San Francisco: The Union Square/ Ricky Pearsall shooting...
My column in the San Francisco Chronicle
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
The shooting of Ricky Pearsall was shocking, but don’t be surprised
It’s almost like gun violence and our reaction to it is zoned. Union Square: OMG! Oakland: Whatev.
By Jack Ohman
My first reaction to the news that 49ers rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall had been shot during a robbery attempt in Union Square on Saturday afternoon was near-incredulity.
Not that it happened, but that an NFL player had been assaulted at a San Francisco landmark.
As the details became known — broad daylight, 17-year-old suspected as the shooter, Pearsall fights back, Pearsall survives — it seemed even more incredible.
But let’s pretend that this shooting didn’t happen in Union Square.
This kind of shooting is just another day at the gun violence office outside Union Square, which is a tragedy unto itself. What’s more tragic is that we’ve all gotten used to these incidents, whether some lunatic kills 25 kids in an elementary school or takes a shot at a presidential candidate.
Given the high public profile of a 49ers wide receiver, yes, everyone in the Bay Area is shocked that Union Square is the venue, and not some boarding house room or a street corner a few miles south of San Francisco’s living room.
It’s almost like gun violence and our reaction to it is zoned. Union Square: OMG! Oakland: Whatev.
As a contributor to the Chronicle, I am actually a resident of Sacramento. I live in a lovely close-in neighborhood called Land Park. I’m 10 minutes from Midtown, if you’re familiar with the area.
Walking through our 1960s California-ranch-house/Brady Bunch-idyll neighborhood, you would never know that, in fact, we hear gunshots here all the time, and people get shot within golf driver range of million-dollar-plus-midcentury-Eichler homes.
The 7-Eleven literally around the corner from me had a grotesque gun murder a few years ago, and the cashier was killed. I knew who he was and recognized him instantly.
A person I know who walks to the gym from our cozy confines decided he wasn’t going to do that anymore. Why? He saw a guy underneath an overpass with a pistol and heard a shot from said pistol a few days ago.
It is rather common to hear gunshots on my street. They are not firecrackers. I grew up in Minnesota, and am experienced with pistols, rifles and shotguns, and can differentiate between the reports they make.
For extra drama, we will hear the occasional police helicopter flying up and down our sedate-looking street, blasting a description of a perp on the lam.
Once, at midnight, the helicopter instructed us to shelter in place in our house, stay away from the windows and wait for an all-clear announcement.
We did.
Mostly, the shots we hear are rather far south, but they are clearly discerned.
None of the people who are shot are NFL wide receivers, and, of course, nothing usually happens, until it does, and you’re left shaking your head about crime.
I’ve had propane tanks pried off my trailer, both cars broken into, and people sneaking around my house.
It’s an urban area. This happens.
It happens in South Sacramento. It happens in Land Park. It happens in Oakland. It happens in the Tenderloin. This time, it happened in Union Square.
Naturally, politicians want to make hay. Mayoral contender Mark Farrell was more than happy to observe, loudly, that this shooting could be directly attributed to Mayor Breed, who is in a competitive reelection race.
Let’s throw in the sheriff’s deputies union, which didn’t endorse Breed — but she was endorsed by the police officers union.
San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association President Ken Lomba told the Chronicle that Farrell was right to blame Breed after the Pearsall shooting, and while Breed has sought to burnish her pro-police credentials this year, he said the mayor should have gotten the city to hire more police officers and sheriff’s deputies.
Here’s the deal: Unless you had magnetometers on Union Square scanning every single human and their bags and backpacks, events like the Pearsall shooting are inevitable as well as geographically ubiquitous and ecumenical.
A San Franciscan with some sense of history might want to note that there was a frightening shooting in Union Square in 1975, in front of the St. Francis Hotel.
Actually, it was more than a shooting.
It was an assassination attempt against then-President Gerald Ford.
My guess is that then-Mayor Joseph Alioto wasn’t blamed for the assassination attempt in Union Square.
Fortunately, the Pearsall shooting did not result in an even greater tragedy. It could have, and we should all be grateful it didn’t.
The real tragedy here — aside from the shooting of an innocent man, 49ers wide receiver or not — is that we need to be more outraged about the national gun sickness, not the location of a random shooting.
It can happen anywhere, and it did, again.
It happened in a truly frightening manner, in a place we all know and love.But don’t express surprise.
We continue to put guns in people’s hands and act surprised when it’s closer to home than we want.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at jackohman.substack.
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My good friend Tim Nyberg, a nice Minnesota boy and a brilliant humorist and graphic designer, has designed some fun Harris/Walz merchandise. Take back the MAGA red hat and get the HAWA red cap (or blue). Here’s the site:
https://apparel.flsbanners.com/hawa/shop/home
tinyurl.com/HAWA24
On the heels of that shocking shooting on Union Square there was yet another massacre in a school, in Georgia, where the governor recently signed a bill permitting open carry, without a permit. Will we never get rid of the guns? All we get is “thoughts and prayers”. When will enough be enough?
Thanks for this commentary. We share some of the same experiences as you here in Carmichael where on the surface it looks like a comfy, leafy suburban Sacramento neighborhood. The quiet nights are often interrupted by sounds of gunfire, wailing sirens and yes, police helicopters broadcasting warnings to stay in the house. The big question remains: What can be done? Seemingly, we are not safe anywhere.