Barry Nielsen was killed by the coldness of San Francisco's community; an SF Chronicle story that will anger you -- or it should

I just saw this a few seconds before I posted it. This is an excerpt. Two things angered me: the report of people stepping over -- rather than helping -- this man, and the very slow response of the SF Police Department. It seems San Francisco's finest can spend more time making racist videos than solving crimes. Mr. Nielsen eventually died from what was finally identified as an attack -- but by whom, no one knows to this day.

DEATH ON THE STREET
Barry Nielsen curled on the corner, a head wound oozing blood, as his iPod hissed the soundtrack to a mystery in the foggy night
Mike Weiss, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 28, 2005

It began with a man crumpled on a nighttime pavement, his knees pulled protectively under his chin and blood pooling beneath his head. Something bad had just happened to Barry Nielsen. Exactly what remains a mystery.

Moments earlier he had been acting as a greeter outside an open studio at 1890 Bryant St., an industrial-chic home to artists, architects and a wine broker. He was dancing exuberantly. Now his iPod was still playing, but on this Friday night with fog dampening the air, he could no longer hear the music.

But this is San Francisco, where a man curled on a sidewalk means a homeless person. Even though the intersection with Mariposa Street was bathed in light from a Muni yard on the northeast corner, people stepped around him.

It was 7:25 p.m. on Oct. 21, and the neighborhood was well-trafficked. People came and went at KQED; there were clubs and restaurants nearby; and on the southwest corner, Starbucks was crowded, mostly with deaf people at a get-together. Finally a woman out for a smoke saw Nielsen's body and grew alarmed. She ran to Starbucks, where a pair of cops had parked their black and white and were on a coffee break.Officer Angel Lozano inspected Nielsen, saw the blood, and summoned an ambulance. When paramedics arrived, Nielsen no longer showed vital signs, Lozano said, but they revived him with CPR.

"We interviewed a few people," Lozano explained outside the same Starbucks a few weeks later, "and nobody saw what happened."

"The gentleman still had his iPod and his wallet," Lozano said. "It didn't appear there was a crime involved. First impression -- he had fallen down." So the officers did not create a crime scene or begin a thorough canvass of the area or summon detectives.

The building at 1890 Bryant is roughly halfway between San Francisco General Hospital, where Nielsen, 48, was rushed in a wailing ambulance, and the Hall of Justice. Over the days and weeks ahead, conflicting versions of what had befallen the dying painter and puppeteer -- had he fallen or been assaulted? -- would emerge from the two edifices...

By Saturday afternoon, when the police had not contacted Nielsen's friends or family, one friend, Dwight Horn, went to Mission Station and was told, "'What investigation? It was a fall, not a crime."

"We were hearing from every doctor we spoke to" that Barry had been assaulted, Hallquist said, "and the cops were doing nothing."