In San Francisco, You Have to Become Batman to Survive

For at least several hundred years a fundamental concept of government has been the idea that the state has a monopoly on violence, meaning it is the only entity which can legally and legitimately use violence (shooting a bank robber) and coercion (imprisoning a thief) for the general good of the people.

In a democracy, that monopoly is granted to the state by the people in exchange for a basic guarantee of security and justice. That could include everything from maintaining a military to prevent a foreign invasion down to the local police who respond if someone steals your car or bringing charges against someone who starts a fist fight.

And yet, our TV and movies are still full of revenge stories, vigilantes and extra-judicial violence. Whether it’s Batman (DC) or Daredevil (Marvel) there is clearly an appeal to the idea of a noble vigilante who violates the state monopoly on violence to create something closer to justice. Batman doesn’t hesitate to beat up the street thugs who prey on and terrorize other people. As a victim of violence himself, he knows the state’s monopoly can sometimes seem like a cruel joke.

And that brings me at last to this story out of San Francisco. I can’t count how many stories I’ve written about businesses in San Francisco who are begging for the city to do something to protect them from the chaos around them. And over and over, San Francisco fails.

At 12:23 p.m. on Nov. 16, a man on surveillance video is seen wearing a white shawl on his head and a brown coat. Cars whiz by as he stands on the I-80 onramp off South Van Ness, uphill from a homeless encampment. 

He lights what looks like a cigarette, takes a couple of drags, crouches, and then hurls a piece of cloth lit on fire about 10 feet. It lands on top of a tent. Within minutes, the entire encampment is consumed by a roar of flames. A woman and man frantically jump out of their nearby tent and flee uphill. “Get out of there!” a woman yells repeatedly.

BOOM! A large explosion, likely from a propane tank, sends burning bits of eucalyptus tree flying everywhere.

That particular fire/explosion did $30,000 of damage to Popular Mechanix, an auto repair shop that has been in business for 35 years. The shop has video evidence of the crime (which you can watch here). The person seen in the video was identified as Laureano Perez Perez, who has a long rap sheet that includes 8 cases since 2019. Two of those, in 2020, involved arson. He pleaded guilty to at least one felony and spent about 6 months in jail. But then he gets out again and the cycle starts all over. 

In fact, Perez Perez was back at the scene of the fire just a few days later. And a month after that he returned and started throwing urine and rocks at employees. He got arrested and the shop took out a protection order. But he keeps coming back. Security cameras caught him again just 10 days ago.

It’s not that the city is doing nothing. They do arrest and charge Perez Perez every few months, it’s just that the city isn’t stopping him or even discouraging him. He’s committing many more crimes than he’s being punished for and the city can’t deal with it. So dealing with Perez Perez has fallen on shop manager DJ Meisner:

“It feels like the Wild West,” said Meisner about the city. “I try not to give into the doom spiral narrative. But they are doing nothing to dissuade me of that notion.”…

In 2022, Meisner said he was putting out blazes weekly and even installed a ladder he bought from a hunting website to get a better vantage point from the fence line. He placed extinguisher devices on the fence, but they have proven useless and have been swallowed up in the fires.

In October, an early morning fire broke out in Popular Mechanix’s backyard, growing into a large blaze that destroyed two of the shop’s cars and scarred surrounding trees. One of the cars exploded because it was full of gasoline.

In January the police recommended charges against Perez Perez for the November arson (the one caught on video). Supposedly the DA reached out to the company this week, but does anyone think it will matter? Perez Perez might go to prison for another six months. Then he’ll be back on the street and Popular Mechanix will be left to do its best to protect itself from him. And of course, he’s not the only agent of chaos in the city.

The shop’s owner, Andrew Gescheidt, says it feels like he’s being pushed toward becoming a vigilante. “I feel like I don’t want to become a vigilante, but the universe is saying you have to do it yourself,” he said. He vowed he wouldn’t go out and hit Perez Perez with a wrench but added, “Bureaucracy is not helping us.”

This is the state of things in San Francisco for many people and maybe elsewhere too. There are a lot of jokers out there who just want to watch the world burn, literally in some cases as Perez Perez demonstrates. We’ve seen lots of deranged people setting Teslas on fire this month. And it wasn’t long ago that we had a trial in New York over a man who took defended a subway car full of frightened people from a deranged man making threats. The universe really does seem to be telling regular people to become Batman if they want to survive. That’s obviously not how this is supposed to work, but when chaos and disorder are allowed to persist what else are people supposed to do?