District Attorney

Editorial: Mayor Lee: Ease off Mirkarimi and help stop the foreclosure crisis

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And so the downtown gang (Willie Brown/Rose Pak, PG&E, the Chamber, the big developers et al) used Ed Lee to outmaneuver the progressives and roll Lee into the job of “interim mayor” on condition Lee not run for mayor.  Then Lee kept lying for months about his intentions and saying over and over that he would not run for mayor–until the downtown gang convinced him to run as a way to further damage the progressives. And now, according to news reports, Mayor Lee is poised to file misconduct charges against Mirkarimi for his gulty plea of false imprisonment in the Mirkarimi domestic violence case.

This could lead to an explosive and polarizing scenario where the Board of Supervvisors, in an election year, would be asked to remove Mirkarimi, a former fellow supervisor and political ally, as sheriff or side with him on what has turned out to become a toxic political issue. This would affect at minimum Mar, Avalos, Campos, and Olague in the supervisors’ races and Mar, Avalos, and Campos in the upcoming Democratic County Central Committee race. It would also affect any candidate in any race that said a nice word about Mirkarimi.  If anybody thinks the mayor and the downtown gang would be unhappy with this prospect, think again. I recommend that Lee hold off on Mirkarimi, and work to uphold his position as a “unifier,” and not become a polarizer and promoter of media and City Hall circuses. Instead of taking on Mirkarimi and the progressives, he should concentrate on such important and timely issues as helping stop the foreclosure process on the thousands of homes facing foreclosure in San Francisco. More: he should go after the big foreclosure banks, starting with the Bank of America and its multi-million dollar short term cash account with the city, and  Wells Fargo, with its national headquarters here in town.b3

More than 1,000 homes in San Francisco are either in foreclosure or at the start of the process. Some 16,000 homeowners are underwater, and as many as 12,000 may face foreclosure in the next 12 months. A report by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment shows that the city could lose $115 million from the reduced property taxes and the costs of carrying out evictions.

That’s a crisis — and while the mayor has no direct control over home foreclosures, he ought to be speaking out and joining the protesters who are fighting this cascade of often-fraudulent bank actions.

The problems are legion: An audit released in February by Assessor Phil Ting shows that more than 80 percent of the foreclosure notices filed in San Francisco contain at least one legal irregularity, and many contain multiple. Banks back-date documents, use faulty information, and in some cases clearly and directly break the law when they move to seize property — often because of bad-faith loans that were more the fault of the banks than the homeowners.

A group from Occupy Bernal, the well-organized, sophisticated operation that’s been intervening in foreclosures and evictions in the Southeast neighborhoods, visited us recently, and the stories we heard were alarming. Some told of bankers who promised to make loan modifications — then went ahead with foreclosure anyway. Some people spend weeks just trying to figure out who actually owns the mortgage — and while the financial institutions are ducking calls and hiding from responsibility, they’re moving forward to toss people out of their homes.

ACCE and Occupy Bernal have had some successes — they slowed down foreclosure actions, forced banks to come to the table and in some cases saved homes. But the activists are up against big corporations and big numbers — too many homes on the block, too many financial institutions, and not enough people and money.

The Ting report showed enough violations of law that we’ve already urged the city attorney and the district attorney to start taking action.

But we’ve heard little beyond silence from the office of Mayor Ed Lee.

Lee’s the city’s chief executive, the person who has to handle the financial fallout of the foreclosure crisis as well as the human impacts — families evicted from their homes have a high chance of winding up on the streets, putting additional pressure on already-stressed social services.

Besides, this is a tragedy — and a lot of the problem is simply unaccountable, unreachable financial institutions. If Occupy Bernal and ACCE, through volunteer organizing and community pressure, can prevent a fair number of evictions, think of what the mayor of San Francisco could do — just by speaking out.

Lee ought to show up at some of the Occupy Bernal actions, but that may be too much to ask. But it’s not too much to suggest that he publicly support the foreclosure fighters and call on the banks to work with local homeowners.

The city keeps its multibillion-dollar short-term cash accounts in institutions like Bank of America, which is responsible for more than 10 percent of all foreclosures in the city. Wells Fargo, with its headquarters right here in town, is responsible for 22 percent of the local foreclosures. Lee ought to let the banks know the city won’t keep doing business with bad actors.

With a little visibility, the mayor could help save hundreds, maybe thousands of families from facing homelessness. This crisis calls for leadership; where’s the mayor?

Mirkarimi sentenced, absent drama

Zelda Bronstein
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Mirkarimi sentenced, absent drama

The drama that hordes of reporters were waiting for didn’t happen. District Attorney George Gascon’s threat to “bring up” at Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s sentencing the notion that Mirkarimi didn’t really think he was guilty vanished. Mirkarimi sat in front of Judge James Collins, who years ago helped a sitting judge duck a domestic violence charge, and agreed to the terms of his sentence (three years probation, mandatory attendance at a 52-week DV counseling program and some modest fines). Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Aguilar-Tarchi said she had nothing to add; neither did Mirkarimi’s lawyer, Lidia Stiglich. And that was that — as far as the courtroom went.

Outside, Mirkarimi faced the expected scrum of cameras and microphones, and read a prepared statement that sounded as if the district attorney had insisted on it. “I deeply and humbly apologize for my behavior,” he said. “There are no excuses and I accept full responsibility.” He said he had started counseling “to remedy my arrogance and anger issues” and apologized for saying earlier that the incident was “a private family matter.”

And he gave no signs of being ready to step down, saying he would “work so much harder to regain your trust … to be a better public servant.”

An hour or so later, Gascon faced the same press crew and announced that he had treated this case “just like any other domestic violence incident.” He denied that there was any political motivation; in fact, he denied it twice. He never made exactly clear why he had decided not to intervene after all at the sentencing hearing, except to say that Mirkarimi’s statements after receiving his sentence were satisfactory (see above).

He said he’s a “strong believer in redemption and restorative justice” and said this deal would “offer [Mirkarimi] an opportunity to redeem himself.”

Which, of course, led to the question of the day: Did Gascon think Mirkarimi could, or should, hold onto his job? Phil Matier from the Chron asked it directly, and Gascon refused to answer, saying “it’s not my place” to say. I tried again a few minutes later, asking if, given Gascon’s belief in redemption, there was any possibility that the sheriff could sufficiently redeem himself to remain in his elected position. Again: “It’s not my place to say.”

It was, however, what everyone was talking about. Matier and Ross reported that Mayor Ed Lee was huddling with lawyers to try to figure out whether he has legal grounds to begin the process of removing Mirkarimi from office. It’s tricky, and has only happened twice in the last 100 years, once in the 1930s, when a public defender was involved in a murder-for-hire case, and again in the 1970s, when an airport commissioner who was also a union official was charged with favoring union workers.

One obstacle, according to Matier and Ross: The D.A.’s Office won’t give Lee the video that was at the heart of this case. Gascon confirmed that, saying the video was considered internal work product and wouldn’t be released to anyone.

The law on removing a sitting elected official in San Francisco is murky and confusing, with little precedent. Does a guilty plea to false imprisonment of his wife equal “official misconduct?” Can an incident that took place before Mirkarimi became sheriff count as misconduct in the office he assumed later?Would the supervisors hold a public trial? What rules of evidence would apply?

The politics are murky, too: If Lee files charges, he’ll be tossing the matter to the Board of Supervisors in an election year, which the supes will hate and it will be a blow to the concept of civility that the mayor tries so hard to promote. If he doesn’t, then in the unilkely event that Mirkarimi does anything else bad, critics will blame the mayor for not acting.

So this isn’t over yet.

Meanwhile, the award for the most inappropropriate question at the Gascon news conference goes to the San Jose Mercury news reporter who, after much discussion about whether Mirkarimi could carry a weapon again and when the stay-away order would be lifted, asked (I kid you not):

“Which should he get back first — his gun or his wife?”

 

 

Jeff Adachi on Gascon and Mirkarimi

Zelda Bronstein
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Jeff Adachi on Gascon and Mirkarimi

Jeff Adachi, the public defender, who has been trying criminal cases for a quarter century, had some interesting comments on District Attorney George Gascon’s latest move:

Ross has already pled guilty and so he’s already accepted the plea bargain.  In order to enter a plea, you have to waive your constitutional rights and the judge has to be satisfied you are voluntarily and intelligently entering a plea of guilty. In the 25 years I’ve been practicing law, I’ve never seen a DA ask a person who already pled guilty to a plea bargain, “Are you really, really sure you are guilty?” so it would be highly unusual for a prosecutor to do so, and even more unusual for the elected DA to do so in a misdemeanor case.

Which is pretty much my point: This is very odd behavior for the DA. I don’t get it.

Gascon and the Mirkarimi plea deal

Zelda Bronstein
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Gascon and the Mirkarimi plea deal

The Mirkarimi case has taken another strange turn: The district attorney, George Gascon, just told the Chronicle that he doesn’t think the sheriff really thinks he’s guilty, and wants to raise that at his sentencing March 19.

I find this pretty unusual and remarkable. Whatever you think of the Mirkarimi case (and there are plenty of different opinions), the guy pled guilty to a fairly serious crime — and Gascon’s staff negotiated the plea deal with Mirkarimi’s lawyers. Why is he talking about messing around with the situation at this point?

Well, according to the Chron, Gascon was responding to a Matier and Ross column in which the sheriff acknowledged that he owes some hefty legal bills and that the cost of defending himself, and the cost to his family, was a factor in his guilty plea. Gascon is taking that as a sign that Mirkarimi maybe still thinks he’s innocent:

“There is a guilty plea here and I know there’s almost an attempt (by Mirkarimi) to deny that this has occurred: ‘I didn’t really do this. I’m being forced to do this.’ That’s very concerning to me, to be very honest with you,” Gascón said in a meeting with The Chronicle editorial board.

That’s a fair amount of extrapolation — Mirkarimi never told Matier and Ross that he’s innocent, although (like most criminal defendants) he maintained that position all the way up to the plea bargain. That’s what happens in a court case; the accused pleads not guilty, says he or she will fight the charges, proclaims innocence — and then, in the vast majority of the cases in the U.S. criminal justice system, eventually cops a plea.

Why? There are lots of reasons. The  New York Times had a fascinating piece on this March 10. You might think you’re innocent, but won’t get a fair trial. You might be innocent, but fear that you can’t prove it and you don’t want to take the risk of the harsh sentence you might get if you lose. You might just decide that it’s better to accept some degree of punishment instead of dragging the case out. You might really be guilty, but not in the way the original charges read. You might be guilty as hell; you just said you were innocent because you were waiting for a good plea deal. This is how the criminal justice system works in the United States.

