George Gascon

Supes to SF: Let’s opt out of ICE’s automatic fingerprint referral program

Mary Magee
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Supes to SF: Let’s opt out of ICE’s automatic fingerprint referral program

Just two weeks before a controversial collaboration between local police and ICE is set to get switched on in San Francisco, Sups. Eric Mar, John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly and Sophie Maxwell are introducing a  resolution that calls on the city to opt out of a program that could undermine public safety and threaten innocent community members with deportation.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who blew the whistle on this program, and Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson will join the supervisors May 18,  9 a.m. on the steps of City Hall. The resolution will be formally introduced at the Board’s afternoon meeting.

Sup. Mar’s legislative aide Lin-Shao Chin told the Guardian that it looks like an opt-out option is possible.
“It’s very vague, the way it’s written,” Chin said, referring to the contract that the Department of Homeland Security has drafted and that cities are required to sign onto, via a statement of intent.”So, while it doesn’t say you can opt out, it’s very vague, and from what we’ve heard, so far it’s all just been verbal communication between the law enforcement agencies.”

The fed’s proposed Secure Communities Initiative (SCI) has been criticized by civil rights experts.They say the program causes immigrants to be reported for deportation without due process and that it destroys trust between the police and immigrant communities.

The program seeks to check the immigration status of anyone whose fingerprints are taken by law enforcement personnel by cross-checking fingerprints through a federal database. They warn that  immigrants who are simply charged with very  minor charges – such as selling ice cream bars without a permit– or those who are overcharged on arrest–could end up torn from their families without due process and reported for deportation.
 
Advocates see similarities between the program and Arizona’s SB1070, since SCI gives discretion to individual police officers, who may mistakenly arrest or overcharge innocent immigrant residents, thereby triggering their deportation. 

“ICE’s own statistics, cited in news reports, indicate that some 88 percent of the 33,000 immigrants deported to date under the program had committed non-violent offenses or no offense at all,” community advocates note.

“Five percent of people tagged are actually documented, and only 10 percent are actually felons,” Chin claimed, warning that there is also, “the  potential for a whole bunch of databases, including those containing information on legal citizens, to be hooked together in ways that pose civil liberty concerns.”

Earlier this month, Washington, DC’s City Council unanimously introduced legislation that would prohibit local police from sharing arrest and booking information with ICE. But the Board’s resolution will be the first in the nation to urge an opt-out.

“The feds didn’t present opting-out as an option, they made it sound compulsory, but immigrant groups who met with ICE were verbally told the could opt out,” Chin claimed.
“Immigrant advocates in Contra Costa and Alameda counties didn’t even know their cities had opted into the program, until folks were referred to ICE. The good news is that we are touching this before we have been hooked into the program.”

Chin said it seems the SFPD CHief George Gascon’s office is “under the impression that the program is mandatory, but that’s not the impression we get from ICE.”
Chin also noted that the SCI is an “unfunded mandate,” since there could be costs to cities and municipalities who have to hold folks in jail longer than usual, while they wait for the feds to come and pick them up.

“From what we have heard, these [SCI] contracts are negotiated at the state level,” Chin added, suggesting that the ball on this issue in California lies within Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown’s court.
 

Secrecy and criminality in the SFPD

Sasha Cuttler
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15
Secrecy and criminality in the SFPD

Today’s Chronicle unveils more problems at the scandal-plagued San Francisco Police Department, as well as the District Attorney’s Office, raising new questions about their commitment to public accountability and protecting civil liberties at a time when the SFPD is seeking more authority and asking for the public’s trust.

At issue are police officers with criminal histories and disciplinary records serious enough to warrant disclosure to the criminal defendants that they testify against in court, which the story indicates is more than 80 officers. Such disclosures have been a standard requirement for almost 40 years, but neither police nor prosecutors in San Francisco have been making them, a revelation that could overturn hundreds of felony convictions because of this official misconduct, the Chron reports.

That bombshell comes in the wake the SFPD’s crime lab scandal, in which lab technician Deborah Madden – herself a court witness with a criminal history that should have been disclosed to defense attorneys – is suspected of regularly stealing from the seized narcotics that she tested.

