The Final Leap (21 page)

Steel never called the authorities about Sprague, a fact that some viewers find hard to accept. Given how long Steel's cameras focused on Sprague and what audiences learn about Sprague's life during interviews, he seems like an obvious candidate to jump. At the same time, the Bridge Patrol never identified Sprague as a risk, either. He was just another pedestrian on the bridge—one among hundreds that morning. He wasn't crying, and there were no outward signs that he was despondent. Steel acknowledges that Sprague's presence on the bridge made him anxious but, Steel says, “There was hardly a day when we didn't think we might be filming someone who was going to jump.”

After filming was completed, and Steel's true motives were revealed, he was denounced by the Bridge District. Celia Kupersmith, the general manager at the time, and Mary Currie, the public affairs director, voiced outrage at Steel's deceit. They also said that the movie would make the problem worse by inciting copycat behavior. Even Tom Ammiano, the Bridge District board member who was the strongest supporter of a suicide barrier, called
The Bridge
“a snuff film.” He and others said that the movie was exploitative, voyeuristic, and immoral because it showed real deaths. People picketed the San Francisco Film Festival when the movie had its West Coast premiere.

Even some suicide prevention advocates had misgivings. Dr. Mel Blaustein, president of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, didn't like the fact that in all six cases where family members were interviewed, the jumpers had a diagnosed mental illness. Blaustein believes that this gives the impression that only people who are mentally ill attempt suicide. Another issue was that Sprague's death seemed both preventable and glorified. In addition, there was no number at the end of the movie that people could call for help (the toll-free number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was added to the DVD version). Finally, the film made no reference to a suicide barrier.

Public opinion about the movie changed, Steel believes, only after victims' families—those in the film, and others—mobilized to say that the problem wasn't the movie, the problem was the bridge. As for his failure to reference a suicide barrier, Steel told me that he's strongly in favor of a barrier; however, he made a deliberate decision not to mention it in the movie. “What I was interested in,” he says, “was starting conversations about suicide.” He wanted to create a movie that caused people to think, feel, and care about suicides from the bridge in a way that they wouldn't forget easily. It's up to audiences, he believes, to supply the missing message, that a suicide barrier is needed.

Still, it baffles him that the movie didn't incite immediate action. “People didn't storm the bridge and say, ‘What the hell is going on here?' ” he said to me in a recent phone conversation. “That's the movie's failure, I think. It didn't ignite a response. It didn't hold people accountable.” He paused for an instant, then added, “The Bridge District has a history of being incredibly disingenuous and calculating on this issue. Their strategy is delay, delay, delay. They're not haunted by the deaths, not driven to undertake changes to stop them.”

Steel told ABC News, “If there was a two-mile stretch of road anywhere in this country, and two dozen people died at that stretch year after year after year after year, the people responsible for that stretch of road would feel compelled to take drastic action to stop 24 people from dying next year.” It's a valid point. When something fails, whether it's the brakes on a car, the engine on an airplane, or the seal of a deepwater oil well, the person or entity that's responsible is blamed, sued, and forced to make changes. That doesn't seem to be the case with the Golden Gate Bridge, however. The few lawsuits that have been filed against the Bridge District have been dismissed without cause. The changes to the bridge that the district has approved have made the span safer for people with physical disabilities, but not mental disabilities. The stories about bridge suicides point out the issues of access—the low railing and year-round pedestrian access—but don't point a finger at the district that manages the span. Indeed, since the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, the district has received a free pass where suicide is concerned.

In December 1997, a two-year-old girl named Gauri Govil was walking on the bridge with her four-year-old brother and their parents. Somehow she slipped through a nine-and-a-half-inch gap between the curb and the roadway, falling to her death. Carney Campion, general manager of the bridge then, called it “the fluke accident of all time.” Even so, the Bridge District paid $1.46 million to the Govil family. In addition, funds were found to close the gap immediately, despite the fact that the likelihood of a tragedy like that ever happening again was remote. It was a matter of will and empathy.