I called Gascon to talk about this, and he started off by saying, as he did in the meeting with the Chron ed board, that “we’re not accustomed to accepting a guilty plea from someone who isn’t guilty.” If that’s really the case, then he’s the only district attorney in the country with that policy. When we talked a bit further, he made the point that domestic violence is a special case: “When the defendant goes through counseling, they have to admit responsibility,” he said. “I want to make sure he understands what a guilty plea is and what it means.” Which is valid — I agree that step one in any sort of anger-management or DV program is taking responsibility for your actions. But didn’t this all come up when Gascon’s staff first cut the deal? Isn’t it a little late now to have second thoughts?

Mirkarimi has already agreed to go to counseling and take a domestic violence class. I talked to his lawyer, Lidia Stiglich, and she told me that she was “at a little bit of a loss. The sheriff accepted responsibility. We have a plea agreement and a disposition, and I don’t see any legal reason why it wouldn’t go forward as proposed.”

I agree, and have said in public many times, that Mirkarimi has to take responsibility for his actions, has to tell the public what really happened that day, and, like any other defendant who enters domestic violence counseling, admit that he’s done something wrong and that it wasn’t at all OK or excusable. That’s all part of the package.

I just don’t get what the district attorney is up to.

 

 

 

 

 

Domestic violence is not a private matter

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL The legal case against Sheriff Ross Mirkarmi has been essentially settled, with the sheriff pleading guilty to false imprisonment and avoiding a trial on domestic violence charges, but the political case is just beginning.

Already, there are calls for Mirkarimi to step down. And Mayor Ed Lee announced March 12 that he’s Mirkarimi’s plea to “a very serious charge that had introduce a new set of legal issues” merits a thorough review.

That could lead to an explosive scenario where the Board of Supervisors, in an election year, would have to vote on whether to remove a sheriff who many of the supervisors have worked with and supported over allegations that are in effect political poison. Anyone who wasn’t ready to throw the sheriff out of office could be accused of coddling a wife-beater.

Mirkarimi’s friends and allies say the sheriff didn’t want to plead guilty to anything. But the questionnaires that potential jurors had filled out showed that virtually everyone who might sit in judgment had read the sensational media coverage of the case, and Judge Garrett Wong had refused to move the trial elsewhere. The judge also rejected every significant motion Mirkarimi’s attorney, Lidia Stiglich, made, and allowed into evidence material that the sheriff’s team didn’t think should be admissible. So the situation looked bleak, and Mirkarimi took a deal.

Mirkarimi maintains his innocence, and says he has no intention of stepping down. He agreed to plead guilty to a crime that had very little to do with what happened New Year’s Eve, when the District Attorney’s Office said he got into a physical altercation with his wife that left her with a bruise on her arm. False imprisonment was never one of the original charges; as is often the case in criminal cases, both sides accepted a less-serious charge in the name of getting the deal done.

Why Mayor Lee sees that as “a new set of legal issues” is baffling; the issues are exactly the same as they were before the plea bargain. None of this is to say that the original charges, backed up by well-publicized (although never fully examined in court) evidence, aren’t serious. Domestic violence, as we’ve said repeatedly, is not a private matter, is not a minor crime, and has far too often been ignored by the courts, police, and prosecutors, sometimes with deadly consequences.

But the way this could play out will open Lee to charges of political opportunism. The mayor would need to charge Mirkarimi with “official misconduct,” which is defined in the City Charter:

“Official misconduct means any wrongful behavior by a public officer in relation to the duties of his or her office, willful in its character, including any failure, refusal or neglect of an officer to perform any duty enjoined on him or her by law, or conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers and including any violation of a specific conflict of interest or governmental ethics law.”

Other than the “standard of decency” statute, which is pretty vague, there’s not much in there for Lee to go on. Unless you say that because Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to a crime with “imprisonment” in the name he’s somehow a threat to the inmates at the county jail, which is a huge stretch, it’s hard to call this “official misconduct.” (There is, on the other hand, the argument that Mirkarimi will be on probation, and thus part of the criminal justice system he oversees, and that it’s an inherent conflict of interest. That, however, would mean any sheriff who was on probation for anything would be ineligible to serve, which again is a stretch.)

If the mayor files official misconduct charges, and the Ethics Commission, by a supermajority, agrees, then the Board of Supervisors would serve in effect as a trial body, much as the U.S. Senate does in an impeachment case. Nine of the 11 supervisors would have to vote to permanently remove the sheriff from office.

If Lee takes that path, he’ll be setting in motion a political process that was designed in the Charter for highly unusual situations and has only been used once in the past 40 years. (And in that case, involving Airport Commission member Joe Mazzola, a court later ruled that the charges, involving his role in plumbers’ strike, didn’t rise to the standard of official misconduct.) You have to ask: Is this case, and this misdemeanor charge, worthy of the exercise of what is, by any standard, an extraordinary power vested in the city’s chief executive? Is it worth the political circus that would result from a trial by the supervisors (some of whom might well be asked to recuse themselves because of their prior relationships with Mirkarimi, making it almost impossible to reach the magic number of nine anyway)?

If the voters of San Francisco think the sheriff needs to go, there’s the right of recall — and it will be available the first week in July, when Mirkarimi will have served six months. If there’s not enough organized opposition to make that happen, he’ll be facing the electorate again in three years (and trust us, he will be opposed and every details of these charges will be part of the campaign). He’s going to pay for this far beyond his court-ordered probation and fine.

Whatever the plea deal, Mirkarimi was clearly involved in a bad conflict with his wife that turned physical. Unless the evidence we’ve seen so far is completely misleading, it’s clear that he left her with a bruise — and that he was at the very least nasty and more likely emotionally abusive to her. Now that the legal case is over, he needs to come clean and tell the public exactly what happened that day, at which point we can all decide if we believe him, if he’s shown that he’s changed, and if the public is willing to give him a chance at redemption.

But Lee should think very seriously before he escalates this by filing misconduct charges. Since the ones who have the most to lose from that are the progressives on the board who are often Lee’s foes, it will have the stench of political maneuvering — and at this point, nobody needs that. The mayor says he’s a unifier; this would be the most divisive thing he could do.

Why Mirkarimi pled guilty

Zelda Bronstein
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Why Mirkarimi pled guilty

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi didn’t want to cop a plea. He knew the damage it  would cause to his political career and he was prepared to fight the charges. But when it became clear that he was losing every single motion around the admissibility of evidence, even when he and his attorney, Lidia Stiglich, were convinced they were right on the merits — and when it was clear from juror surveys that virtually everyone in town had read the salacious press accounts and it was impossible to find a neutral jury, he decided he had no choice.

That’s what people close to the sheriff told me shortly after Mirkarimi unexpectedly agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment. It may seem an odd plea for a sheriff, but it was a way to get rid of the more serious charges. A domestic violence conviction would seriously interfere with Mirkarimi’s job — among other things, nobody with a DV rap can possess a gun — not that the sheriff of San Francisco needs to carry a gun, but in the law-enforcement world, domestic violence is (properly) taken very seriously.

The calls for the sheriff to resign have already started. An informal sfgate poll on the subject is already posted.

I talked to Mirkarimi shortly after he appeared in court, and he told me he has no plans to step down. “I wanted to resolve this matter and move forward with the important work of the department. And I terribly miss my family and I want to be re-united.”

That’s going to be tough — someone will probably try to mount a recall effort and every single detail that has come out so far in the news media will be repeated if and when he runs for re-election in three years. In politics, that’s a long time away — but these kinds of charges never disappear.

People close to the sheriff told me that that Mirkarimi was concerned that he couldn’t find a jury that hadn’t already convicted him in their minds. “The questionnaires were very clear,” one ally said. “Nearly everyone had read the newspapers and already had some kind of a negative opinion.”

Among other things, his friends said, Mirkarimi was concerned that  a former girlfriend, Christina Marie Flores, would be allowed to testify against him — despite what his team considered serious questions about her credibility.

Flores used to be my next-door neighbor and I’ve always been friendly with her. I was on her TV show once. But the news media accounts have essentially ignored a detail that was in one of Mirkarimi’s defense motions:  After they broke up, Flores sent Mirkarimi a hate poem in which she not-terribly subtly threatened to damage his political career.

I’m not going to quote all of the emails cited in the brief (breakup+email=bad news); suffice to say that until December, 2008, Flores was clearly in love with Mirkarimi and sending him passionate notes asking him to reconsider what was obviously a move by Mirkarimi to end the relationship. (And yeah, there were nude pictures that Mirkarimi was supposed to “enjoy when you miss me.” Gak.)

On Jan 2, 2009, the brief states, “having understood that the relationship with Mirkarimi was over, Flores sent Mirkarimi a lengthy hate poem. In startling contrast to her prior e-mails to Mirkarimi, Flores now called Mirkarami `the worst type of waste of air’ and said that there ‘are smarter and more handsome men BY FAR.’

“Flores ended the poem with the following:

So as 2009 rolls in and you roll out
I remember what my life was all about
Surrounded by so many of my friends
I am rich and happy with how my story ends

Except one thing.

I have never had the distinct pleasure
Of meeting such an idiot of such great measure
That freely let me know of things
That could unwind plans of what his political future brings

Yes, I do know those, some of whom you hate.
Who could have a say in your fate
And long friendships with some that you despise
That after the fact have opened my eyes.

What to do with the ball in my court …
Let us see what happens.”

Don’t know who “some of whom you hate” means, but Mirkarimi has had a contentious relationship the San Francisco Police Department. Flores is the daughter of a police officer and the ex-wife of another officer, who happens to be a domestic violence inspector.

Three years after that poem was written, when she heard about the DV allegations against Mirkarimi, she filed a police report alleging similar behavior. She also talked to two newspapers, the Chronicle and SF Weekly.

In her statement to the district attorney’s office, the brief states, “Flores conceded that she wanted to go public for personal reasons: ‘He said that that woman from Venuzuela (Lopez) knew about our relationship and it didn’t matter to her … which I think is a lie. And that’s probably why I’m here because I don’t think she knew.’”

Doesn’t mean that anything she claims about Mirkarimi was untrue. A woman who is mad at her ex-boyfriend for whatever still has every right to complain about domestic violence, even later; if she was physically abused, then what happened at other points in the relationship doesn’t change anything.
But it’s interesting that the daily papers, which reported freely on the prosecution’s side of this story, haven’t mentioned the equally fascinating (and tawdry) allegations in the defense brief.

