San Francisco Anti-Poster Crank Compromises Homicide Investigations
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| This may be the only time you see this poster due to Mr. Zooey, the San Francisco poster vigilante |
Christine Evans, the mother of Brandon Lee Evans, who was shot to death while attending a party in Golden Gate Park last November, put up 300 posters in January offering a $10,000 reward she collected to donate to anyone with information that would lead to the arrest of her son's murderer. The posters were all ripped down within days. After returning to her native San Diego, Evans received notice from SFPD homicide Inspector Brian Delahunty saying he'd been sent an email from a man identifying himself Eugene Zooey:
" Your 8½ x 11 inch "*$10,000 Reward*" mini-billboards installed and maintained along the public right-a-way...represents a blatant trespass and harmful misuse, incompatible with our community goals and aesthetic standards, and recognized by law as a public nuisance and criminal misdemeanor in particular instances. Please read our request."
The request was a four-page treatise saying such posters create "an air that our neighborhood is a crime riddle area [sic] that may well do more to attach vagrants, drugees, vandals, criminals, and other social misfits." It cited state and city codes on unlawfully putting up signs on public and private property. It even appended a "Proof of Service by Email," as if it were serving the officer with an official legal document. Delahunty wrote Evans that he suspected its author was the same person who had taken down the police department's initial bulletins calling for leads on the case.
"He doesn't like any degradation in his neighborhood," Delahunty says. "I receive phone calls and e-mails and he's just very upset with the San Francisco Police Department and how we don't uphold all the laws in San Francisco, just some of them."
Apparently, the reward posters aren't the only ones that have been
targeted by the mysterious Eugene Zooey. He also posted stern warnings
on the Web sites of the May 1 International Workers Day and Prop. 8 dissenter blog Protest8SF to take down their fliers.
With the $300 that Evans spent on the posters to solve her son's murder down the drain, Evans is annoyed that the investigation could be compromised by, essentially, a San Francisco crank: "I want to do the best for my son...and he wasted all that," she says.
Evans' sister wrote Zooey an email (we did the same, but
heard nothing back) and he responded with more vitriol: "Neither you
nor anyone else in your vigilantly group [sic] has a right to post
illegal notices on *any* public or private property. *No one* has
rights that cancel out the rights of others and no one is above the
law. Something appear to you fail to comprehend. Did you give any
thought about what you were do, about other people, anyone besides
yourself? What if everyone did what you did? Oh but you don't care
about such things do you."
Zooey's passion against posters leads us to ask: Just who is the vigilante here?
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