The SFPD and its undercover party-busting cop Larry Bertrand are also accused of harassing nightclub owners and patrons, busting private parties using excessive force and warrantless raids, and illegally seizing computers and other personal items – all while publicly seeking to discredit the Entertainment Commission and seize its power to shut down nightlife in the city, as well as seeking greater authority to roust and threaten vagrants by proposing a law to ban sitting or lying on city sidewalks.

SFPD officials have repeatedly claimed the agency can be trusted not to abuse these new authorities, but the latest revelations about criminal cops highlights how difficult it is for the public or the press to keep tabs on the agency.

The Guardian today sent the SFPD a Sunshine Ordinance request for the names and violations of the officers in question, but if the past is a predicator, it’s likely to be denied with the claim that such records are exempt under the Peace Officers Bill of Rights, a state law with strict privacy protections for cops.

Even defense attorneys who have well-established rights to examine an arresting officer’s criminal and disciplinary histories through what’s known at Pitchess motions are routinely stonewalled by the SFPD, say defense attorneys. For example, attorneys for Arash Ghandan, an alleged victim of Bertrand’s brutality and retaliation, are now having a hard time getting information on the officer’s history. “We are in a battle for Bertrand’s personnel file,” Ghanadan’s attorney, Steve Sommers, told the Guardian. “The city of San Francisco just does not hand over documents without a fight.”

In 2006, former SDPD attorney Reno Rapagnani and his wife, former SFPD Sgt. Leanna Dawydiak, raised the issue of SFPD secrecy, its pattern of routinely shielding problem officers from discipline and public scrutiny, and retaliating against whistleblowers – and were then subjected to a witch hunt that forced them out of the department.

More recently, SFPD and its powerful Police Officers Association succeeded in watering down an early warning system for violence-prone officers, removing a number of triggers – such as resisting arrest and assault on a police officer charges that often accompany cases of abusive police conduct – that had been recommended by a police practices expert and which are currently used in San Jose and other cities. 

Meanwhile, District Attorney Kamala Harris, a candidate for California Attorney General, is also being criticized for the latest scandal. Under the Penal Code, she bears the responsibility for ensuring that her prosecutors are doing background checks on all witnesses and sharing that information with defense attorneys.

“Ultimately, the district attorney has to answer for this. It is the prosecution’s duty to check the criminal backgrounds of officers called to testify. That never happened, and as a result, people have been denied fair trials,” Public Defender Jeff Adachi said in a press conference on the issue this morning.

The tough-on-crime era of the 1990s — when politicians, police, and prosecutors did all they could to create new laws and enforcement powers – is over, and we have a severely overcrowded prison system to show for its short-sightedness. But that mentality continues to guide the SFPD.

Since the arrival of Police Chief George Gascon from Arizona last August, SFPD has undertaken a series of crackdowns, including hundreds of drug arrests in the Tenderloin, raids on marijuana-growing operations in the Sunset and parties in SoMa, citing Dolores Park-goers for drinking, and, on Friday, giving at least two Critical Mass bicyclists tickets for amplified music. He’s also said he wants more power to discipline problem officers, but he has yet to show that’s anything more than just talk.

Perhaps now it’s time for the pendulum to swing back in favor of restoring damaged civil rights and raising our expectations of the agencies that have such power over our daily lives and freedom. The SFPD should adequately police itself before it looks for new ways to police the rest of us.   

Day laborers link sit-lie to Arizona crackdown

Sasha Cuttler
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13
Day laborers link sit-lie to Arizona crackdown

After another overwhelming vote against it last night, the sit-lie ordinance (banning sitting or lying on SF sidewalks) proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon is probably toast. But just to make sure, the activists at Stand Against Sit Lie are holding another day of creative protests on sidewalks around the city this Saturday, 4/24.

Among the 13 events scheduled so far will be immigrant day laborers sitting along Cesar Chavez Street between Mission and San Van Ness streets to protest both sit-lie and another legislative attack on immigrants, the controversial Arizona measure that essentially bans undocumented immigrants and encourages police to arrest them using racial profiling techniques.

