The San Francisco Police Department arrested a 54-year-old man accused of brandishing a fake gun in Fisherman’s Wharf, a spokesperson with the department confirmed to SFGATE on Friday evening.
The arrest occurred Wednesday, when officers responded to Leavenworth and Columbus streets at 12:17 p.m. and detained a suspect who matched the description given by witnesses. During the arrest, officers found and seized a fake gun. Displaying an imitation firearm is a misdemeanor under California law.
The circumstances of the arrest seem to line up with a recent KGO-TV story about a man who reportedly fancied himself a vigilante named “Boots.” The report shows him dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans, with his hood pulled up over his head — his visage covered by a neoprene face mask, and his eyes hidden by a pair of sunglasses. With the cadence one might use to describe a folk-hero, the KGO report said the man was a business owner who had “taken it upon himself” to “fight back” and “protect his neighborhood” from thieves.
The KGO report notes that Boots was arrested at 12:17 p.m. Wednesday in Fisherman’s Wharf, details that exactly match the account of events given by police. While his alleged goal of warding off thieves by looking scary and brandishing a fake weapon may not have gone exactly as planned — he seems to have been arrested while trying to prevent crime — “Boots” maintained that his efforts were still successful.
“While police were there, nobody was getting their car broken into for that half hour,” he told KGO.
The San Francisco Standard followed up on the KGO story on Friday. That story, titled “Masked San Francisco Car Break-In Vigilante Arrested, Unmasked,” revealed the man’s name. (SFGATE does not typically include the names of suspects, except in especially newsworthy cases.) When a Standard reporter reached the man by phone, he denied being the vigilante, but the outlet was careful to note that he did so only after he was informed that he would be named as the person arrested for brandishing a fake gun.