In broad daylight, the first-round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers was shot in the chest Saturday afternoon by a teenage thief, and the star’s first words were “Am I gonna die?” Wide receiver Ricky Pearsall had been walking alone on a sidewalk near Union Square when a 17-year-old with a gun tried to steal his Rolex watch.
Once a fashionable shopping area like Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Union Square has become seedy as Macy's, Nordstrom, and many other stores, boutiques, and restaurants have closed there. Pearsall was shopping after an autograph signing at the Cow Palace.
Video showed blood covering his upper body while he was helped into an ambulance. His mother subsequently posted on Facebook that the bullet miraculously missed vital organs and exited his body, declaring that “God shielded him.”
San Francisco authorities were immediately lenient to the shooter, concealing his identity and declaring that he would be charged merely in juvenile court. But it has been posted on X that he is a gang member who was caught with an illegal gun merely days earlier, and then released by California authorities.
Teenagers who commit even murders in California are typically back on the streets within a few years of becoming adults. By charging them only as juveniles, as this assailant will be, officials make them eligible for release in the near future.
Welcome to San Francisco, the once-golden city that has been ruined by the liberal policies of Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and other Democrats. Rampant street crime, homelessness, and people defecating on public sidewalks have repelled so many tourists and conventions that the largest hotels in the city have been abandoned by their owners.
America has never elected a San Francisco liberal as president, and should not start now with Kamala Harris. In the second quarter of this year, office vacancy in San Francisco rose to a record 37%, which means that more than a third of the commercial space is empty.
Kamala Harris was the district attorney for San Francisco for seven years, and then the Attorney General for California for six years after that. Her statewide office was favorable towards two soft-on-crime ballot initiatives, Proposition 47 and 57, over opposition by police unions to the latter.
As the San Francisco District Attorney, Harris refused to seek the death penalty for the murder of police Officer Isaac Espinoza in 2004, despite how many Democrats including former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein stated that capital punishment was warranted by the special circumstances of that case. Harris announced her decision of leniency for the cop-killer merely three days after the brutal murder of Officer Espinoza, before he was even buried and without speaking first to his widow.
The shocking murder of Officer Espinoza left their 3-year-old baby girl without a father. He had honorably served eight years with the San Francisco Police Department before he was gunned down in cold blood.
The president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association criticized Harris in an interview with CNN in 2019, questioning why she ruled out the death penalty so quickly. “What would her motives be to do this so soon after the death?” he asked, implying Harris’ political agenda.
Nicole Shanahan, the San Franciscan running mate of RFK Jr. who recently endorsed Trump, tweeted on Saturday that “crime here is spiraling out of control. People are nervous to walk downtown—even in broad daylight.”
“We’ve got tech execs getting stabbed to death, an NFL first-rounder shot while shopping, and routine robberies, vehicle break-ins, and violent crime turning SF into a nightmare for families. Anyone claiming all is well is lying to you,” she added.
Yet this is where Kamala Harris was the top prosecutor when she sought prison sentences for petty marijuana violations while letting violent criminals go free. The epidemic of crime in San Francisco is the result of her policies, which have been continued by other liberals.
Shanahan has become a vocal California critic of Democrats, posting on her account highly effective videos against Kamala Harris. After she and RFK Jr. suspended their candidacy in favor of Trump, she observed that “Democrats spent millions on lawsuits to keep us off the ballots in states across the country.”
“Now that we’ve suspended our campaign, they’re scrambling to keep us on the ballot. This is a party that truly believes in controlling the American voter and does not trust Americans to choose freely at the ballot box.”
San Francisco is ranked as the worst-run city in the United States, according to researchers at WalletHub. Photographs of the rampant vagrancy and maps of store closures there leave little doubt that it deserves this ignominious ranking.
This results from the liberal ideology that Democrats attempt to impose nationwide, with Kamala Harris. Americans should decline to put this in the White House.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
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