The SF Day Labor Program is organizing the protest and today sent out a statement linking the two measures, noting that the sit-lie ordinance criminalizing otherwise lawful behavior and targets marginalized populations. Last night at the DCCC meeting, Sup. David Campos also made the point that day laborers who stand on street corners all day seeking work sometimes need to rest.

“Day laborers in San Francisco have to sit down once in awhile when they’re out on street corners waiting for work,” Jose Ramirez, a day laborer and coordinator of the SF Day Labor Program, said in today’s statement.  “Taking us to jail for sitting down in San Francisco is the same as immigrants being targeted by police for simply being Latino.”

After the Planning Commission early this month voted 6-1 to recommend against the sit-lie ordinance – finding that it violated a number of city goals and policies – the measure is awaiting consideration by the Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee, possibly on May 3. 

DCCC: Thumbs down on sit / lie

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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15

San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee voted last night in favor of a resolution opposing San Francisco’s proposed sit / lie ordinance, a law backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon that would make it illegal to sit or lie down on city sidewalks. Gabriel Haaland introduced the resolution, and it passed with overwhelming support.

Here’s a YouTube clip of Haaland’s comments during the committee discussion, filmed by Linda Post.

The DCCC is the policy-making body for the Democratic Party in San Francisco, chaired by former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. The vote followed a lengthy public comment session in which a wide variety of people voiced their opposition to sit / lie, including homeless youth advocates, residents of the Haight, and surprise guest Malia Cohen — formerly an executive staff member for Mayor Gavin Newsom. Some comments provoked laughter (“Sit /lie is like the fungus that won’t go away!” one Tenderloin resident exclaimed), while others framed their arguments in moral terms (“It’s hard to think of it as anything less than criminalizing poverty,” attorney David Waggoner charged). Cohen, for her part, called the ordinance “mean-spirited.”

The central committee members held a meaty discussion too, in which several members shared deeply personal stories to explain their feelings about the ordinance. Haaland described how, after graduating from law school in the mid-1990s, he found it so difficult to find work as a transgendered person that he worried about becoming homeless himself.

Committee member Tom Hsieh, who said he’d lived in the Haight for 10 years, spoke about his young daughter and expressed his discomfort about the “anything goes attitude” he’d seen people on the streets exhibit in her presence. Hsieh was one of a handful of committee members who voted against Haaland’s resolution. The others were Scott Wiener, Meagan Levitan, Mary Jung, and the proxy for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, while Matt Tuchow and the proxy for Assemblymember Fiona Ma abstained.  

Sup. David Campos addressed Hsieh’s concerns directly, saying that he did not believe the proposed ordinance actually addressed the sort of behavior that he found upsetting. “Sit / lie is the wrong focus,” Campos said. “The focus should be, how do we make policing better in San Francisco?” Noting that he had formely served as a police commissioner, he called for more effective community policing.

When he met with the mayor’s office about sit / lie, Campos added, he got the impression that the law was not actually meant to stop people from sitting or lying down on the sidewalk, but to target hostile behavior occurring on the street. “When you pass a law, you have to mean what it says,” he noted. He also pointed out that day laborers who wait on sidewalks for work would essentially be criminalized by the ordinance, since it’s unreasonable to expect that they wouldn’t occasionally sit down while waiting for a job.

Meanwhile, Scott Wiener’s resolution to endorse the Community Justice Center and encourage its expansion into the Haight failed with 14 voting against it and 10 voting to support it, while two abstained. While many committee members voiced general support for the CJC, a few said they resisted the idea of dictating to the Haight that it should install a similar court.

The DCCC also endorsed Linda Colfax and Michael Nava as candidates for Judge.

The crime-lab mess: Who knew?

Zelda Bronstein
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2
The crime-lab mess: Who knew?

It’s no secret that the San Francisco crime lab is a godawful mess; in fact, we first pointed out problems in the lab back in 2001. Nobody took it seriously, and things continued to deteriorate.


