFist reporter Jay Barmann writes, is “appropriately about pandemics, the Fates, and ‘the string of time.’”
Alright, that’s all for this week. Thanks y’all for reading and again, if you want to receive these news updates daily, I’d love for you to subscribe to The SF Minute.
Have a great weekend and I’ll see you back here next Friday! – Nick B.
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