San Francisco prosecutors have decided not to charge the transient accused of repeatedly bashing the city’s former fire commissioner in the skull with a crowbar — even after obtaining video of the man taking practice swings moments before the attack.
The District Attorney’s Office dropped the case against Don Carmignani’s alleged assailant Garrett Doty after deciding the homeless man was acting in “self-defense,” sources close to Carmignani told The Post Tuesday night.
Prosecutors heeded Doty’s arguments and ruled that the attack was not senseless — they said Carmignani instead instigated the vicious assault after deploying pepper spray on the homeless man who lived outside his mother’s property in the city’s affluent Marina District.
“We live in a city where both the Mayor and the DA are elected. Their re-election is very much tied to public perception of crime and safety. Therefore, they have a vested interest in changing the narrative to make it appear that crime is not random,” the source said.
“The city should stop politicizing public safety and instead focus on doing their job of making San Francisco a safe and livable City for everyone,” they added.
Disturbing video shared with The Post shows a man believed to be Doty yank the metal rod out of a trash can and practice swinging in front of Carmignani’s mother’s home, where he and two other transients were blocking the driveway.
Upsetting footage taken by a bystander shows Doty backing a heavily bleeding Carmignani against the wall of a gas station store while widely waving the crowbar.
Carmignani tries to hold his fists up in self-defense but is forced to wipe the streaming blood from his eyes before Doty strikes him in the head with a resounding clang.
The dazed 53-year-old retreats toward the roadway before he is bashed in the head again and later chased down the sidewalk by his assailant.
Carmignani, who sustained a puncture wound to the back of the skull, was rushed into emergency surgery and spent several days in the ICU.
Doty was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with serious bodily injury and assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, but was released back to the city streets with impunity after prosecutors pointed to Carmignani as the aggressor.
The retired firefighter could even face charges for deploying pepper spray on the men in an attempt to boot them from his mother’s property.
The source told The Post Tuesday that the San Francisco police department and District Attorney’s Office failed to interview Carmignani about his version of events before dropping the case.
Carmignani said he had taken matters into his own hands after the city neglected his mother’s calls to 911 asking for help — she had witnessed a trio consuming drugs and harassing neighbors in her entryway.
The fire commissioner was attacked just one day after Cash App founder Bob Lee was stabbed to death on a San Francisco street in the middle of the night — an attack District Attorney Brooke Jenkins warned was not random and even compared to Carmignani’s case.
It was widely assumed Lee was killed at the hands of a vagrant until his colleague, IT consultant Nima Momeni, was arrested for the murder more than a week later.
“The city was almost gleeful to announce that Bob Lee was not killed by a homeless person. This response totally lost sight of the fact that Bob Lee was murdered, which is a tragedy and violent crime, no matter who perpetrated it,” the source close to Carmignani said.
District Attorney Jenkins did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.