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On Monday afternoon, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins released a “declination of charges report,” explaining why her office would not be charging security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony for the killing of Banko Brown at the entrance of a Walgreens on Market Street.
The SF District Attorney’s Office also released surveillance footage, witness statements and other evidence used to make the decision, including a video that shows Anthony shooting and killing Brown after a scuffle. Brown, 24, was unarmed when he was killed at the 825 Market St. store on April 27. His death triggered an outcry from the public and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who unanimously called for the release of evidence, including video footage.
John Burris, a civil rights attorney representing Banko Brown’s family, spoke to SFGATE after the security tape and report were released to the public. He said Brown’s family is “disappointed” by the lack of charges, and that they, like Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Shamann Walton, want California Attorney General Rob Bonta to launch a review into Jenkins’ decision. Burris told SFGATE he intends to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Walgreens and Anthony in the “near future.”
In the Walgreens security tape, Anthony can be seen physically stopping Brown at the door as Brown tries to exit the store with a bag of items. Anthony pushes and punches Brown multiple times before wrestling him to the ground. Brown then gets up on his feet, grabs his bag, and heads for the door. He turns around and moves toward Anthony slightly, allegedly to spit on him, at which point Anthony shoots him in the chest.
According to the district attorney’s interpretation of video evidence, the testimony of several witnesses, and Anthony himself, Anthony killed Brown in self-defense. Anthony told investigators that Brown threatened to stab him during their initial altercation, which made him fear for his life. The report separately cites two witness interviews who said that Brown looked like he “wanted to fight” or “was trying to hit” Anthony, but neither corroborated hearing Brown threaten to stab Anthony.
“There’s no justification for this level of force,” Burris said after watching the video of Anthony shooting and killing Brown. “… The security guard had the upper hand here. He was bigger, tossing [Brown] around. This is woefully unjustified. It’s horrible to think that over a shoplifting case, Banko would lose his life over it.”
“This is not a case where the young man was using force or trying to hurt anyone,” Burris added. “He was trying to get by, and he was confronted, tossed around.”
Burris strongly disagreed with the district attorney’s office report, which said, “All of this evidence strongly suggests that Anthony firing at Brown in self-defense was objectively reasonable.”
“That’s not what I see,” Burris said. “Anthony is in total control — he’s bigger, stronger, tossing the young man around. At all times, [Brown] seemed to be more interested in getting away than anything else. It was the guard who was being aggressive and was determined to not allow him to get away. … This was officer-generated physical conduct that did not support the use of deadly force. You can’t use greater force than you were being confronted with, and there’s nothing here to suggest that the officer was being confronted with deadly force.”
Burris told SFGATE that he found the lack of any charges against Anthony to be “stunning,” and that based on the available evidence, he believes this is a clear-cut manslaughter case. He said that Jenkins imperiled her office’s investigation after her initial statement about the killing, released on May 1, when she said the “incident … does not meet the People’s burden to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that the suspect is guilty of a crime.”
“She screwed up the statement that she made initially,” Burris said. “I think the totality of the circumstances clearly support that it was unreasonable to use this degree of force.”
Burris said he received an email from the DA’s office on Monday morning that his public records request for video footage and other documentation would be granted Monday afternoon. He ended up finding the footage on the office’s website, after the San Francisco Chronicle published a story linking to the available evidence, he said. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.) Burris has informed Brown’s family that the footage has been released, though as of Monday afternoon, they do not intend to view any of it, he said.
SFGATE news editor Amy Graff contributed to this report.
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