Now the Examiner is pointing fingers at District Attorney Kamala Harris, saying her office had word that things weren’t exactly hunkey-dorey at the testing facility long before the current mess emerged. And if, indeed, a senior deputy in the D.A.’s office knew that the crime lab was bungling cases, Harris should have been informed, and she should have gone to the police chief and demanded to know what was going on; after all, lots and lots of her cases are now going south because of screw-ups in the lab.


But let me add another element to this, one that the daily newspapers haven’t put much focus on:


Where the hell was the chief of police, the assistant chief in charge of the crime lab, the crime lab director — all the top SFPD brass — whose job it was to monitor the lab and ensure its quality — while a truly nasty, messy situation was developing? Now, much of this pre-dates Chief George Gascon, and the guy he brought in from L.A., Assistant Chief Jeff Godown, who’s now trying to patch things up. But if the D.A.’s office knew there were problems, and a deputy D.A. was able to point to one lab employee who was allegedly calling in sick just to screw up lab operations, it’s almost inconceivable that nobody at the Police Department had a clue what was going on.


Godown appeared April 19 at the Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee, and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi grilled him about how the situation was allowed to get so bad. Godown’s answer: “We’re still trying to piece together who knew what at the crime lab. Did the commanding officer know? Did the command staff at the Hall of Justice know?”


Good questions, because either somebody knew — and didn’t report it — or nobody knew anything, in which case you wonder why the SFPD is allowed to run a crime lab in the first place.

Sit/lie debate takes a strange new turn

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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67

Emails are rocketing around San Francisco political circles in anticipation of an April 21 meeting of the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC), the policy-making body for the Democratic Party in San Francisco. Committee members are slated to discuss the city’s proposed sit/lie ordinance, a controversial measure backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon meant to afford police more powers for dealing with hostile youth occupying sidewalk space.

Labor activist Gabriel Haaland, a DCCC committee member, touched off a small firestorm early this week when he submitted a resolution against the sit/lie ordinance. Haaland, who has lived in the Haight for around 15 years, said wayward youth have been flocking to that neighborhood and hurling occasional barbs at passersby (including himself) since he can remember, and recent interest in the issue does not make it a new problem. “What would actually solve the problem?” Haaland asked, and offered that sit/lie is not the answer. According to a post on Fog City Journal, his resolution for the Democratic Party to oppose sit/lie was co-sponsored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, Supervisor David Campos, Supervisor Chris Daly, Supervisor Eric Mar, Aaron Peskin, Hene Kelly, Rafael Mandelman, Michael Goldstein, Joe Julian, Jane Morrison, Jake McGoldrick, Michael Bornstein, and Debra Walker.

While some might look at a grungy street kid and see a menace to smooth business functioning or an unruly vagrant not being properly dealt with because the laws are too weak, Haaland said he perceives a kid from a broken home who already feels alienated from society. Incarceration for a nonviolent crime such as lying on the sidewalk would only further alienate these youths, he argued, possibly nudging them toward criminal behavior instead.

“This legislation will not solve longstanding, complex problems,” Haaland’s resolution reads. “City Hall has openly and repeatedly admitted in the press that the criminal justice system is failing to deal with similar issues in the Tenderloin, and has created an alternative known as the Community Justice Court (CJC) that is founded on principles of Restorative Justice.”

Restorative Justice is an alternative approach to dealing with crime that involves bringing together those who are directly affected to understand and address the harm that has been done, with emphasis on personal accountability and transformation. Some models also seek to change the conditions in which harmful actions occurred.

Haaland’s resolution urges the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor to oppose sit/lie, and to explore successful alternatives to incarceration.

The proposal sparked a second resolution, this one from committee member Scott Wiener, who is a candidate for the District 8 seat on the Board of Supervisors. Wiener submitted that the Democratic Party should officially get behind the CJC, and should acknowledge its error in opposing the court, a Newsom pet project, in 2008. “When I saw Gabriel’s resolution … I noticed it contained a positive reference to the [CJC],” Wiener told the Guardian. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

Furthermore, his resolution “encourages the Mayor and Board of Supervisors, budget permitting and based on careful analysis, to consider future expansion of the CJC’s geographic boundaries to include the Haight-Ashbury.”

