San Francisco, CA
People We Meet: Ranjit Brar’s ‘horrible’ road led him back to San Francisco
“Imagine this, right? There’s a fork in the road where down one road is like — how would I explain this,” Ranjit Brar muses for a moment. “Dead trees. You see rocks, or a road that’s potholes. It’s just horrible.”
The other road in the scenario looks beautiful, Brar says, but seemed “so far-fetched” that for years, he didn’t choose it.
Instead, he found himself selling drugs, stealing cars, committing identity theft, anything — just to buy more heroin or pay for a place to sleep at night. He’d catch charges, post bail, skip town to the next county.
“It’s easier to stay in something that feels more secure, even though it’s a miserable life,” Brar says. Today, he sits at a conference table, with his work ID and key fob hanging off a lanyard around his neck, his goatee neatly trimmed. A tattoo on his throat peeps over the top of his T-shirt.
One fork in the road came 12 years ago, when Brar found himself 32 years old and addicted to painkillers after a shooting at his home in Florida left him severely injured. He told a Daytona Beach news outlet in an interview at the time about his pain and the various medications he was taking to ease it.
Eventually, his doctors cut him off the pills, and he found his way to heroin. Before he knew it, his family was in shambles.
Feeling “empty inside,” Brar left behind his children and relationship and hit the road back to the Bay Area. “San Francisco, it’s the best place if you want to change your life around,” Brar says. “And it’s the worst place if you want to destroy your life.”
Brar had spent his early years here, and his adoptive father still lived in the area.
“I came back to California … to reconcile [with] my father, try to see if I could salvage the relationship,” Brar says. “Any connection to family at this point, that’s what I wanted.”
When that family connection fell through, Brar continued to find comfort in drugs. As he bounced around the Bay Area, committing petty crime, all roads seemed to lead back to San Francisco, his home base and the city where he was born.
“I’d come here, Tenderloins. I knew how to survive in the streets, how to sell drugs, the homies are here,” Brar says. “For about ten years, I struggled with trying to get clean. And I couldn’t do it on myself.”
Brar’s “rock-bottom,” he says, was the day he was arrested and realized he had no one to reach out to.
The loneliness was jarring. It reminded him of trying to connect with his father, or being shipped off to boarding school in India as a child — an experience he has now learned to see differently.
“Even though it was a lonely time in my life, everything is something to learn from,” he says. He learned Hindi and Punjabi, and got to travel and see the Himalayas with his grandmother.
In a similar way, Brar today finds a different kind of solace in the Tenderloin.
He attended rehab in custody and after he was released, and began volunteering with St. Anthony’s. Brar now works there as a full time volunteer coordinator. He has an apartment nearby and another he shares with his girlfriend.
As we walk out the door, we run into one of his best friends, with whom he does everything from attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings to going on vacation together. He clarifies that this person is “not a homie, a friend.”
Brar connects with other people in the throes of addiction and lets them call him if they need support.
And beyond the neighborhood, his children are grown up and successful, one surfing in Australia, another working as an electrician in Florida, and a third attending college in New York.
Brar, though, still finds his comfort in San Francisco. Reflecting, he says that rehabilitating in the same place where he used drugs has only made his recovery stronger. “It keeps me grounded.”
SAN FRANCISCO – An 8-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department received a hero’s sendoff Thursday afternoon as she was discharged from San Francisco General Hospital, less than three weeks after surviving a life-threatening shooting in the line of duty.
First time opening up to the public
The backstory:
Officer Brittney Taylor was greeted by a formation of first responders clapping to show their appreciation and respect as she emerged from the hospital in a wheelchair.
The discharge marks the first time Taylor has spoken publicly since the violent encounter on the night of May 31. According to newly released police body-camera footage, Taylor was shot in the upper leg and foot by a robbery suspect following a pursuit that ended in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood.
“I almost lost my life,” Taylor said. “It’s the little things you take for granted. Holy crap, you get to sit back and look at the big picture.”
