Why did the police let David DePape hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer?

by philg

We are informed that the San Francisco police, presumably armed with guns and clad in bulletproof vests, were spectators as a violent attack on a taxpayer occurred. From the New York Times:

In the early hours of Friday morning, the intruder entered through a back door of the stately home in San Francisco’s upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood, yelling, “Where is Nancy?”

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, was thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., protected by her security detail, but her husband, 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, was home. By the time police officers arrived after being dispatched at 2:27 a.m., they found the assailant and Mr. Pelosi wrestling for control of a hammer. The intruder then pulled the hammer away and “violently attacked” Mr. Pelosi with it in front of the officers, said William Scott, San Francisco’s chief of police.

In other words, if we are to believe Pravda, at least for a period of time, the police took no action to stop the crime in progress.

Chief Scott said in a late-afternoon news conference that when the officers arrived, they saw Mr. Pelosi and the suspect, each with a hand on a hammer. They ordered both men to drop the hammer, he said, and the suspect pulled it away and struck Mr. Pelosi “at least once.”

There are multiple officers (plural). One of the guys involved in the struggle is 82 years old. The other one is probably not a prime specimen of physical fitness (see below). Why wouldn’t the police officers have rushed in to take the hammer away instead of waiting for the struggle for hammer possession to be resolved?

More aggressive policing in Los Angeles 30 years ago:

Separately, the attacker is characterized as a “MAGA Trump supporter” on social media. “Pelosi Attack Suspect Was A Psychotic Homeless Addict Estranged From His Pedophile Lover & Their Children” (by Michael Shellenberger, the “lifelong progressive and Democrat” author of San Fransicko) has some photos taken at the attacker’s house in Berkeley, California:

Some excerpts:

DePape lived with a notorious local nudist in a Berkeley home, complete with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and an LGBT rainbow flag, emblazoned with a marijuana symbol, hanging from a tree. … Neighbors described DePape as a homeless addict with a politics that was, until recently, left-wing, but of secondary importance to his psychotic and paranoid behavior. “What I know about the family is that they’re very radical activists,” said one of DePape’s neighbors, a woman who only gave her first name, Trish. “They seem very left. They are all about the Black Lives Matter movement. Gay pride.”

The modern American “family” structure is on parade here as well:

A November 27, 2008 article in the Oakland Tribune said Taub and DePape were married with three children. But DePape’s stepfather, Gene, told AP yesterday that Taub was his stepson’s girlfriend, not wife; that David and Taub had two, not three, children together; and that David’s third child was with another woman.

(At least two generations of children growing up without two biological parents.) The family structure evolves to become more complex over time:

Taub was in the news again five years later when she, then 44, married a 20-year-old man, Jamyz Smith, naked, at City Hall in San Francisco. A photo in the December 16, 2013 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle shows DePape, Taub, Smith, and the three children huddled under a blanket watching television together. The caption describes DePape as “a family friend.” … Ryan La Coste, who lives in an apartment directly behind the Taub-DePape house, said that the day after Taub’s wedding to Smith, “There was a huge fight. The guy [Smith] that she married got locked up. And so Taub married somebody else. My understanding was that David [DePape] was the best man to her husband at the wedding.”

Based on Twitter and Facebook, it is primarily Donald Trump who is to blame for this attack and, after Trump, Republicans generally. Let’s assume that this is correct. But why aren’t the San Francisco police at least partly responsible for not stopping what Donald Trump told David DePape to do? The Pelosis pay property tax on their Pacific Heights mansion. Aren’t they entitled to police protection rather than police spectators?

(Note that the disintegration of public safety in San Francisco is not a bad thing from the perspective of the Florida real estate industry or from the perspective of a Florida taxpayer. We would be delighted if everyone who owns a mansion in Pacific Heights (“the most expensive neighborhood in the United States”) sold it and moved to Palm Beach County to start paying property taxes to the school system here.)

33 thoughts on “Why did the police let David DePape hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer?”

