The following story first ran February 24th. I received a number of emails about the story and one of them stands out as a personal message I want to share. That comment is below and the original article follows directly after.
"Ken was a friend of mine who I hadn't seen for a couple of years... I'm totally disgusted that KGO embarrassed him so much that he went into a deep depression. I think running the story AGAIN this year pushed Ken past the point of no return...
He went through enough hell when the story first ran... I hope Dan Noyes feels the guilt over what he helped cause for the rest of his life... Then again, lives don't matter, ratings do, right Dan?"
- an anonymous comment posted to Sam Spade's San Francisco
The original story:
On February 8th the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Supervisor Tom Ammiano
, who also sits on the Bridge Barrier Projects
Advisory Committee, planned to tell his fellow committee members to stop stalling and at very least, urge the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors to begin the feasibility study for a suicide barrier as soon as possible. The meeting at which Ammiano plans to make that request is today, February 24th.
Unfortunately, the day before Valentine's Day, Ken Bostock, a former gardener for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, jumped from Golden Gate Bridge to his death in the cold and churning water of San Francisco Bay
.
Bostock was the subject of an ABC-7 News
report that accused the gardener of shirking his duties and milking the City payroll. The scathing report by ABC-7 reporter Dan Noyes
left Bostock in deep depression. He resigned from his job and worked part-time as a bartender for the Bar on Castro.
Dan Noyes, the reporter who had so much to say about Bostock on the air refused to comment on the gardener's suicide. Instead, he referred calls to ABC-7 President and General Manager Valari Staab who issued a carefully crafted statement that offered nothing of substance other than this chilly formal statement: "His death is a tragedy. We extend our deepest sympathies to his friends and family."
There are several issues that lead to Bostock's suicide.
ABC-7 went for a cheap shot. Dan Noyes was authorized to go out and uncover some dirt about San Francisco municipal employees. He wanted to assure his station of good ratings with a story that "uncovers waste and fat on the City's payroll." So, did he go after someone with authority in City Hall or perhaps one of the many loafers and couch potatoes who work for the Health and Human Services Department? No. Noyes took a cheap shot and followed an ordinary city gardener around town with hidden cameras.
It appears that ABC-7 publicly harassed and embarrassed this man to the point where he quit his job of 16 years and slowly sunk into deep depression. In my mind, ABC-7 , Dan Noyes and Valari Staab are partly responsible for this man's death.
The Bridge District is also partly responsible because of their unbelievably slow progress in approving a suicide barrier for the Bridge. It is because of the endless delays that Tom Ammiano wants to light a fire under the District. Bevan Dufty, a fellow advisory committee member, has also vowed to push for immediate action.
But other members, like Jerry Cochran (Del Norte County Assessor) for example, want to slow the process and spend more months and years in discussion about the concept of a suicide barrier. This is the kind of backward thinking that ignores the urgency and reality of bridge suicides.
"This tragedy, and the people who continue to jump and have jumped since the bridge board has entertained the idea of a barrier, really proves that enough is enough already," Ammiano told the Bay Area Reporter in an exclusive interview. "I'm asking them to begin the first phase of study. I got us $1.6 million of the necessary $2 million, and we need to move forward. I think they'll be agreeable."
I hope Tom is right and he finds the committee to be agreeable. We need to take solid action now to begin the process of getting those barriers up and in place.
In the meantime, let's hope media sensationalists like Staab and Noyes restrain themselves and stop adding to the problem.
Update: I received a note from Tom Ammiano that the Golden Gate Bridge Barrier Projects Advisory Committee voted to move forward with feasibility studies!
7 comments:
Why is the Asessor of Del Norte County, which is way up by the Oregon border, on the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Bridge? This makes no sense! Let's have local people on the bridge board, not Republicans from Crescent City!
"The Bridge District is also partly responsible because of their unbelievably slow progress in approving a suicide barrier for the Bridge. "
BS
He decided to jump, the bridge didn't make him, now did it?
I'm sorry if someone decides to take there life, but that's their concern, and I don't think any form of barrier should be erected on the bridge.
Oh, and to the person who posted the querry about del Norte county ... go do some research.
Del Norte was one of the counties that funded the bridge bonds back during construction, so they have a seat on the bridge board.
On February 14th, my brother in-law, Toa Te'o, jumped from Golden Gate Bridge. There were eye-witnesses but I.D. was not possible until many days later. We are looking for any information concerning his suicide. Please e-mail to
Ken was a friend of mine who I hadn't seen for a couple of years... I'm totally disgusted that KGO embarrassed him so much that he went into a deep depression. I think running the story AGAIN this year pushed Ken past the point of no return...
He went through enough hell when the story first ran... I hope Dan Noyes feels the guilt over what he helped cause for the rest of his life... Then again, lives don't matter, ratings do, right Dan?
Thank you for giving attention to this and thank you for treating Ken Bostock like a real person and not just a number. After reading about what dan Noyes and ABC-7 did to that poor man, I have decided to get all my news from KRON-4 or ABC-7. That KGO Channel 5 can go straight to hell.
You mentioned Jerry Cochran. His is an ultra-conservative small-twon and small-minded politician from Crescent City. He claims not be homophobic, but the people in Crescent City who hear his wise-cracks and jokes know that gays and lesbian people are fair game for his jokes. As long as we have men like that making decisions for San Francisco people, we are going to see delay after delay in getting a suicide barrier. People like Cochran see $$$ as their main criteria for any decision they make. With them its money first, people last.
I was a friend of Ken but had not seen talked to him for over a year. Last Fall, I had called him and left a message on his answering machine, but he had not returned my call. I had no idea he had been the target of a TV station's investigation and when I read the article, I was absolutely shocked. I can understand why Ken went into deep depression and then later decided to take his life. Ken was a proud person and had been humiliated in front of hundreds of thousands of people, including family and friends.
The media has no business exposing ordinary citizens and workers for something like this. Such a matter is between an employee and their employer. Ken was employed by the City, not the residents of the neighborhood where he worked. He wasn't the mayor of San Francisco either or an other elected official, he was a gardener. This issue should have been handled by the City. No need to make such a thing public. Such things should be illegal. If residents had an issue with what was going on, they should have continued to try dealing with the city and their elected officials. That's why we elect them. Them being non-responsive is no reason to go ahead and attack a worker directly.
But at this point, what I find even more amazing is that the San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council still today boasts the ABC 7 report on their site. They really should be ashamed of themselves.
http://www.sfneighborhoodparks.org/news/news120104a.html
To me, that fact adds insult to injury. How could they be not only so insensitive, but so arrogant as to leave such a piece of trash on their site. I encourage anyone who is also offended by this to email
and/or Isabel Wade, Executive Director of that council at
Make sure to copy the mayor and other city supervisors.
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