The Death of Casey Moe
On August 28, 1997, the day before the August Critical Mass ride, a van
owned by JCDecaux and operated by an unlicensed driver drove through an
intersection in downtown rush hour traffic, where it struck and killed a 25
year old bicycle messenger named Casey Moe who was running a red light. The
San Francisco Police Department and District Attorney's office, under the
direction of Terrence Hallinan, declared both the driver and the company
that allowed him to operate the van without a licence to be blameless.
The original press report mentioned that Moe was struck by a JCDecaux van.
Twenty-four hours later, that detail was removed from all press reports. The
press releases and comments from SFPD's public relations officer Sherman
Ackerson indicated that Moe was at fault for the accident and was "driving
recklessly" though not a single eye witness can be found who will verify
this version of events. The Chronicle, northern California's biggest
circulation newspaper, placed the site of the accident very near a busy
crosswalk lending credence to the reckless cyclist events.
Our local mayor-appointed police commission sees no reason to be concerned
by any of this. In San Francisco, five cyclists were killed in 1997, up from
two in 1992. Primarily their fault.
In San Francisco, it's nearly impossible to get SFPD officers to fill out
accident reports when a cyclist is involved. Those that are filed are nearly
uniformly biased against cyclists, who are assumed to be at fault whenever
there is a collision. At a recent Police Commission hearing, cyclists
complained of cases where reporting officers have gone so far as to
disregard accounts of eye witnesses and still place the cyclist as fault.