  1. I don’t understand it and I suspect that the NYT is running a very thin summary of what actually transpired. I wonder if there is security camera footage from inside the premises? In any case, a hammer attack to the head against an unarmed person definitely constitutes “threat of death or grave bodily harm” and the officers would have been authorized to shoot one or the other of them. It sounds like they hesitated, perhaps in an attempt to ascertain who was whom, or out of a desire not to fire their weapons inside the Pelosi home. I also don’t understand why the officers appear to have relied on verbal commands in a situation where it’s obvious that someone is going to get hit with a hammer if they don’t physically intervene.

    It’s hard to second-guess the split-second reactions of an officer or officers in a fast-moving situation. Was there any bodycam footage? That should tell a lot.

  2. The left-wing news media are in full blown “hands up don’t shoot”, “trump ran over a demonstrator in Charlottesville” disinformation mode. Nothing new here and we can hope anyone that could be swayed will ignore. Meantime, how about them Astros?

  3. There are many Sherlock Holmes stories where someone who is ostensibly guilty and “caught in the act” actually protects someone else, e.g.:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Beryl_Coronet

    In this case it’s indeed strange why the attack happened only when witnesses were present. One of many possible scenarios (intentionally kept naive):

    B invites A to play poker. They get into an argument. B goes to the bathroom, phones the police and returns with a hammer in his/her/zir/their hand. A is annoyed at the display of distrust, but doesn’t know yet that the police has been called, so the argument does not escalate.

    Once the police arrives, B lies and says that A is a burglar. Enraged by the betrayal, A grabs the hammer and hits B.

  4. There is a major synagogue nearby with heavy security, and Presidio Terrace itself is a gated community, normally with a security checkpoint at the entrance from Arguello Blvd. On the other hand, the wall that separates Presidio Terrace from the nearby Presidio is fairly low and could easily be scaled, so perhaps that’s how he got in.

    Here’s the ex-girlfriend’s take. Note, she is currently serving time for the attempted kidnapping of a 14-year-old boy, so it seems crazy runs in the family.

    https://abc7news.com/gypsy-taub-david-depape-san-francisco-pelosi-assault-who-attacked-paul-conspiracy-theory/12396990/

    A big part of the problem is the ending of involuntary commitment in the late 1960s (in California, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act) by well-meaning legislators who have no clue about the harsh realities of acute mental illness.

    • The Pelosi house is on Broadway just east of Divisadero. Photos show a French door that was allegedly busted in to gain entry.

  7. Let me tell you about yet another day on the job for a San Francisco cop:

    They get a call. A fight is occurring in [expensive neighborhood]. They show up and two men, one old, one young, are beating each other up. What’s the story? It’s a sugar daddy and his boy toy having a domestic dispute. The cops are *not* going to stick their necks out in these situations, so they defuse it in as mildly as possible and move on.

    Now, this guy might have been a crazy off the street, but if you think the Pelosis don’t have the best security system money could buy, I have a Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.

  9. At 2 am in the morning when it’s 40 degrees outside a large man in his underwear carrying a hammer, duct tape and handcuffs gets to the pelosi house (car? no car? public transit?) and manages to break into what you would think would be one of the highest security houses without being seen or heard, ties up Paul who is also in his underwear then lets him go to the bathroom where he keeps his cell phone charging (instead of his nightstand like everyone else) he calls 911 about his “friend” then leaves the bathroom instead of staying and waiting the 2 minutes it takes the cops to get there. Paul decides to start wrestling for a hammer with a guy half his age. Then the cops arrive and a third person lets the cops in just in time to see David win the duel against the 80 year old and strike him in the head with a hammer. Paul gets hit by a hammer but miraculously lives. Also at some point David was asking where’s nancy. Who witnessed this and other events? Did the cops get a testimony from a hospitalized Paul? This third party bystander? Where’s David’s testimony?

    All media is focused on motivation of David not on details/facts.
    WTF???

    • The part about the attacker being in his underwear was reported by a TV station, but has now been denied. The third person has also been denied. But it does appear that someone let the cops in the front door, and the hammer attack was after that. So the story is still a little fishy.

