More on the Yale Choir Story

As expected, the beating up of members of the Bakers Dozen acapella group is now a full blown story with all the breathless reporting and graphics that comes with it. It's even gone national with Drudge reporting that the singers were beaten up "after singing the Star Spangled Banner" as if we here in San Francisco are so anti-American that we'll beat anyone up who sings the National Anthem.

The major source of controversy stems from the police response. According to the Chron, the police went to go check it out but deemed it not that much in a way of a big deal. This despite the fact several members of the group had to go to SF General. Four members of the gang that beat up the choir members were detained but according to the police, none of the members attacked could correctly identify the people who hit them. Members of the group dispute that. The SFPD are sending investigators down to LA, where the group is on tour, to show them lineup photos to get IDs. The group was asked to come back up to the city to talk to the investigators but refused to, probably because they were asked to also pay for their trip.

As for the people who hosted the party, Reno Rapagnani said he understands why the cops were slow to deal with this as it happened on New Year's Eve and they were probably overwhelmed that night with everything else going on in the city. He did say, however, that he thinks they need to step it up. Whitney Leigh, of the Gonzalez and Leigh law firm who is representing the families of the choral group, however, thinks the cops are doing what they need to do at this time.

One interesting new detail has come out, this from Reno Rapagnani. Reno says that he thinks this thing stems from a rivalry between two SF Catholic schools, St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart. Reno's daughter, who had the party, is from St. Igantius and most of the attackers were from Sacred Heart. If this is true and the choral group got caught in the middle of some lame-ass high school rivalry that's now descended into some sort of West Side Story gang-war, well, that just has to be the most retarded thing we've heard in a long time. We think the correct phrase to describe them here would be, as a commenter said, a bunch of "punk ass posers."

ABC7 News, which first hopped on the story, has even more details of the fight, including pictures of the Santa Hat wearing Richard Aicardi. According to them, Richard and his buddies tried to start a fight at the party (so cool) but it went nowhere real fast. That's when Richard called his buddies to help out.

Finally, the reaction to the story is also getting pretty heated, as evident not only on SFist but elsewhere too. On ABC7's blog somebody went to the trouble of posting Mrs. Aicardi's phone number with the implicit idea, we guess, of calling in and harassing the family. And as noted, Eileen Aicardi's Yelp page has also been overwhelmed with nasty comments about her mothering skills.