The Patriot Post® · Kamala, San Francisco, and America

“I feel his body changing,” said San Francisco Police Sergeant Joelle Harrell, a 30-year veteran of the force. “And I see him look down, and he’s like, ‘Am I gonna die?’ And I was just like … I just grabbed hold of him really tight, and I looked at him, and I said, ‘Look at me.’ I said, ‘I know you don’t know me, but please trust me. It’s not your time. You’re going to be okay, okay? God is with us right now.’”

God was clearly with Ricky Pearsall in Union Square on Saturday afternoon. That’s where the rookie first-round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers was shot in the chest — in through the front, out through the back, no surgery required — by a 17-year-old assailant who coveted the young wideout’s Rolex.

“During the robbery,” as the New York Post reports, “there was a struggle over the weapon which fired multiple times leaving Pearsall shot in the chest, police said. ‘Ricky wasn’t having any of it,’ San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin said cops told him of the NFL player’s determination to fight off the robbery.”

The would-be murderer, from nearby Tracy, was also shot in the struggle. He was captured shortly afterward and was arraigned yesterday in juvenile court, where he expressed through his attorney that he was “so sorry for what happened.” Of course he is.

And yet, in the soft-on-crime style of this Democrat-dominated city within this Democrat-dominated state, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced Tuesday that the perp would be charged as a juvenile. This means that if he’s convicted, he’ll be in prison at the longest until his 25th birthday.

But never fear: “Robberies and any violence like this will not be tolerated in our city,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

We wonder, of course, about the wisdom of wearing a Rolex anywhere in San Francisco these days, given the hellhole that the city has become. But what we really wonder about is the absurdity of even having to acknowledge such a thing: that an American citizen in one of America’s great cities should have to watch what he wears — whether an expensive watch or a nice pair of Nikes — or else risk being robbed, stabbed, or shot. This is how low our expectations have become, and how far San Francisco has fallen.

San Francisco didn’t devolve overnight, and no one person is to blame for this dystopia. But, as columnist David Marcus points out, Kamala Harris can’t escape her share of culpability:

From 2004 until 2019, the responsibility to enforce law and order in San Francisco fell to District Attorney Kamala Harris and her protégé George Gascon. The result? By any estimation, it has been an ignominious disaster. Even as you drive from the airport to downtown in this once great city, the sight that greets you off the highway is streets with empty storefronts — like broken teeth, jagged and sad.

In the Tenderloin District it gets worse, far worse, and it isn’t getting any better, in fact, much the opposite. The last time I was in the City by the Bay was in 2021, and I struggled then to describe the craven brutality of the homelessness and drug addiction. Let me try again. … The scale of human tragedy is laid bare by the proximity of wealth to squalor, of healthy and beautiful minds and bodies to squandered lives doped out and laid out beneath signs for Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany & Co.

When you think San Francisco, think Kamala Harris the prosecutor. Again, here’s the New York Post: “As state attorney general from 2011 to 2017, Harris refused to take a position on two ballot initiatives that have come to define modern California — but her office wrote favorable descriptions for both, likely aiding their passage. Proposition 47 downgraded felony thefts to misdemeanors when the stolen property had a value of less than $950. … Proposition 57, meanwhile, allowed the early parole of some inmates to reduce the prison population, introducing violent offenders back into society after serving only half of their sentences.”

Meanwhile, as California resident and Central Valley farmer Victor Davis Hanson writes, “California, as some of the Democratic primary candidates bragged last year, is the progressive model of the future: a once-innovative rich state that is now a civilization in near ruins. The nation should watch us this election year and learn of its possible future.”

But VDH didn’t write that cautionary note four days ago. He wrote it four years ago. He also told of the advice he got one night from the doorman of a San Francisco hotel: “Do not park your car on the street because it most surely will have its windows smashed and its contents stolen, and the police will either not respond if called or the city would not prosecute the criminal if arrested. Check the soles of your shoes before entering the hotel lobby to ensure that human feces or needle remnants are not stuck to the bottoms.”

Hanson was lucky. He didn’t get shot like Ricky Pearsall. But either way, the message is the same:

Kamala Harris will do for America what she did for San Francisco.