It’s the kind of thing that, Mirkarimi’s allies say, made it hard to find a fair jury.

Judges these days go out of their way not to exclude evidence in DV cases, and the fact that this was such a high-profile political case made that even more dramatic. Ruling that the videotape of Mirkarimi’s wife crying and showing a bruise and the testimony of an ex-girlfriend who said he abused her inadmissible would most likely have forced the district attorney to drop the charges. Very few judges would want to take that risk.

So now Mirkarimi has to deal with the fallout, and it raises the question: Can the progressive community accept and once again support a sheriff who has all of this baggage? Is there anything Mirkarimi can do to convince his allies and the voters that either (a) the charges were overblown or (b) he’s learned from this, is going into counseling, is a changed person, and can seek political redemption?

The city forgave Gavin Newsom when he had sex with his close friend’s wife (after he allegedly went into treatment for alcohol abuse) and forgave Willie Brown when he impregnated a campaign fundraiser (because nobody cares about that sort of thing these days), but domestic violence is a very different deal. As it should be.

Any yet, some people are clearly willing to give him a chance. Alix Rosenthal, a longtime leader on women’s issues who supported Mirkarimi for sheriff, told me that she doesn’t think he should step down.

“I think this whole thing has been blown way out of proportion,” she said.

Mirkarimi, she noted, needs to publicly go into counseling with his wife (which he can’t do until the stay-away order is lifted — seriously, right now he can’t even go to counseling with his wife) and he needs to make it clear that he’s addressing anger-management issues. But she thinks he can still play a role in the progressive community.

There will be other progressives who disagree, and Mirkarimi will have to win them over. And all the while, the supporters of Chris Cunnie, the former Police Officers Association president who lost to Mirkarimi in the fall, aren’t going to let this go away quietly.

UPDATE: The Chron is already calling on Mayor Ed Lee to “investigate” the sheriff for misconduct. Investigate? As if there’s anything that hasn’t already become public? The real message is that the Chron wants Lee to try to get rid of Mirkarimi. And so it begins.

Bayview man who filmed cops convicted

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Bayview man who filmed cops convicted

In a case that has gained notoriety in San Francsico, Debray Carpenter, also known as Fly Benzo, was convicted Feb. 22 of two misdemeanors.

Benzo was filming the police with his cell phone camera at the time of his arrest. Videos of his arrest are available online.

Video evidence

Benzo was arrested at an Oct. 18 rally. During that incident, police officers John Norment and Joshua Fry of the Bayview precinct apparently unplugged a boombox that they said was not authorized in a street outlet. Then, when officers began videotaping Benzo, he took out his camera phone and began videotaping them as well. Witnesses report that police told Benzo to get the camera “out of my face.”

According to transcripts of three videos of the incident, police told Benzo “back up” and “don’t put your hand in my face.” Benzo claimed his right to stand “where I want to stand” and to film the police. Other individuals near him at the time objected to police orders for Benzo to “stand back,” saying, “he didn’t even touch you though” and asserting that Benzo had done nothing wrong.

After a minute or so of back and forth, Officer Fry stated “Don’t put your hand – You know what? Put your hands behind your back.” At that point, the video shows four officers converging to detain Benzo and knocking him to the ground.

The assault in question occured after Benzo was detained.

“[Benzo] was moving himself from side to side. He didn’t want to get knocked to the ground. During that incident, Officer Fry scraped his elbow and that’s the alleged assault,” said Severa Keith, Benzo’s attorney.

The jury convicted Benzo of misdemeanor assault rather than felony, citing insuffient evidence that Officer Norment had suffered a concussion after the incident.

Trial by jury

Benzo’s trial concluded Feb. 22. The jury found Benzo not guilty of felony assault of a police officer, but did convict him of three misdemeanors. Benzo was convicted of “resisting, obstructing or delaying a peace officer in his or her lawful duties” (California Penal Code Section 148 A1) and misdemeanor assault committed against a peace officer (Section 241 C).

Assistand District Attorney Omid Talai emphasized that  “Benzo was convicted by a jury of his peers.” The jury spent four days deliberating the case.

“The jury obviously took this very seriously and went through each element of the defense. They said they’d watched the videos numerous times,” said Talai.

But some supporters have raised doubts about the jury, partly because there were no African American jurors.

“He did not get indicted by a group of his peers,” said Tracey, a comrade of Benzo’s from the Black Star Liner Coalition. The Coalition is a CCSF student club aimed at improving the relationship between the college and its surrounding community.

Benzo has said that he was consistently harassed by police, including Norment and Fry, for several months prior to the incident.

Keith says she had several witnesses ready to testify to this harassment at the trial.

“These officers would sometimes flip him off, there were a couple of officers who would go by him and hold up the black power fist in a mocking way. There was testimony of how these officers had threatened him,” said Keith.

However, prosecutors successfully exluded all evidence concerning previous incidents between Benzo, Norment and Fry with a pre-trial motion

According to Keith, “We had a really good and very thoughtful jury. But they were not given the chance to understand all the aspects of what happened that day.”

She added that jurors were permitted to write questions to ask witnesses, and several jurors used this tool to attempt to ask about previous incidents between the officers and the defendent in order to better understand the motives of all parties. These questions were not answered due to the pre-trial motion.

“A lot of middle class people hear stories about the way that people in poor black neighborhoods experience the police, even on a day to day basis when nothing out of the ordinary had occured, and they don’t believe it because it’s so different form their experiences. Or they don’t want to believe it because they don’t want to believe that people get treated that way, or that police act that way,” said Kieth.

Troubled history
Benzo is known for speaking out against issues of police harassment in the Bayview, including the killing of Kenneth Harding. Harding, 19, was shot by police in August 2011. Harding was leaving a T train when police asked to see his transfer, a two-dollar value. Harding presumably panicked and ran away from the police. Officers shot at him as he ran. Police have claimed that Harding produced a gun and, while running, shot behind himself at police, and that it was his own bullet that killed him.

Police then approached and surrounded the fallen Harding and prevented others from approaching him. After 30 minutes, the young man had bled to death. A video of his death has since circulated widely on youtube.

Harding’s death sparked an upsurge in the continued outrage over police violence and racist disparities in law enforcement tactics.

Many of Benzo’s supporters feel that his convictions impinge on first amendment rights, and feel that the convictions are unjust.

But Benzo, a CCSF student and musician, is also trying to spend time taking care of his life responsibilities.

“[Benzo] is a college student. He’s doing what he needs to do, and going to school,” explained Tracey.

Benzo is scheduled for sentencing April 20, to be decided by Judge Jerome Benson. Each misdemeanor could carry a year in county jail.

Kieth is considering appealing the verdict.

The mortage crimes

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL The mortgage crisis in San Francisco isn’t just devastating to homeowners and to the southeast neighborhoods where foreclosures are most common — it’s clear evidence that lenders and their affiliates are and have been acting illegally. This city ought to be taking the lead on pressing civil and criminal charges against the mortgage outfits.

City Assessor Phil Ting commissioned a report in February that showed that nearly every one of 382 foreclosures actions in the city between January 2009 and October 2011 had at least some irregularities. In more than 80 percent of the cases, the report identified direct violations of law.

It’s a stunning revelation: In nearly 100 percent of the cases studied, the mortgage companies did something wrong. Homeowners were not notified that they were in default. Properties were seized and sold by companies that didn’t have the proper title to them. Documents were backdated or signed by an entity that didn’t have the authority to sign. In some cases, it wasn’t clear who actually owned the mortgage, because the corporation that filed for foreclosure had never property taken title to the loan.

The report comes as Occupy protesters in San Francisco are moving aggressively to target banks that are tossing people out of their homes and at a time when county sheriffs in other parts of the country are refusing to execute foreclosure orders.

There may not be much San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi can do — mortgage foreclosures in California can be done with almost no oversight and by the time the sheriff is called in there’s nothing left but an eviction. But the report makes clear that there were both violations of business regulations and crimes, in some cases felony crimes — and the San Francisco city attorney and district attorney should be moving as quickly as possible to take legal action.

Both City Attorney Dennis Herrera and District Attorney George Gascon have asked for more material from Ting’s office, although neither has announced a formal investigation. But every day that this goes on, more people lose their homes and more crimes are committed — and both offices should move as quickly as possible to take action.

There’s nothing in the federal settlement over fraudulent mortgage activity that prevents local officials from taking this sort of action. There’s nothing preventing Herrera from seeking an injunction against further foreclosures or preventing Gascon from indicting the lenders and their executives.

Meanwhile, Ting told us that he’s asking Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate, because the pattern of violations almost certainly goes beyond San Francisco.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has introduced a bill that would mandate transparency in foreclosures, so at least homeowners would know who to contact to seek a modification. That’s a good start. But holding these sleazy operators accountable would send a message that San Francisco isn’t going to let this sort of behavior continue.

Save our homes

Andrew Lam
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Save our homes

yael@sfbg.com


This story has been edited


Bay Area activists, fueled in part by the Occupy movement, have recently taken stands against police brutality, for the rights of the homeless, against the corporate power of banks, and much more. But, arguably, nowhere has the movement been more successful than in the fight against foreclosures and evictions.


With the support of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and the Bayview Foreclosure Fighters, several Bayview residents whose homes had already been sold continue to occupy them, and in some cases sales have been rescinded. Occupy Bernal has used civil disobedience to postpone six housing auctions, keeping their neighbors in their homes that much longer. They secured a meeting with Diana Stauffer, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage senior vice president, and David Campos, District 9 supervisor, to delay foreclosure proceedings.


But the activists are pushing for a full moratorium on foreclosures and evictions in San Francisco. Such a moratorium is not without precedent. In recent years, sheriffs have stopped evictions and foreclosures in Wayne Country, Michigan; Cook County, Illinois; Butler County, Ohio; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.


When Cook County Sheriff John Dart imposed his moratorium in 2010, he said, “I can’t possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can’t say for sure everything was done properly. I need some kind of assurance that we aren’t evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks.”


San Francisco seems ripe for a similar stance, as Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting recently released a report revealing widespread lawbreaking in foreclosure proceedings. The report found that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud.


Representatives from the District Attorney’s and the City Attorney’s offices told the Guardian that they are concerned about the report. These bodies may be starting the process of further investigating findings. Last week, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whose office carries out the county’s evictions, said he has begun an initiative to collect and analyze the city’s foreclosure data.


