Inexcusable Behaviour From Commercial Broker

Found via www.squarefeetblog.com. Square Feet is a commercial real estate blog providing information, market data, as well as commentary on news and happenings which have an impact on the Silicon Valley commercial real estate market.

2 Men Arrested In Pleasanton Cab Driver Assault Full story from CBS Channel 5.

Pleasanton police have arrested two men suspected of verbally and physically assaulting a taxicab driver Thursday.

Units responded to report of a battery in progress at a 7-Eleven store on Valley Avenue at around 1:10 a.m., according to the Pleasanton Police Department. Jaswinder Bangar, a local taxi driver, was found suffering facial lacerations and a broken tooth.

Bangar told police he had picked up two men at the Redcoats British Pub and Restaurant in Pleasanton who, on the way to Danville, began calling Bangar derogatory names and punched him in back of the head.

Bangar said he pulled into the parking lot at 7-Eleven to call police, but the two men, later identified as Jacob Billingsley, of Alamo, and Danville resident Michael Goldstein, grabbed the cell phone and broke it.

A subsequent investigation into leads led officers to Goldstein's home in Danville, where both men were found hiding.

How is this a real estate story?

Goldstein was managing director Collier's Stockton office in California. According to squarefeetblog, his profile has been removed from the Collier's site. I guess after this kind of alleged behaviour, his company thought the better of being associated with him.

My Reaction

It's strange...I felt personally affronted by this guy's alleged actions. Normally, we're so insulated from and inundated by stories of reprehensible behaviour like this that we don't take notice of them. And that's a shame because these are all people with real lives being affected; but they're just so far away we don't feel any real emotion attached to them other than to say, "That's awful!" and then we go about our day and forget all about it.

This time however, I guess because one of the accused is a commercial broker, I think I felt a little ashamed. I shouldn't - I didn't attack the poor driver - but I did all the same. This guy has besmirched all of us in the commercial real estate industry by his actions and yet I felt somehow responsible (?) for him when I read this. One of our own has fallen and crossed a line that should not be crossed. Ever.

Shame on him!

We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than this. We have a difficult time as it is in this business battling negative press and negative bias every day; we don't need this kind of heat. I hope, if found guilty, he gets the maximum penalty allowed and that his state registrar pulls his license. Permanently.