Wiener is fully behind the sit/lie ordinance. “Right now, the police do not have enough enforcement tools to deal with some of the behavior on the streets,” he said. The measure has been an issue in the District 8 race, since progressive candidate Rafael Mandelman opposes the ordinance.

The resolution contest wasn’t over yet. In response to resolution No. 2, Haaland submitted yet another resolution — along with a personal note that appeared to extend an olive branch — revising Wiener’s proposal by urging support for “the restorative justice model as an alternative to incarceration.” (Haaland wrote an in-depth piece about restorative justice in a recent Guardian editorial.)

“I appreciated him doing that,” Wiener said when asked what he thought about resolution No. 3. “But I’m not convinced that that’s the way to go. That’s why I did not agree to it.”

Perhaps there won’t be any kum-ba-ya moments after all.

Along other email-blast circuits, Haaland’s initial proposal prompted David Villa-Lobos, a strong sit/lie advocate and District-6 contender, to sound his own alarm by urging SFPD officers to attend the April 21 meeting and defend the sit/lie ordinance.

The city Planning Commission recently voted 6-1 against the measure, and a grassroots group that brought opponents of the rule onto city sidewalks last month will hold another Stand Against Sit Lie citywide protest on April 24. The measure is expected to go before the Board of Supervisors near the end of the month.

The DCCC meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 21, at 6 p.m. in the basement auditorium of the California State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave.

Momentum shifts against sit-lie

Sasha Cuttler
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19
Momentum shifts against sit-lie

Proponents of criminalizing sitting or lying on San Francisco sidewalks have seen their prospects of success steadily dwindle in the last week, starting with the creative and well-covered Stand Against Sit-Lie protests on March 27 and continuing through last week’s Planning Commission vote against the measure to yesterday’s debate on BBC’s The World, in which opponent Andy Blue clearly bested proponent Ted Loewenberg.

In fact, Blue and his grassroots band of progressive allies deserve tremendous credit for flipping the momentum on the issue away from the narrative pushed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Police Chief George Gascon, and the reactionary Haight area property owners from Loewenberg’s Haight Ashbury Improvement Association.

While Newsom and Loewenberg tried to argue this was about giving police another “tool” to use against violent street ruffians, Blue and the progressives have correctly pointed out that the overblown examples proponents cite (ie hoodlums punching passersby, barricading businesses, and spitting on babies) are already illegal and that the law actually punishes the simple act of lounging in public.

That argument by progressives got strong support from a Planning Department report on how the sit-lie ordinance cuts against a variety of city policies and goals that promote open space and using sidewalks for more than just transportation, a view that the Planning Commission endorsed on a surprisingly lopsided 6-1 vote, with even Newsom’s appointees crossing him on the issue.

Few members of the Board of Supervisors have embraced the push for sit-lie, so it’s likely to be dead-on-arrival when the board considers it later this month, but Blue’s group isn’t taking any chances. Stand Against Sit Lie is planning another day of creative protest – with more sidewalk picnics, games, and maybe a return of Chicken John’s sidewalk hot tub – on April 24.

Newsom wants more authority for party-crashing cops

Sasha Cuttler
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12
Newsom wants more authority for party-crashing cops

At a time of rising concern about police crackdowns on San Francisco nightlife – including the use of unprovoked brutality, selective harassment, and punitive property seizures – it would seem a strange time to call for abolishing the Entertainment Commission and returning its authority to the San Francisco Police Department. But Mayor Gavin Newsom has now called for doing just that.

Newsom last week refused calls to get involved with mediating a nasty dispute between the SFPD and nightlife workers and advocates, who have filed claims and lawsuits against the city alleging improper police behavior, including a racketeering lawsuit and another lawsuit alleging police retribution against promoter Arash Ghanadan for complaining about mistreatment, for which Police Chief George Gascon is scheduled for a video deposition on April 8 (other depositions involving Gascon and the undercover partners Officer Larry Bertrand and ABC agent Michelle Ott will follow in coming weeks).