But Mirkarimi’s hands may be tied. As he told Ann Garrison of KPFA radio Feb. 25, “I don’t have the latitude or discretion, much as I would like, because there would need to be a change in state law that empowers municipal sheriffs to be able to use that discretion.”


Occupy Bernal formed just a couple months ago, but it has emerged as a powerful advocate for homeowners facing foreclosure. The neighborhood-based branch of the Occupy movement chose to focus specifically on preventing the evictions of Bernal Heights residents, where over 100 homes face foreclosure.


They kept the pressure up Feb. 25, when a group of supporters convened at 1090 Chestnut Street, the residence of John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo. That bank owns the majority of mortgages on Bernal homes facing foreclosure.


The protest wasn’t meant to block the street and no one tried to enter the building where Stumpf owns three of the 14 floors. But police decided that the group of about 150 warranted blocking off the entire block to traffic, to the annoyance of many neighbors.


“You collected $43.7 billion in taxpayer money and have since made record profits at the expense of low-income communities, while repeatedly breaking your legal and moral obligations as a creditor. You have failed to comply with loan modification requirements under your own lending agreements,” said a blown-up “foreclosure notice” outside Stumpf’s home.


In the spirited street theater scene, activists dressed as an auctioneer and a larger-than-life John Stumpf played out a fake auction of Stumpf’s property.


Dexter Cato, a father of four whose wife was recently killed in a car crash in the midst of months-long loan modification proceedings, faces foreclosure from his Bayview home of 40 years.


“Stumpf, we want a new address for you,” said Archbishop Franzo King of the Western Additions’ John Coltrane church, “850 Bryant Street!”


The crowd then proceeded to chant this address: the San Francisco Hall of Jusice and County Jail.


“We understand that some of our customers are going through difficult times during this economic recovery,” said Jim Foley, president of Wells Fargo’s Greater Bay Area region, in a press release responding to the Feb. 25 protest. The company plans to hold “Home Preservation Workshops” in Richmond March 7 and 8 to help homeowners facing foreclosure.


Public officials may be a long way from locking up CEOs for foreclosure fraud, but some have taken notice of complaints against the banks. On Feb. 2, the Berkeley City Council voted not to extend its contract with Wells Fargo to manage $300 million in city assets, citing its foreclosures on city residents.


On a national level, activists have been successful in persuading people to transfer their money to local banks and credit unions in recent months. Javelin Strategy and Research came out with statistics that 5.6 million Americans have switched bank service providers in the past 90 days, three times the normal transfer rate. Bank Transfer Day in early October was specifically cited as the trigger by 610,000 of those people.


The recent $25 billion settlement between the five largest banks and attorneys general in California and other states over mortgage fraud made big headlines, but activists note that it allocates a measly $2,000 to some people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Occupy Bernal’s Buck Bagot said people need more protection from powerful banks. “Banks suckered people into this stuff, and they have made billions,” Bagot said. “We’re not saying people shouldn’t have to pay off the money they borrowed, but it took two to tango.”

Guardian editorial: SF should go after mortgage criminals

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EDITORIAL The mortgage crisis in San Francisco isn’t just devastating to homeowners and to the southeast neighborhoods where foreclosures are most common — it’s clear evidence that lenders and their affiliates are and have been acting illegally. This city ought to be taking the lead on pressing civil and criminal charges against the mortgage outfits.

City Assessor Phil Ting commissioned a report in February that showed that nearly every one of 382 foreclosures actions in the city between January 2009 and October 2011 had at least some irregularities. In more than 80 percent of the cases, the report identified direct violations of law.

It’s a stunning revelation: In nearly 100 percent of the cases studied, the mortgage companies did something wrong. Homeowners were not notified that they were in default. Properties were seized and sold by companies that didn’t have the proper title to them. Documents were backdated or signed by an entity that didn’t have the authority to sign. In some cases, it wasn’t clear who actually owned the mortgage, because the corporation that filed for foreclosure had never property taken title to the loan.

The report comes as Occupy protesters in San Francisco are moving aggressively to target banks that are tossing people out of their homes and at a time when county sheriffs in other parts of the country are refusing to execute foreclosure orders.

There may not be much San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi can do — mortgage foreclosures in California can be done with almost no oversight and by the time the sheriff is called in there’s nothing left but an eviction. But the report makes clear that there were both violations of business regulations and crimes, in some cases felony crimes — and the San Francisco city attorney and district attorney should be moving as quickly as possible to take legal action.

Both City Attorney Dennis Herrera and District Attorney George Gascon have asked for more material from Ting’s office, although neither has announced a formal investigation. But every day that this goes on, more people lose their homes and more crimes are committed — and both offices should move as quickly as possible to take action.

There’s nothing in the federal settlement over fraudulent mortgage activity that prevents local officials from taking this sort of action. There’s nothing preventing Herrera from seeking an injunction against further foreclosures or preventing Gascon from indicting the lenders and their executives.

Meanwhile, Ting told us that he’s asking Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate, because the pattern of violations almost certainly goes beyond San Francisco.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has introduced a bill that would mandate transparency in foreclosures, so at least homeowners would know who to contact to seek a modification. That’s a good start. But holding these sleazy operators accountable would send a message that San Francisco isn’t going to let this sort of behavior continue.

—

Cole Hardware pleads guilty in SFPUC scam

Sasha Cuttler
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1
Cole Hardware pleads guilty in SFPUC scam

We at the Guardian have long celebrated small businesses as more beneficial to San Francisco than large corporations, which often extract wealth from the community and use it for competitive advantage or political corruption. But a recent criminal case shows that even a beloved local business – in this case, Cole Hardware – can get caught up in shady dealings.

The District Attorney’s Office yesterday announced the settlement of a procurement scam case involving the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and employees of Cole Hardware. The company pled guilty to felony charges and has agreed to pay $51,545 in restitution to the SFPUC and $650 in court fines and fees.

“Our city will not tolerate city vendors who steal taxpayers’ money. We are pleased Cole Hardware has accepted responsibility for their role in this multi-level scheme to defraud the SFPUC,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a public statement.

Court records detail a scam that ran from April 2003 to October 2007 in which Cole Hardware and another city vendor worked with former SFPUC manager Donnie Alan Thomas – who pled guilty to his role in the scheme last year – to submit false invoices to the SFPUC for personal purchases.

Cole Hardware has issued a public statement explaining its role in the case and reasons for accepting the guilty plea: “For more than 50 years, Cole Hardware has stood for integrity, excellence and good citizenship in San Francisco. Unfortunately, a few years ago two trusted 20+ year employees submitted misleading invoices to the City, thereby facilitating a fraud by some of the City’s P.U.C. workers. At the time, Cole Hardware’s ownership was not aware of this misconduct. When we learned the details we terminated both employees, fully cooperated with the District Attorney’s investigation, adopted new internal policies to prevent future misconduct and offered to reimburse the City for any losses attributable to our employees. Sadly, after more than two years of huge expenses fighting the charges in court, Cole Hardware has reluctantly accepted a plea bargain. This is purely an economic decision. Cole remains committed to our mission of serving those living and working in San Francisco.”

SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington noted in his public statement how important it is to take a hard line against this kind of fraud: “Today we have sent a strong message that the City will not tolerate public servants or vendors who attempt to fleece our hardworking taxpayers.”

There are six other co-defendants who have already pled guilty in this case: Donnie Thomas, Jean Quiroz, Centennial Distributors, Inc., John Rauch, Robert Mazariegos, and Vincent Padilla. There are three other co-defendants who have not yet pled guilty and who await their preliminary hearing: Miles Bonner, Tri-Delta Electric, and Elizabeth Bradford.

Video admitted in Mirkarimi trial

Zelda Bronstein
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90
Video admitted in Mirkarimi trial

A videotape and related statements that the prosecution said was critical to the domestic violence case against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi will be admitted at a trial set to begin Feb. 28, Judge Garrett Wong has ruled.

The ruling allows prosecutors to show the roughly 50-second video in which Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, tearfully recounts the incident of New Years’s Eve, 2011 and shows a bruise on her arm.

“Without this evidence we have no legal recourse to completely move forward with this case,” prosecutor Elizabeth Aguilar-Tarchi told the judge, reflecting what observers have been saying for weeks: The case against the sheriff could hinge on how the trial judge interprets a complex part of the state’s Evidence Code.

At issue is whether a statement that would normally be excluded as hearsay can be allowed in court as a “spontaneous or excited utterance” — a statement made after a crime when a victim or witness hasn’t had time to reflect on the events or plan to fabricate or alter the story of what happened.

In this case, the video was made a day after the alleged violence, and Mirkarimi’s lawyer, Lidia Stiglich, argued that it was carefully scripted and staged for reasons that had little to do with Mirkarimi’s specific behavior the day before.

In fact, she said, Lopez and Ivory Madison, a neighbor who made the video, discussed how the information would only be used if Mirkarimi and Lopez divorced or had a custody fight over the couple’s two-year-old son, Theo.

Lopez was hardly still excited or emotional over the incident, Stiglich said: “There is evidence that Ms. Lopez went shopping, made phone calls, including two calls to Ms. Madison, and texted [Madison’s] husband.”

The video, Stiglich argued, “was the antithesis of a spontaneous statement” — it was made after Lopez had a day to calm down and was made specifically for evidence in a child-custody case, the attorney noted.

But Aguliar-Tarchi insisted that Lopez was sufficiently emotional that the time frame wasn’t the central issue — and Judge Wong agreed. “Time is a factor to consider, but not determinative,” he said from the bench. “What is crucial is the mental state of the speaker.”

The ruling complicates Mirkarimi’s defense: Photos released by the District Attorney’s Office from the video show a clearly upset Lopez showing the camera a bruise on her upper arm and saying that this wasn’t the first such incident.

If Wong hadn’t accepted the video, it’s likely that the District Attorney’s Office would have to drop the charges, since Lopez has refused to testify and the rest of the case is so thin and circumstantial that it would be hard to present it to a jury. “This is the focal point and crux of our case,” Aguilar-Tarchi said.

Now Mirkarimi will have to come up with a more compelling narrative as to why the story that his wife described to a camera wasn’t an accurate reflection of the facts. 

The ruling could certainly be grounds for appeal — based on the courtroom discussion, the video falls very close to the line in what can and can’t be admitted, and while the judge has broad discretion on these issues, criminal defendants have challenged such rulings in higher courts numerous times. But the jury — and the news media, and thus the public — will now be allowed to see what is by any definition a very damaging video that will hurt Mirkarimi’s political career, whatever the outcome of the trial.