  10. Police was protecting public order!
    They are not personal bodyguards.
    Or maybe they were not sure whether intruder was invited and it was love, they did not want to come over as bigoted.
    But after hummer attack they had the reason for the arrest.

    • You can be quite sure the cops ARE acting as personal bodyguards for the top politicos and other rich plutocrats. Heck, I do have cops with guns patrolling my land at night, and I’m not a politician.

  13. What makes you think the police didn’t rush?

    Seems very easy to get one good swing in before someone could wrestle you to the ground.

    Or are you asking: Why didn’t the police open fire in between the time the DePape pulled the hammer back and it landed on Pelosi?

  14. This morning on my NPR station the host introduced the story and wanted his guest to know that they were going to “take a balanced perspective” on this story and so they didn’t directly connect DePape to fascists and instead talked about the events of January 6th.

  15. The real news here isn’t the attack or the “hammer” or the “underwear”, it’s how the media and politician are painting this incident by using scary words like “civil war”, “historic level threats” and “Trump”.

    Such attaches and even far worse happens every-single-day across the country, but when it happens to a well know person, then it becomes a national news and a doomsday topic.

    I suggest those who are afraid of “hammer” attacks and COVID, wear a helmet, both outdoor and indoor. You are now safe from both elements.

  16. Disappointing level of commenter bias on this one.

    Paul Pelosi is not gay. They have five children who look like him. He is often accused of cheating with other women.

    Example: https://nypost.com/2022/06/04/inside-the-marriage-of-nancy-pelosi-bon-vivant-husband-paul/

    > Meanwhile, two people who know the couple well told The Post it was an open secret that Paul had an eye for the ladies.

    > “He was a real man about town until she became speaker and that got shut down,” said a Pelosi insider. “I’m amazed they kept it under wraps … She’s off running the country and he’s back in San Fran. But he’s stuck with her. He could have dumped her ass for some pretty little thing. He’s a good Catholic.”

    Infinitely more likely that a mentally ill person broke in and attacked him, as that happens frequently in SF.

    • He’s gay. JFK was gay. Obama is gay. Most of the conservative thought movement fellows are gays. Having children doesn’t make you not gay.

    • @John, I agree about the gay allegations that they are unfounded. If this was true, it would have been discovered long ago. However, this:

      > Infinitely more likely that a mentally ill person broke in and attacked him, as that _happens frequently_in_SF_.

      I don’t get. Why, out of the blues, the news media and political leaders are now considering this incident on Paul Pelosi a grave danger to our democracy and is a historic threats to law makers? Aren’t they implying the rest of us are nothing?

    • There are some fishy things about the news reports. Maybe the reports are wrong. Maybe some information is being withheld. Someone needs to ask questions.

    • I think most commenters qualified their thoughts a theories, unlike the press that told us, e.g., that the Hunter Biden laptop story was definitely false.

      As currently presented, the events don’t make much sense, so people speculate.

    • Roger, Anonymous, and others,

      What seems odd about the reports?

      If you met David DePape on the street, are you more likely to think

      – This guy looks capable of doing something weird and violent, or
      – This guy looks like a gay prostitute for men worth 100M.

      If he was a paid sex worker for 9-digit clients, he would be polished, discreet, and have the body of a Marvel action hero, right?

      How often do high-end prostitutes’ get into hammer fights with clients, then go back to living in their vans?

      Isn’t “crazy weirdo does something crazy and weird” a very plausible explanation here?

    • Has anyone asked the SFPD if they have body camera footage of their time there? They were in the Pelosi home and witnessed a lethal force attack. Did any of them have their cameras on?

    • @Newshawk: It also looks like DePape was in the country illegally as an overstay visa holder from Canada (British Columbia.) It’s via Fox LA on Twitter though, so it must be fake news. More popcorn!

      [Question: Were the SFPD members involved in this call in the country illegally since they didn’t have their body cameras turned on?]

      https://twitter.com/BillFOXLA/status/1587169589426851842

  18. How did he get there? His home (bus) is 11 miles away from Pelosi’s house. How did he get into the gated community then through the gate around the house? How did he avoid security? Why was the response called a wellness check?

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