San Francisco 49ers rookie Ricky Pearsall is currently recovering from a bullet wound just months after the team selected him with their first-round pick in the NFL Draft.
Pearsall's gunshot occurred during a robbery attempt at Union Square in San Francisco on Saturday. The incident has raised concerns over the city's violent crime levels amid the city's ongoing struggles with homelessness. San Francisco has one of the nation's highest per capita concentrations of homelessness.
The city has also dealt with an intense drug crisis in the past year, holding a candlelight vigil on Sunday to commemorate the 1,100-plus residents who have died by overdose since January 2023.
San Francisco mayor London Breed acknowledged that the Pearsall shooting may impact her record on crime as she seeks re-election in 2024.
"We are glad that the victim will be OK. But this incident does set us back from all the hard work that we’ve done in order to make significant changes in public safety in San Francisco," Breed told reporters at a news conference over the weekend.
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Breed, a Democrat who was born in San Francisco and attended the University of California, Davis for undergrad and the University of San Francisco for her MPA, has been in office since 2018. She has been highly criticized for a major budget cut to the San Francisco police and sheriff's departments that would occur over the next two years. The cuts came in the aftermath of the riots that occurred after the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020.
The San Francisco Deputy Sheriff's Association put out a statement last November condemning Breed's decision and claimed it was harshly affecting the public safety of the city.
"Mayor Breed’s 2020 endorsement of the nationwide movement to defund the police marked a significant turning point in San Francisco’s law enforcement landscape. Despite subsequent attempts to present herself as pro-public safety, her decisions to freeze deputy sheriff and police hiring in 2022 and allocate $120 million from law enforcement to the African American community in 2021 indicate a consistent trend of budget cuts and reallocation, casting doubts on the city’s ability to maintain law and order," the statement read.
Last October, San Francisco police chief William Scott said Breed never approved a requested increase in the police department's recruiting funds. Scott said the city had been using the same recruitment budget since 2007.
49ERS' RICKY PEARSALL RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL AFTER BEING SHOT IN ATTEMPTED ROBBERY
Prior to being elected mayor in 2018, Breed was elected a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from the fifth district in 2013, then president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2015.
Breed's main opponent in the city's upcoming mayoral election is fellow Democrat Mark Farrell, a former interim San Francisco mayor and former city supervisor. Farrell has been running a campaign based on public safety, and criticized Breed in a statement on X shortly after news of Pearsall's shooting had spread.
"Enough is enough," Farrell posted on X. "If we want public safety in San Francisco, then we need change in City Hall."
Farrell, who was also born in San Francisco, is a former Air Force pilot and attended Catholic and Christian schools throughout high school and undergrad.
Farrell served as the city's acting mayor from January of 2018, after the death of former mayor Ed Lee, until Breed's inauguration in July of that year.
Farrell previously authored an $11 billion city budget. The budget included funding for the hiring of 250 new police officers. It also allocated in excess of $7 million to criminal justice reform measures, including a pilot program for pretrial diversion. It also increased the amount of funding the city provided to supportive homeless services, including homeless navigation centers, and the Homeward Bound to send homeless people to live with loved ones elsewhere.
Pearsall, 23, was released Sunday from the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. He was back at the team facility on Monday, San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch said Tuesday. The Niners placed Pearsall on the non-football injury list, giving him time to recover from the shooting and a shoulder injury that had limited him all summer, Lynch said.
The condition of the 17-year-old suspect, who was transported to the same hospital, has not been disclosed. The young male suspect is a resident of Tracy, a city about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of San Francisco, police said. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has yet to file charges against him, and it is not yet known if she will ask a judge to move the boy’s case from juvenile to adult court.
The teenage suspect was arrested after being shot in the arm about a block away from where he allegedly confronted Pearsall. He was barefoot after his slip-on sandals fell off during the struggle with the football player, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
San Francisco Police Department data released in July showed crime in the city was considerably down in the first half of 2024. But it was unclear if that trend would continue.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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