The same will and empathy don't seem to exist when it comes to bridge suicides. If they did, a barrier or net would have been erected years ago, Steel believes. That, or people wouldn't be allowed to walk on the bridge, which is another option. It's not an option that the Bridge District has considered seriously, however, mainly because closing the bridge to pedestrians would be even less popular than a suicide deterrent. The bridge opened with people walking across it, and views from the bridge remain among the area's greatest offerings. The district briefly considered charging people to walk, run, or bike on the bridge, but dismissed the idea. Even a nominal fee would generate much-needed revenue, and in some instances it would be enough to deter a suicidal person. Kevin Hines, one of the few people to survive a bridge jump, spent the last of his money on a bus ride to the bridge. He didn't have money for return fare, and he couldn't have paid a toll to walk on the bridge if it had been in place.

“I suggested to the Bridge District that they charge people $1 to cross,” says Patrick Hines, Kevin's father, who along with his son was interviewed in
The Bridge.
“They told me I was crazy. The Bike Coalition opposed it; they said it would be inconvenient for bicyclists.” The response disgusts him. How inconvenient is it to pay a nominal fee to ride across the most famous bridge in the world? Resigned, Hines says,

Fine. Don't charge them. Just charge people on the east side [the side with the pedestrian walkway]. Let people on the west side [the bicycle path] cross free. Almost all the deaths occur from the east side anyway. It would decrease the Bridge District's deficit and stop many of the deaths. My son had no money when he got to the bridge. If he had had to pay, he couldn't have gotten to a place to jump. But the Bridge District refuses to do it. They don't want to admit that one person jumps every ten days. They think it [suicides from the bridge] will just go away, and it might have except for Eric Steel's courage. What he showed on film is something that Golden Gate Bridge authorities have denied since day one.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the only bridge in California with its own board and staff. All other bridges come under the authority of Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation. In contrast, the Golden Gate Bridge District is an independent entity. According to its Web site, the Bridge District's mission is “to provide safe and reliable operation, maintenance, and enhancement of the Golden Gate Bridge.” One might think that such prominent reference to safety would include making the bridge safe for all, but that's not the case. For over seventy years, Bridge District board members have repeatedly voted against erecting any kind of suicide deterrent on the bridge.

There are nineteen board members, nine representing the city and county of San Francisco, four representing Marin County, three representing Sonoma County, and one each representing the counties of Napa, Mendocino, and Del Norte. Various entities, ranging from the mayor of San Francisco to county boards of supervisors, have the authority to elect or appoint individual Bridge District board members; however, the board as a whole is autonomous.

The current president of the board is Janet Reilly, who owns a restaurant with her husband (formerly she was a public relations manager and TV reporter). The first vice president, James Eddie, manages a family ranch. The second vice president, Dick Grosboll, is an attorney. The two most recent past presidents have been Al Boro, a retired phone company executive, and John Moylan, a retired union plasterer. Similarly, the occupations of the other fourteen board members have little if any connection to transportation, yet their opinions and decisions determine everything that happens on America's greatest bridge.

Board members are appointed to two-year terms, and aren't subjected to term limits. Four current members have been on the board fifteen years or more; one former board member served forty years. Collectively, they oversee the work of 825 employees, including two hundred who are devoted to the bridge itself. The latter include toll takers, tow truck operators, painters, ironworkers, electricians, engineers, communication technicians, and grounds crews, in addition to administrative employees.

Celia Kupersmith was the Bridge District's chief executive officer and general manager for ten years, starting in 1999 (she resigned from the $260,000 position in September 2010 to accept a job in Seattle). According to her, Eric Steel's movie missed the point. Rather than focusing on those who die, who “get ideas” (in Kupersmith's words) when Golden Gate Bridge suicides become public, Steel should have focused on the lives the Bridge District saves by having trained personnel keep a vigilant watch. In 2006, Kupersmith told ABC News,

So far this year, we've talked back 65 percent of all of the suicide candidates that have arrived here at the bridge to do some sort of harm to themselves. We do that by training not only what you might consider your typical first responders, meaning your police officers, but we also train our ironworkers, our painters, our service operators—literally anyone whose job requires them to be out on the Golden Gate Bridge on a regular basis.