 

 

Motion could cripple case against Mirkarimi if granted

Sasha Cuttler
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Motion could cripple case against Mirkarimi if granted

(UPDATE 2/27: The judge today denied the defense motion to suppress this video. More details here.) The domestic violence case against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi could be dealt a crippling blow if the judge approves yesterday’s defense motion to bar videotaped testimony that his wife, Eliana Lopez, gave to their neighbor, Ivory Madison. But even if Mirkarimi beats the criminal rap, his political future could still depend on finally offering a detailed explanation of exactly what happened during that New Year’s Eve incident.

Yesterday’s motions were the subject of a cover story in today’s San Francisco Examiner, but they were strangely buried on page C2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, which also chose not to provide details of the motion, which makes a fairly compelling case for barring the videotape that is the only evidence that Lopez may have had a bruise on her arm, allegedly inflicted by Mirkarimi.

The motion argues that the videotape is inadmissible hearsay evidence that doesn’t meet the legal standard of an immediate reaction to a crime. Not only was it recorded the next day, but both Lopez and Madison say on the tape that it was intended to be used only if Lopez left Mirkarimi and sought sole custody of their two-year-old son, Theo.

“The videotape itself was the product of a reflective and deliberate decision to create evidence for purposes of a custody proceeding,” Mirkarimi attorney Lidia Stiglich argued in her motion, citing caselaw that makes such considered actions inadmissible. As the Examiner noted, the motion suggested Lopez might have ulterior motives in such an instance, making it possible that she misrepresented to Madison what had happened. Lopez denies that Mirkarimi abused her and is not cooperating with the prosecution.

Madison is quoted in the motion as saying the video was being made in case there was ever a child custody case and that “I really don’t know” what happened that night, but she believed it wasn’t an isolated incident, allegedly telling police, “she definitely didn’t describe it as ‘he grabbed my arm one time and left this mark.’”

Stiglich told the Guardian that barring the videotape from admission would be huge: “It’s a significant piece of evidence.” Some legal observers have even said the entire case against Mirkarimi could crumble if that evidence is barred, and that the ruling on its admissibility could really go either way depending on which judge gets assigned to the case tomorrow.

“We are not suprised nor concerned with the motion filed by Mr. Mirkarimi’s attorney and we will continue to handle legal issues in the courtroom and not in the media,” District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Omid Talai told us. He wouldn’t characterize how important that evidence is to the case, but he did say, “Every case is filed based on the totality of evidence.”

Yet Stiglich said much of the case rests of that videotaped evidence, which she believes presents a distorted view of what happened. “These statements are essential to their case, and there are issues with that type of testimony,” Stiglich told us.

Yet if Mirkarimi beats the criminal rap by suppressing that evidence, it’s unlikely to help him in the court of public opinion. Neither Mirkarimi nor Lopez have provided a full explanation or alternative narrative of what happened that night, how the alleged injury occurred, or other crucial details, and Stiglich said she doesn’t think now is the time for that kind of tell-all.

“I don’t think anyone should be making factual statements outside the courtroom at this point,” Stigich told us, confirming that she has advised against Mirkarimi making those kind of public statements, although she said he has been anxious to do so.

Motions in the case could be heard as soon as tomorrow, but Stiglich said she doesn’t expect opening statements in the case to take place under the week after next. She estimates witness testimony in the case will take about a week.

Then, after it’s all over and the jury renders a verdict, we’ll all see how much Mirkarimi’s team discloses about what actually happened that night and with earlier instances where Mirkarimi allegedly got physical with Lopez and a previous girlfriend, Christina Flores, who prosecutors also hope to put on the witness stand.

And if there are still questions to be answered, then we can all push Mirkarimi for a fuller accounting, render our own judgments, and determine where we think the truth lies and what that says about the public officials involved in this case.

Why do evictions continue despite widespread banking fraud?

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Do you think a groundbreaking report – showing that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud – would finally mean swift justice for victims of those crimes?

Think again.

According to Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, whose office produced the astonishing report, government action is certainly appropriate in the follow-up to the report. “There are potential legal action on behalf of the attorney general and potential policy solutions at the state level,” said Ting.

But these solutions will likely take their long, bureaucratic time. And in the meantime, San Francisco homeowners — many of whom say that they were lied to, tricked, or defrauded by the lenders or beneficiaries of their mortgage loans — will continue to be kicked out of their homes with no legal oversight.

People have been claiming these injustices for years. Now, the report has proven that the vast majority of them are probably right.

“Until now, public information in California regarding improper foreclosure practices has been largely anecdotal. This report is important because it is the first to provide a rigorous, quantifiable analysis of the nature and frequency of foreclosure irregularities in California,” said Lou Pizante of Aequitas, a mortgage investigation firm that partnered with the Assessor-Recorder’s office to produce the report, in a press release.

The report focuses on six areas: assignments, notice of default, substitution of trustee, notice of trustee sale, suspicious activities indicative of potential fraud, and conflicts relating to MERS (short for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.).

In 99 percent of loans, the report identifies “one of more irregularities.” In 84 percent, there were “what appear to be one or more clear violations of the law.”
These violations include forging signatures, failing to file proper paperwork, failing to notify borrowers of things that they are legally required to know such as changes in the owners of their mortgages and notices that they have been put on track for foreclosure. And lots of felony fraud. 

Yet Ting told us it will be difficult to use these findings to hold banks and other lenders accountable, at least any time soon.
The report is likely the beginning of a lengthy process that will, at best, involve investigations from several city and state departments.
Matt Dorsey, press secretary for the city attorney’s office, confirmed that “we’re working with our client department the Assessor-Recorder,” but couldn’t say much else.

District Attorney George Gascon released a statement addressing the report, which says that “Mortgage-related fraud is a top priority in my office will prosecute those who pray on vulnerable homeowners. Many people have lost their homes due to foreclosures, tearing apart families and communities.”

But according to Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai, the DA’s office cannot begin looking into the cases until it receives documents from the Assessor-Recorder detailing the allegations in the report.

Talai emphasized that “our door remains open, and we would always welcome anyone with any kind of information”; homeowners with documents that they believe contain proof of invalid foreclosure proceedings can go to the DA themselves.

But will the release of the report help these homeowners?
 
When asked if people who believe they were a victim of these “irregularities” and “felony crimes” could use the report to challenge their lenders, Ting replied, “they could potentially.”

But, “the alternate question would be asked, which is: were they actually making payments on their homes? If they weren’t, they would have a very hard time challenging their foreclosure.”

Yet, anecdotally, lenders often tell consumers that they need to stop making loan payments in order to qualify for loan modification. They then get put on the fast track for foreclosure. Ting said his office heard these anecdotes too.

“Unfortunately, oftentimes when that happens, it’s done verbally. We also heard that. But it becomes almost impossible to prove,” Ting told me.

So banks can lie to consumers, thus potentially immunizing themselves from prosecution based on crimes committed against consumers. Then to top it all off, when folks get evicted and become homeless, they can be ticketed or jailed for sitting on the sidewalk. Thanks, justice system.

Hopefully, this report can act as an important step in the right direction.

“I’m proud of the fact that this is the first report of its kind, in the state, really identifying these issues on a systematic basis,” said Ting.

At least now the thousands of San Francisco residents that have lost their homes can point to evidence proving that this is a more complicated problem than people borrowing money that they can’t afford to pay back.

As the report states, “Reckless borrowing notwithstanding, much publicly available evidence suggests that there are indeed many legitimate victims of abusive lending and service practices.”

These people didn’t need the report to tell them that they were “legitimate victims.” But let’s hope that, with its help, they can see some justice.

Guardian editorial: The DA and mayoral corruption

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EDITORIAL The indictments of two executives of an airport shuttle company on charges of laundering campaign money are, in themselves, a rarity and something to celebrate: the district attorney of San Francisco is actually attempting to enforce the laws against political corruption. That’s unusual in this city, and worthy of note.

But at this point, the entire sum total of prosecutions involving the scandal-ridden campaign of Mayor Ed Lee amounts to a pair of cases against people who made what appear to be illegal contributions. As of today, the message that’s being sent is that nobody in the Lee campaign did anything wrong. And that seems a little bit curious.

Lee’s late entry into the race — after he’d promised for months not to run — and his refusal to abide by the rules of public financing forced his supporters to raise a large amount of money very quickly. There were so-called independent expenditure committees collecting donations and running parallel campaigns that, by law, should have been entirely distinct from Lee and his official effort. We’ve always been dubious about the supposed lack of coordination.

Then there were the well-documented instances of irregularities serious enough that every other candidate in the race asked for state and federal monitors to watch the election. Several eyewitnesses told local reporters that they saw volunteers for one of the supposedly independent groups filling out absentee ballots for voters, using a special template that ensured the votes would go for Lee. Some said they saw ballots being collected at a makeshift voting booth. In a video provided by the campaign of State Sen. Leland Yee, it appears that volunteers were both filling out ballots and placing them in bags — both clear violations of law.

Gascon’s announced investigations of all the allegations — but more than three months later, nothing has come of it. His office won’t confirm or deny whether investigations are ongoing or whether any further indictments may be forthcoming. But at the Chinese New Year Parade, Chinatown powerbroker and Lee ally Rose Pak announced that she had heard Gascon was investigating her.

There’s been plenty of time to collect evidence, and Gascon has a responsibility to let the public know, as quickly as possible, what’s happened to the rest of the allegations. If everyone in the Lee campaign is really innocent, and none of the independent groups supporting the mayor did anything wrong, he should say that, and present the evidence.

It doesn’t help Lee, the city, or the integrity of the voting process to have these cases drag out. Gascon needs to conclude them, expeditiously.

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Will shutting down two businesses really ‘clean up’ the Tenderloin?

Sasha Cuttler
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21

It was noon on the Jan. 30 when I broke the news to 24-year-old Amer Mousa that the City of San Francisco was filing a civil suit to shut down Walid Abdulrahman, his friend and owner of the Razan Deli on Ellis Street in the Tenderloin.

Two hours earlier, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr held a press conference out the front of the Azaal Market on the corner of Leavenworth and Turk streets in the Tenderloin to announce the dual lawsuits against the markets owners, Jaber A. Algahim and Walid Abdulrahman, for maintaining a public nuisance. Our efforts to get comments from Algahim and Abdulrahman were not successful, but Mousa spoke freely about the situation.