When asked if she felt any fear during the incident, Taylor admitted she did that night, though not in the moments leading up to it.
“I knew what could happen,” she said, describing the entire ordeal as an eye-opener. “It is difficult to think about it. You replay it, and it absolutely causes me to lose sleep.”
Credit where credit is due
Dig deeper:
Taylor credited the hospital’s medical team, specifically trauma surgeon Dr. Andre Campbell, with saving her life.
However, Dr. Campbell emphasized that the quick actions of Taylor’s fellow officers at the scene played a critical role in her survival.
Instead of waiting for an ambulance, officers recognized the severity of her injuries, placed her into a patrol car, and rushed her directly to the hospital.
“Which was great,” Dr. Campbell said.
Taylor also highlighted the deep bond shared within her “close-knit police family.”
A squad of female officers and their commanding sergeant have maintained a constant presence at the hospital to offer continuous support throughout her stay.
The native San Franciscan expressed that she has no regrets and hopes her experience will encourage other officers to do their best.
“I love the city,” Taylor said. “I don’t like it when people come to my city and destroy it or hurt the citizens here. That takes a toll on me. I’m going to do something about it.”
The road to recovery
What’s next:
When asked how she would respond to people calling her a hero, Taylor remained humble.
“It’s my job. I was doing my job that night. I’m glad to be put in that position of being a hero.”
Following her release, Taylor received a full police escort as she headed home.
While she notes that her full recovery could take anywhere from six months to a year, she remains resolute about her future.
“You gotta let me put my uniform back on and get back out there,” Taylor said, adding that she has no hesitation about continuing her career. “Honestly, no. I got to slow it down. I have time now.”
The Source: Interview with SFPD Officer Brittney Taylor
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced multiple hate crime charges, as well as assault and vandalism charges against an Oakland man for an incident that happened in the Castro District last month.
On Thursday afternoon, Hans Haken pleaded not guilty to one felony count of assault with a deadly weapon, one count of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, one count of vandalism, one count of hit-and-run, and one count of reckless driving.
Prosecutors also allege each of the felony assault counts was a hate crime.
“In San Francisco, we have zero tolerance for any hate, hateful acts, certainly that cross the criminal line, and we will do everything that we can to protect our residents from these types of incidents,” said Jenkins at a Thursday afternoon news conference.
It was on May 16, around 5:30 p.m., when prosecutors say Haken spray-painted a homophobic slur on the wall next to Chartreuse by Roje, a gay-owned floral boutique in San Francisco’s Castro District.
“It was a reminder that even though we’re here in Castro, San Francisco, we live in this well-protected bubble that we have created very passionately and strongly, that that can still happen,” said Jeffrey Dumlao, the owner of Chartreuse by Roje. “If anything, that is what’s scary, that it happened here in broad daylight of all times.”
Dumlao says his store had already closed by that time, but Justin Donnelly, who lives above the store, heard the spray-painting and came down to confront the man and tell him to stop.
“He just became very agitated,” Donnelly said. “I tried to remain calm and just tell him, like, sir, you know, I don’t, I don’t, I’m not involved in any of that. I’m just, I live here, right, and this is, this is my home, and you know, this is vandalism.”
Donnelly says when he took a picture of Haken’s license plate, Haken got in the car and tried to run him over. Then, prosecutors say he got out of the car and punched Donnelly in the jaw while uttering homophobic slurs.
“I’m definitely doing a lot better than I was. It’s been, I don’t know, a month or so,” Donnelly said.
He says the incident has shaken him, but he’s been lifted up by the community’s support and law enforcement.
“A lot of people have said, ‘oh my god, I can’t believe something like this could happen in San Francisco, of all places.’ And the fact is that something like this can happen anywhere, but in San Francisco, we don’t stand for it, and we deal with it, so, so that makes me feel good,” Donnelly said.
In announcing the charges, Jenkins pointed out the climate in this country has become more hostile to the LGBTQ community. She says that makes it even more important for elected officials to protect that community, just like they do every other community.
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