If one wanted to reduce illegal drug use, send the most virulent forms of cancer into remission, or rehabilitate hardened criminals, a 65 percent success rate would be laudable. It would be a sign of progress. But to say that two-thirds of all suicide attempts on the Golden Gate Bridge are thwarted doesn't seem like anything to brag about when it means that one-third of the people—twenty-five to thirty-five per year—are dying.

I asked Mary Currie, the Bridge District's public affairs director since 1992, if her opinion of
The Bridge
had changed in any way since it first aired five years. She had attended the opening and said, “I'm not critical of the film. We're not content cops.” She said that the movie “did a good job showing the reaction of family members to someone who's suicidal.” At the same time, “It was a shock and a surprise,” and Steel was wrong to misrepresent his intentions in getting a permit. It undermined his credibility, she believes. I make the point that if he hadn't misled people, his permit wouldn't have been approved. This is said in the Bridge District's offices, in a meeting with Currie, Denis Mulligan (the former chief engineer who succeeded Celia Kupersmith as general manager), Bridge Manager Kary Witt, and Lisa Locati, the captain of bridge security. No one denies it.

I asked the other three if they'd seen the movie. Mulligan had, but Witt and Locati had not. Witt stated, “I haven't seen it, and I won't see it. To me, it's reprehensible and sick to see actual people dying.” Locati agreed.

“Yet you watch real people jump from the bridge on videotape,” I commented.

“That's our job,” Witt said, “and we don't watch jumps very often—at least I don't. We don't do it for pleasure.”

I was tempted to tell Witt that people who watch documentaries like
The Bridge
don't do it to be entertained; they do it to be informed. Being informed, however, hasn't been a high priority of Bridge District officials, at least where suicide is concerned.

As staff, Mulligan and, to a lesser extent, Witt and Currie report to the Bridge District board of directors. Board members set policies and provide general oversight while staff are responsible for day-to-day operations.

Depending on the source, the Golden Gate Bridge District tends to be depicted in two ways by the media and the public. On one hand it's portrayed as a regional powerhouse, beholden to no one, that manages a transit empire. In
Paying the Toll
, Louise Nelson Dyble chronicles decades of power brokering, secret deals, and mismanagement by district officials. Several local legislators, most notably Willie Brown when he was speaker of the California State Assembly, have introduced bills designed to dismantle the district and transfer responsibility for the bridge to Caltrans. So far, Bridge District officials have been able to fend off reforms.

On the other hand, the Bridge District is portrayed as something of a boutique agency with no equal to it in the state. The district manages one bridge, the buses that travel across it, and the ferryboats that traverse underneath it. Of the three functions, the bridge is far and away the top priority. It's the reason why people serve on the board; after all, there's no special distinction managing buses or ferries. There is status in being among a select group of people who manage a national monument—a group, incidentally, that's even smaller than the number of people who have survived a Golden Gate Bridge jump. The monetary rewards are minimal; board members attend twice-a-month meetings and are paid $50 per meeting day up to a maximum of $5,000, or $7,500 for the board president, who's an ex-officio member of all board committees. The prestige, however, is undeniable. After all, there's only one Golden Gate Bridge.

Current general manager Denis Mulligan equates the Bridge District to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART), while board members tend to liken their role to guardians of an international treasure. They have sympathy for the families and friends of jumpers, but they believe there are larger interests to consider. First and foremost are the millions of tourists who come to San Francisco every year. Should their views and photographs be marred by a suicide barrier? Second are the thousands of commuters who cross the bridge every day. Their tolls help pay for the bridge's maintenance. Should what they see be affected by higher railings or a net? Third are all of the joggers and bicyclists who use the bridge. Marathons are run across it, and an estimated six thousand bikers peddle over it daily.
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Fourth is everyone whose home or office looks out on the bridge. Each has paid dearly for the privilege. Should what they see be altered (albeit minimally) because a few people need psychiatric care? Last are other residents of the area for whom the Golden Gate Bridge isn't an everyday sight but, nevertheless, is a source of pride. Should they be reminded by the addition of a suicide barrier that there are people who want to kill themselves?