The City’s complaint says the deli is a safe haven for criminal activity and that Abdulrahman either allows it to continue unabated or is actively involved himself. It is not hard to understand the logic behind the suit; shut down problem businesses and the neighborhood will heal. But in a City with a history of going after small businesses as if they are the root cause of all criminality, the question remains about whether this is really about helping the neighborhood or about being seen to help.

Abdulrahman does not speak English well, so it was Mousa who answered the phone. When first asked about the store’s involvement in illicit activity, Mousa became flustered, confused, and denied any knowledge of drug activity within the store. “Maybe outside, in the neighborhood, but I wouldn’t risk my job like that,” he said at the time.

Both Abdulrahman and Mousa are from Jordan. Abdulrahman is a close friend of Mousa’s father, so close Mousa refers to him as “uncle.” Mousa came to the U.S. on a greencard in 2009 and has been studying to be a nurse. He met his future wife in school and they married in 2010. Every day he heads into San Francisco from Daly City to work in deli from 10pm until 6am to support his young family.

The Razan Deli is a pokey little deli open 16 hours a day that does not sell alcohol and keeps little stacked on the shelves. It caters for the homeless and street population with candy, burritos, and cheap pre-made frozen meals. Bigger items are left to liquor-selling competitors across the road whose owners refuse to say anything about what happens outside their doors, lest some doped-up gang member decide to make an example of them. When asked, they just stare at the ceiling and say they put their faith in God.

Outside, Ellis Street is quiet, at least during the day, with the exception of a woman in a wheelchair and another leaning against a wall who mumbles something about robbery and cackles to herself. Stopping at any intersection along Turk Street invariably means being approached by dealers. The greatest concentration stand just outside the Azaal Market while they chatter constantly and offer passers-by narcotics with incomprehensible street names.

The lawsuit was the result of a two-year undercover operation by the SFPD that claimed to have found evidence of a “pattern of illegal activity” at each business. The complaint and police statements claim the deli acted as a safe-haven and intermediary for drug dealing and buys stolen goods for resale. To build the case, undercover officers visited a local Walgreen’s and asked the business to donate items before trying to re-sell the product to businesses in the Tenderloin, while slipping in the fact that they were stolen goods.

Police statements say Abdulrahman bought stolen goods and helped facilitate undercover officers buying drugs from the dealers loitering outside the shop. Mousa does not deny that Abdulrahman took the bait on the two occasions he was present. “Look, we’re not angels,” he says. “When the undercover police came, they gave us razors, you know like Gillette, and my uncle bought some stolen merchandise for personal use. He didn’t buy all, he just bought some.”

If true, that would be a very different accusation than the one being made by the city in its civil suit, which has asked the court to close the business and impose an initial penalty of $25,000, additional penalties of $2,500 for “each act of unlawful business practice” and costs for the suit and investigation. In a criminal prosecution, Abdulrahman might receive up to a year in jail for receiving stolen goods of around $200 in value and a separate charge for being an accessory to the sale of a small quantity illicit substances. That is, assuming he is guilty of everything the police say he is. And they have evidence.

Yet none of that matters. Abdulrahman cannot afford an attorney; he will appear self-represented. Either he will be sent into bankruptcy or he will be run out of business. This legal fight seems lopsided, to say the least.

The City of San Francisco has a history of going after small liquor shops and markets in the Tenderloin and the Mission on a crusade to shut down criminal “safe-havens” or “magnets of drug dealing,” as Matt Dorsey, media liaison for the City Attorney’s Office, framed it during a phone conversation about the city’s tactics in choosing to bring a civil claim against Abdulrahman. “Civil cases have lower standard of evidence. Effectively we’re going to try and shut the business down. As they say, the City’s Attorney tries to take their money. The District Attorney puts people in jail,” he said.

The theory goes that shutting down such places will force the criminal element out, leave them nowhere to go and ultimately make the neighborhood a safer place. Randy Shaw, Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC) and editor of BeyondChron, has endorsed this view and has said he “cheered” the litigation.

Shaw’s hostility for the Azaal Market, alternatively known as the Barah Market, was plain. His tone indicated the market’s continued existence was a personal slight. “We sued the Maryland and the Barah markets in the 90’s and the Maryland hasn’t been a problem since,” said Shaw, a housing right attorney turned Tenderloin political power broker. Shaw said he welcomes any city efforts to try to clean up the neighborhood. But it’s hard to see how this action will make much difference, particularly given the neighborhood’s open criminality.

“I called the police more than seven or eight times, from the cell phone,” Mousa said. “What did they do? Nothing. They know who the drug dealers are. There’s just two to four drug dealers on the whole block. Most of the others just work for them. If police don’t come and do their job, what am I supposed to do? Start shooting? … If I keep calling the police I’m going to get shot. All I can do is tell them to get outside the store. Go sell your shit outside the store.”

Abdulrahman’s shop will close, that seems like the likely outcome. Once the shutters are drawn, the City Attorney and the Chief of Police will hold another press conference and claim a great victory in their fight to “clean up the neighborhood” in the name of “families and the elderly.” It will sound good on television, and read well in the papers. Everyone will clap and agree that the streets are a safer place for it, but it seems like a huge stretch of imagination to blame the Tenderloin’s problems on these two small businesses.

“I’m a full time student, I have a wife, I’m not living by myself, I cannot live by myself or with some buddies, I need to have a home. After the store closes, what’s going to happen to me? There are no jobs right now. Even if I get a full-time job, how much am I going to make?” Mousa says. “This is just going to destroy two families, two households. What’s going to happen? Nothing’s going to change. There are still going to be drug dealers outside… This neighborhood is broken. It was broken when we got here, it will be broken when we leave.”

Gascon and mayoral corruption

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EDITORIAL The indictments of two executives of an airport shuttle company on charges of laundering campaign money are, in themselves, a rarity and something to celebrate: the district attorney of San Francisco is actually attempting to enforce the laws against political corruption. That’s unusual in this city, and worthy of note.

But at this point, the entire sum total of prosecutions involving the scandal-ridden campaign of Mayor Ed Lee amounts to a pair of cases against people who made what appear to be illegal contributions. As of today, the message that’s being sent is that nobody in the Lee campaign did anything wrong. And that seems a little bit curious.

Lee’s late entry into the race — after he’d promised for months not to run — and his refusal to abide by the rules of public financing forced his supporters to raise a large amount of money very quickly. There were so-called independent expenditure committees collecting donations and running parallel campaigns that, by law, should have been entirely distinct from Lee and his official effort. We’ve always been dubious about the supposed lack of coordination.

Then there were the well-documented instances of irregularities serious enough that every other candidate in the race asked for state and federal monitors to watch the election. Several eyewitnesses told local reporters that they saw volunteers for one of the supposedly independent groups filling out absentee ballots for voters, using a special template that ensured the votes would go for Lee. Some said they saw ballots being collected at a makeshift voting booth. In a video provided by the campaign of State Sen. Leland Yee, it appears that volunteers were both filling out ballots and placing them in bags — both clear violations of law.

Gascon’s announced investigations of all the allegations — but more than three months later, nothing has come of it. His office won’t confirm or deny whether investigations are ongoing or whether any further indictments may be forthcoming. But at the Chinese New Year Parade, Chinatown powerbroker and Lee ally Rose Pak announced that she had heard Gascon was investigating her.

There’s been plenty of time to collect evidence, and Gascon has a responsibility to let the public know, as quickly as possible, what’s happened to the rest of the allegations. If everyone in the Lee campaign is really innocent, and none of the independent groups supporting the mayor did anything wrong, he should say that, and present the evidence.

It doesn’t help Lee, the city, or the integrity of the voting process to have these cases drag out. Gascon needs to conclude them, expeditiously.

Is SF’s DA investigating Rose Pak?

Zelda Bronstein
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Is SF’s DA investigating Rose Pak?

Well, Ms. Pak thinks he is. At the Chinese New Year parade, where she wields the mic at the reviewing stand and typically makes nasty comments about local politicians, she was relatively muted this year –– except when D.A. George Gascon rode by. “I read in the blogs that you’re still investigating me,” she shouted. “What the hell did I do? I just elected the first Chinese American mayor. You will find nothing, except that I swear a lot.”

Gascon has for more than four months been investigating irregularities in the Ed Lee campaign, including charges of illegal campaign contributions and voter fraud. Gascon’s office issued a press release Feb. 14 announcing the indictments of Go Lorries and two of its senior employees. The airport shuttle outfit allegedly laundered campaign money by asking its employees each to donate the maxium $500 to Lee’s campaign and then paying them back from company funds. From the release:

The defendants are accused of making an unlawful $11,500 campaign contribution from GO Lorrie’s to the Ed Lee campaign by passing it through GO Lorrie’s drivers and staff. … “Campaign finance and disclosure laws help to ensure fairness and transparency in our elections,” said District Attorney George Gascón, “and my office takes the violation of these laws very seriously.  After a thorough investigation, we have found clear evidence to charge Go Lorrie’s and two of its employees with making illegal campaign contributions.”

Nobody from the Lee campaign has been charged with anything.

So what about the other apparent violations? Is that still under investigation? Is Rose Pak a target? I asked Stephanie Ong Stillman, Gascon’s spokesperson, and she told me that she can’t confirm or deny that there’s any further investigations under way or that any specific individual is under investigation.

So I’m glad to see the Go Lorries indictment, which marks a rare instance of somebody taking campaign laws seriously. But there’s a lot more here, and I hope Gascon doesn’t think that nailing one company that everyone will insist acted on its own with no support from or connection to a pretty darn sleazy campaign will end the controversy.

 

 

Hearing today on bizarre Occupy Oakland stay-away order case

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Hearing today on bizarre Occupy Oakland stay-away order case

The first Occupy Oakland protester to allegedly be in violation of a stay-away order has a hearing today.

Joseph Briones, 30, was arrested along with 408 others at an Occupy Oakland protest Jan. 28. He is one of 12 who were apparently issued the restraining orders, and is therefore barred from being within 300 yards of Oakland City Hall, potentially for the next three years, according to Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Teresa Drenick.

But based on a Feb. 8 hearing, Briones and his lawyer understood that he did not have a stay-away order against him, said Occupy Oakland media committee member Omar Yassin.

“That’s why he was at the plaza, carefree, on Wednesday,” said Yassin. That’s when Briones was arrested.

In a Feb. 9 press release, Officer Johnna Watson of Oakland Police media relations said that “Joseph Briones is one of four individuals charged with a violent felony offense stemming from the Jan. 28 protest.” But according to records at the District Attorney’s office, that’s incorrect; Briones is charged with three misdemeanors.

While everyone scrambles to get their story straight, Briones is still in jail. He has a hearing at 2 o’ clock today. If found to have violated a stay-away order, he could face six months in prison.

So far, Briones is legally innocent of any crime; he has not been convicted of any of the charges leveled on him in connection with Jan. 28. None of the other 11 who are prohibited from going near City Hall have been convicted of anything either.

Besides all that, the stay-away orders may be entirely illegal.

According to Jivaka Candappa, one of the attorneys working on the stay-away order cases, “the orders are unconstitutional and unreasonable.”

Most of the charges on the twelve are as benign as blocking the sidewalk and remaining at the scene of a riot (the latter is the same charge that was placed on  hundreds who were cited and released with no bail, and whose charges will likely be dropped—including me.) Even the felony charges, such as assault of a police officer, are common charges leveled on protesters that are usually dismissed. It is highly unusual to ban individuals from any public place, for any reason, let alone City Hall and a public plaza so obviously necessary for access to First Amendment rights, under any circumstances.

“This is legitimate action in, for example, a domestic violence situation. Here, protesters have not attacked anybody and they’re not a physical threat,” said attorney Mike Flynn, president of the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

Candappa says that he and his colleagues may file motions in the Alameda County Superior Court challenging constitutionality of the stay-away orders.

Said Candappa, “preventing someone from exercising their First Amendment rights doesn’t promote public safety. Courts are very reluctant to restrain someone’s expressive rights, because its really a cornerstone of any democracy and if you want to be able to participate in democracy you’ve got to have a right to express yourself. To take away that fundamental right to express yourself is something courts are very reluctant to do, especially when those conditions are applied against someone who has not yet been convicted.”

 

Mirkarimi’s not going anywhere

Zelda Bronstein
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Mirkarimi’s not going anywhere

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi may be guilty of domestic violence, and if he is — as I’ve said repeatedly — it’s a serious crime and he should be held accountable. It will be very hard for him to remain in office with a DV conviction, even if it’s just a misdemeanor.


But right now, the charges are just that — charges. In the eyes of the law, he’s innocent until proven guilty. So I don’t see how Mayor Ed Lee can suspend him.


Lee’s under a lot of pressure, and under the City Charter, he has the sole authority to suspend an office holder for “official misconduct,” which is defined as “wrongful behavior by a public officer in relation to the duties of his or her office.” If there’s a suspension, the Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors would both have to vote to remove Mirkarimi permanently.


But here’s the thing: Lee has no evidence of official misconduct — not unless the district attorney decides to turn over to the mayor all of the files in the criminal case, at which point Ethics and the supes would be holding mini trials of their own on evidence that hasn’t been adjudicated in court (and a court may rule some of it inadmissable).


That doesn’t seem likely (and it would be very odd for the D.A. to join the mayor in what would amount to a second prosecution).


And all of this would be going on at a time when the actual criminal trial is only four weeks away.


The courts have interpreted “official misconduct” fairly narrowly. If Mirkarimi is convicted, then the city attorney can get into the argument over whether domestic violence has any “relation to the duties” of the Sheriff’s Office, and since he’s a law-enforcement officer, that might not be too hard to argue. Certainly the charge of influencing a witness would be subject to that interpretation. So after a conviction, Lee would be in a position to think seriously about suspension — if Mirkarmi didn’t step down on his own.


But right now, there’s no conviction. In terms of the court system (that would have to get involved) Mirkarimi isn’t guilty of anything yet.


Mirkarimi could decide to take a leave of absence, although he doesn’t seem inclined to do that. But whatever the merits of the case, and whatever the political arguments about whether the sheriff can do his job in the middle of this media circus, I — admittedly as a nonlawyer — can’t see how Lee could possibly invoke the suspension provisions of the Charter.


Maybe I’m missing something. 

More on the Mirkarimi case

Zelda Bronstein
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More on the Mirkarimi case

I wrote up the Jan. 19 hearing on the domestic violence charges against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, but a few more points are worth thinking about as the embattled sheriff prepares for another court hearing Jan. 23.


For one, the stay-away order that Judge Susan Breall issued doesn’t allow Mirkarimi to have any contact with his two-year-old son for the next 45 days. That seems not only harsh but bad for the kid, who doesn’t understand why he can’t see his daddy and is, not surpisingly, confused and upset. There are no winners in this case (except the folks who would just as soon see Mirkarimi gone and replaced with a more traditional law-enforcement sheriff), but the biggest loser, the one I feel worst about, is the kid. If the judge was really worried about Mirkarimi being a danger to his son (which, frankly, seems like a huge stretch), then she could have authorized supervised visitation. That’s not at all unusual in these kinds of cases, and would at least give the child a chance to have contact and a relationship with his father during the period when all of this is being sorted out in adult court.


There’s not a lot of talk about the inherent conflicts of interest in this case, issues that come about from a sheriff who was once an investigator in the District Attorney’s Office facing criminal charges filed by that same office, which is now run by a former police chief who the sheriff clashed with repeatedly when he was a supervisor. I don’t know the law on this or how it could possibly play out, but there’s an interesting article about it all here.


It’s odd that the conflict piece ran in a publication that makes its living bashing local progressives, but everything about the media in this case is odd (except that fact that it’s become an international zoo). The one writer who has talked seriously about Mirkarimi’s right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty — and the only major voice in the media urging him not to step down — is the Chron’s conservative columnist Debra Saunders. 


Another interesting media tidbit: I don’t know Mirkarimi will enough to have any insight into his behavior in romantic relationships, but one person who really does — his longtime former girlfriend, journalist Evelyn Nieves — has been quoted only once in the bottom of a New York Times/Bay Citizen story, to wit:


“I was shocked when I read about it,” Evelyn Nieves, a journalist and a past partner of Mr. Mirkarimi’s, said in an e-mail. “Ross and I were together for the better part of a decade — eight years or so — and never once did he even come close to being physical during an argument.”


“It’s just not his way,” Ms. Nieves added. “He was way more prone to proposing that disagreements be talked out. He could talk and talk.”


Again: Doesn’t mean he’s not guilty. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t changed. Just interesting that only one publication has even tried to contact and get a quote from Nieves.


I’m not a lawyer, of course, but it seems to me that the defining moment in this case will not be the trial but the pre-trial hearing in which Mirkarimi’s lawyer tries to get a judge to rule that the videotape of Eliana Lopez talking about her injury and her fear of her husband can’t be used in court. Bob Egelko has an excellent piece here; he points out that if the video isn’t admissible as evidence, the case will collapse. If a judge rules (and the legal arguments seem to support it) that the prosecution can’t introduce the video or show it to the jury, then I suspect the district attorney will have to drop the charges; if Lopez refuses to testify against her husband, there’s nothing else to go on.


But this is a domestic violence case, and judges (no surprise) are political, and how many members of the local bench really want to be the one who ended such a high-profile case (and in effect, let the suspect walk) on what the media will call “a technicality?”


 


 


 


 


 

Plenty of drama at the Mirkarimi hearing

Zelda Bronstein
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Plenty of drama at the Mirkarimi hearing

I’m glad I got to the courtroom early; by the time Judge Susan Breall called the case of People v. Ross Mirkarimi, there wasn’t a single seat available, and Her Honor wasn’t allowing standing room.

What followed was a quick “not guilty” plea to three misdemeanor charges – and then a session that lasted more than two hours, with a long interruption, as the prosecution and defense argued over whether Mirkarimi was such a threat to his wife and two-year-old son that he should be forced to stay away from them and avoid any form of contact until after what is expected to be an early March trial.

In the process, Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, made a passionate plea against the restraining order and Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Aguilar-Tarchi introduced new evidence to support her claims that the newly elected Sheriff is not only guilty of domestic violence but too dangerous to allow into his own home.

In the end, Breall – who once worked as a prosecutor in domestic violence cases – issued the order forbidding the sheriff from any contact with his wife and child, and told Mirkarimi and his attorney, Robert Waggener, to return to court Jan. 23 to set a trial date.

Breall angered Lopez – and some courtroom observers – by saying she was concerned that the 36-year-old Venezuelan soap opera star was new to the country and lacked fluency in English and a family support system. Waggener noted that the length of time Lopez had lived in the United States and her language skills weren’t part of the evidence in the case and had nothing to do with the need for a protective order. He later told me that it was unusual for a judge to mention or consider that sort of information in a restraining order.

In fact, Breall noted that she had learned about Lopez’ background from reading the newspapers, leading Waggener to insist that the judge stick to the facts before her and not rely on news accounts that the attorney said were inaccurate.

At times, the proceedings turned bizarre: After Lopez had been identified by her full name and discussed at some length, her attorney noted that the last name and address of a domestic violence victim should not be in the public record. Breall agreed, and from then on referred to her only as “Eliana L.”

A little late for that, of course: The local news media have put her picture and full name on the front pages and the airwaves repeatedly in the past week.

Early in the proceedings, Breall asked if Lopez had seen a victim advocate in the District Attorney’s Office, noting that such a visit was part of standard procedure in these kinds of cases. Shortly afterward, Lopez left the courtroom; we later learned she had walked down the hall to the D.A.’s Office and met with the advocate.

Waggener asked repeatedly during the afternoon that statements from Lopez be taken in a closed courtroom, citing her privacy rights. Breall declined, and refused to put any documents under court seal.

After delaying the case for roughly an hour while Lopez had her meeting and Waggener read over the documents that had already been published in local newspapers but had only that day been provided to him, the judge came back and heard arguments on the stay-away order – and we learned more about the evidence that the D.A. will be presenting in the case.

Waggener noted that after reading the documents he had received, he saw nothing that would justify barring Mirkarimi from seeing his family. Aguilar-Tarchi started to discuss what the now-famous videotape that neighbor Ivory Madison made of Lopez showing a bruise and discussing a confrontation with her husband, but Lopez’s lawyer interrupted with an interesting new claim: She said that when Lopez had met with Madison, who is a lawyer, she believed that everything she said would be protected by attorney-client privilege and thus shouldn’t be admitted as evidence.

That will no doubt come up later – but for now, Breall wasn’t interested.

Then Lopez took the stand.

Speaking in English – relatively fluent English – she first chided the judge for the comments about her language skills and her residency in the U.S. “This idea that I’m a poor little immigrant is insulting,” she said. “It’s a little racist.”

She said that, rather than being adrift without a support system, she was someone who had been living on her own for 16 years, had her own career and her own apartment in Venezuela (one larger and nicer than her home in San Francisco). She said she’s spent time in Los Angeles and New York and had traveled in Mexico, London, Tibet, Europe and all over Latin America.

“I don’t need the support of my (extended) family,” she said. “I support my family.”

She also said that the press coverage, while unfair, was nothing she couldn’t handle: “I’ve been working in TV for 15 years,” she noted. “Check out the press in Venezuela. This is nothing.”

Then she got into her point: She saw no need for a protective order, didn’t fear her husband and found the whole idea abhorrent. “The violence against me is that I don’t have my family together,” she said. “This country is trying to pull my family apart, and that is the real violence.”

Aguilar-Tarchi wasn’t done, though. After Lopez finished, she repeated some of the allegations in the video, but then described text messages that Lopez had allegedly sent to Madison. “She told a neighbor that she was afraid,” the prosecutor said. “She asked if she could change the locks on the door. She asked if she would have to go to the police or if the police would come to her.”
The text messages also stated, Aguilar-Tarchi said, that Mirkarimi was scared and didn’t want the story to come out and that he had taken Lopez and their son, Theo, on a vacation to Monterey in an effort to prove that everything was fine. “My little Theo is so confused,” one of the messages allegedly said.

Waggener argued that the case wasn’t yet on trial and that much of the evidence was hearsay. And, he said, “in terms of what this court sees all the time, broken bones etc., this is on the low end.” He explained that the couple had been together from the day of the incident – New Year’s Eve – until the day the original protective order was issued, “with no complaints or evidence of violence.” He called the description of the videotape (which hasn’t been shown in court) “highly distorted.”

Breall said some nice (if somewhat condescending) things about Lopez, who she called “charming,” but wasn’t swayed. “I am going to treat this case like any other case,” she said, issuing the order that would keep Mirkarimi away from his wife and child until the end of the trial. Waggener later said he would come back to Breall to seek a modification in that order next week. Breall said the trial would start no later than March 5.

(In an interesting side note, the prosecution demanded that Mirkarimi give up the three guns in his possession. I never knew he kept guns in his house. At any rate, they’ve already been turned over to the authorities.)

I walked out thinking: This is just awful. There’s really nothing positive you can say about it.

I’ve known Ross Mirkarimi for years; I’ve never seen any hint of violence in his behavior. Of course, I’m not that close to him, and I don’t know anything about his marriage. Still, somebody who has been part of the progressive community for a long time has been accused of something really terrible, and it has a lot of us shaking our heads and, frankly, wondering what to think. You want to stand by a friend who’s in trouble (and lord knows, I have plenty of friends who’ve been arrested and charged with all manner of crimes, and some of them were guilty as sin, and they’re still my friends).

But I’ve also helped a close friend through episodes of domestic violence, and I can tell you it isn’t a minor deal, or a private family affair (as Mirkarimi foolishly and inappropriately stated). It’s a serious crime, and for many years, the cops and the courts didn’t treat it that way. And because it used to be really hard for women to get stay-away orders (and in some areas, it still is), women have been badly hurt and sometimes killed.

It’s only because progressive political leaders (the same progressives my blog trolls love trash at the slightest provocation) demanded changes in the law that the rules now allow for prosecution even if the alleged victim doesn’t cooperate. It’s only because of progressive reforms that a case like this is even in court.

And I agree with those reforms. As I’ve said before, there’s no excuse for intentionally injuring anyone – and there’s less than no excuse for injuring your spouse. If that’s what Mirkarimi did, he should be held accountable. It doesn’t matter what side of the political divide he’s on. If he’s guilty of domestic violence, I’m not going to make excuses for him.

More than a misdemeanor charge is on the line. All Mirkarimi has done professionally is progressive politics and law-enforcement, and by most accounts, neither one has much room for someone who has a DV rap. (Although I have to say – there are an awful lot of cops who have DV allegations against them and are still on duty.)

If Mirkarimi weren’t the elected sheriff, this case might well have been handled a lot differently. He could have accepted a misdemeanor plea, taken DV courses, gone into therapy, tried to put his marriage back together. That’s pretty standard in first-offense cases. But to do that would be to admit something he can’t easily admit to and remain in office.

So Mirkarimi knows his only real chance is to win a “not guilty” verdict and then try to rebuild his reputation. Given the stakes, I can’t imagine that he would so much as raise his voice half an octave against Lopez over the next few weeks; one more allegation it would be the end of everything. But Breall must be worried (as any modern judge would be in any prominent DV case) that if she refused to issue the restraining order and something bad did happen, her ass would be very much on the line. So she did the obvious thing.

And the media circus continues.

The only possible bright side (and I always look for a bright side) is that a lot of people who weren’t talking about domestic violence are now discussing it, on the front pages. They’re talking about how a lot of women are trapped by batterers, how they’re afraid to testify and can’t (or don’t want to) leave, how all of us, particularly the police and the courts, are responsible for protecting victims who can’t find a way to escape. And that’s a whole lot of women.

All of that said, we have to remember that Mirkarimi is still innocent until proven guilty. The mayor has no business removing him from office at this point; he hasn’t been convicted of anything. It’s only a few weeks until his trial (Mirkarimi has made it clear he wants this over as quickly as possible, so by law he has to face a jury within 45 days). After that, if he’s guilty, the mayor and the supervisors can worry about whether to vacate the Sheriff’s Office – unless Mirkarimi makes that decision himself.

Sheriff Mirkarimi charged with domestic violence

Sasha Cuttler
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Sheriff Mirkarimi charged with domestic violence

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has been charged with three misdemeanors in connection with an alleged domestic violence incident against his wife, Eliana Lopez, on New Year’s Eve, District Attorney George Gascón announced this afternoon. Gascón said a restraining order has been issued that bars Mirkarimi from contacting his wife and child and that bail has been set at $35,000, although he was unaware whether Mirkarimi had been booked yet.

Mirkarimi is being charged with one misdemeanor each of domestic violence battery, child endangerment, and dissuading a witness from testifying. Gascón said their young son, Theo, was present during the incident. Lopez has refused to speak with investigators, but she has publicly denied that her husband has ever abused her.

Mirkarimi has maintained his innocence, as he did again with Lopez by his side during a City Hall press conference held simultaneously with Gascón’s press conference at the Hall of Justice. “We believe that these charges are very unfounded and we will fight those charges. I’m confident in the end that we will succeed,” Mirkarimi said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It was unclear whether the appearance with Lopez violated the restraining order.

Gascón confirmed press reports that Lopez had communicated via text message about the incident with the neighbor who ultimately contacted police – although he refused to disclose or characterize the contents of the communications – and that there was a photo taken of an injury to Lopez’s arm. He also said there are indications that this was not an isolated incident and the investigation is continuing. “We have heard there have been other instances,” Gascón said.

The fact that the charges were misdemeanors wouldn’t require Mirkarimi’s removal from the office he assumed just last weekend if he’s convicted, but he has already been required to relinquish any weapons, including his service revolver. He faces a year in jail and three years probation on the charges.

“While we do not relish having to bring charges against a San Francisco elected official, I have taken an oath to uphold the laws of the state of California and as the chief law enforcement officer for the city and county of San Francisco it is my solemn duty to bring criminal charges when the evidence supports such action. No one is above the law,” Gascón said. “Whether this was the elected Sheriff or any other San Francisco resident, this type of behavior is inexcusable, criminal, and will be prosecuted.”

Gascón also said that while Lopez has refused to cooperate, he believes there is ample evidence to bring charges. “A case is always stronger if the victim is willing to testify. However, it is very common for victims to be uncooperative in domestic violence cases,” Gascón said, noting that his office filed 771 domestic violence cases last year. He also said, “Regardless of whether the victim supports a prosecution, it is the state’s and my office’s obligation to ensure the safety of the victim.”

OccupyOakland rings in the new year with protests against police

Sasha Cuttler
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OccupyOakland rings in the new year with protests against police

Occupy Oakland kicked off the year with two marches protesting police and prisons. A march to the Oakland City Jail on New Year’s Eve was followed by a march against police brutality on New Year’s Day, ending with a rally against police violence. Speakers at the rally indicated that the Bay’s most radicalized Occupy group may focus on an anti-police repression theme in the new year.

About 300 people attended a nighttime demonstration in Oakland City Center on Dec. 31. Protesters left Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza at 9:45 and marched to the city jail. About 20 Occupy Oakland protesters remain in jail after several different incidents of arrest in the past weeks.

At the jail, protesters spoke about police repression, set off fireworks, and chanted “inside or outside, we’re all on the same side.” Many reported seeing solidarity fists sticking out from between bars on the jail’s windows.

The demonstration was part of a national call for New Year’s Eve jail solidarity protests, and similar “noise demonstrations,” in which protesters made noise outside jails to show solidarity with inmates. Similar protests took place in 25 cities around the world.

The march featured a giant banner stating “Fuck the police.”

Around 11:30 pm, protesters marched back for a dance party on the plaza. “At midnight, we did the countdown like everyone else,” said Patrick, who has been involved in OccupySF and Occupy Oakland.

A banner dropped in the plaza read, “Out with the old. Occupy 2012.”

At 1 pm on Jan. 1, Occupy Oakland participants gathered once again. They marched to Fruitvale Bart Station in an anti-police brutality march commemorating Oscar Grant. The unarmed young Oakland man was killed on Jan. 1, 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the shooting and given a two-year prison sentence.

The march was followed by a rally and speak-out with about 500 in attendance. Several women with sons and grandsons who had been killed by police in San Francisco and Oakland shared their experiences. Adam Jordan, member of the Oscar Grant Committee for Justice, said that Occupy Oakland had helped unify the local community against police brutality.

Several speakers agreed that police violence against the poor and people of color and recent arrests at Occupy Oakland, as well as tear gas and other weapons used against Occupy Oakland protesters, are all connected. “It’s all systemic. It’s the same problem,” Jordan said. “The police that are attacking everyone in Occupy Oakland now have been attacking black people for centuries.”

Members of Oscar Grant’s family, including his mother, his young daughter, his fiancé, his uncle, and several cousins, were also present, and many spoke.

Gerald Smith, an organizer with Occupy Oakland and member of the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and Repression, read aloud a message from Angela Davis, who has proposed nationwide demonstrations to free political prisoners on Feb. 20. He also talked about several proposals to continue to protest against police violence in the East Bay, including picketing the Alameda County District Attorney’s office and emergency meetings the following day every time an Oakland resident is killed by a police officer.

In a reference to the leaderless, “horizontal” structure that has defined Occupy groups around the world, Smith said to the crowd, “How much will we do this? It’s up to you. I hope you know by now, you decide everything.”

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