The police crackdown, the subject of recent cover stories in both the Guardian and the SF Weekly, has been underway for more than a year and nightlife advocates say it is reminiscent of the arbitrary police enforcement against disfavored clubs and parties in the late 1990s that led to the creation of the Entertainment Commission in the first place.

Making Newsom’s new stance even more puzzling, the commission has been responsive to the overhyped criticism of the commission by nightlife critics, some politicians, and the San Francisco Chronicle and Examimer. The commission voted last night to suspend Suede for shooting out front, a decision that Board of Supervisors President David Chiu (whose North Beach constituents have put pressure on him to rein in problem clubs) cast as a litmus test for the commission, and one it apparently passed. In addition, Commissioner Terrance Alan, who had been criticized for his conflicts of interest, last week announced that he will be stepping down from the commission when his term expires in June. 

“Isn’t anyone paying attention? It’s really got me baffled,” Alan said of the continuing calls to kill the commission. “I don’t know what this is about.”

He isn’t the only one. Commissioner Jim Meko, who had been critical of the commission’s industry-heavy makeup and reluctance to take aggressive action against problem clubs, told the Chronicle that turning permitting and enforcement over to the cops would be much worse.

Sen. Mark Leno, who as a supervisor created the commission back in 2002, agrees. He told us that he opposes the change proposed by Newsom.

“I strongly believe the original reasons for the creation of the commission, an inherent conflict in having the same body that enforces licensing to also issue those licenses, remains,” Leno told us.

Leno also noted that it was only in November that the Board of Supervisors voted to give the commission more authority to suspend the licenses of problem clubs, which they used with Suede, delivering the maximum penalty possible: a 30-day suspension.  

“If they just gave them additional authority, let’s give it a little time to work out before we talk about disbanding them,” Leno said. He also noted that it’s strange to see the mayor and supervisors criticizing the industry-heavy makeup of the commission considering that they’re the one who make those appointments: “That’s in the hands of the board and the mayor.”

Neither Chiu nor Newsom have returned our calls seeking comment, but several Guardian sources with long involvement in the conflict between the SFPD and the nightlife community say the cops – particularly hardasses like Commander James Dudley, who has often made comments critical of nightlife and its promoters — have long sought to have more power over nightclub, private parties, and the citizens who attend them.

But until there is a fair airing of and resolution to the trend of overzealous and belligerent enforcement actions by the SFPD, any move to give that agency more authority to kill the fun in San Francisco is likely to be met with heavy opposition.

 

UPDATE: David Chiu just got back to me, saying Newsom hadn’t consulted him before taking his stand and telling us, “I don’t agree that we need to abolish the commission.”

But as the supervisor from a sometimes-rowdy district that includes a couple of clubs where violence has occurred, Chiu does want to make some changes in how nightlife is governed in San Francisco, seeing a conflict between the Entertainment Commission’s role promoting nightlife and regulating it: “The Entertainment Commission has conflicting missions.”

Chiu said he would like to see nightclub permitting turned over to a body like the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT), which handles street closure permits and has representatives from several city agencies. It would exist alongside the Entertainment Commission, whose work Chiu said has become “overly politicized” in recent months.

At the same time, Chiu said, “I generally agree with” the Guardian’s coverage of the War of Fun, and said that he’s helped facilitate meetings with SFPD to deal with issues like the inappropriate police seizures of DJ’s laptops: “From my perspective, I want to make sure people’s civil rights aren’t being violated.”

But Chiu said the problem seems to lie more with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control than the SFPD: “It appears the ABC has been inappropriately cracking down on the mainstream venues that are trying to do the right thing.”

Chiu said there isn’t a pressing need to act quickly on the Entertainment Commission issue and said that he would work with Leno on the solution, something Leno confirmed, telling us, “I have had some conversations with David Chiu and I’m going to get more involved.”

Lawsuit could expose SFPD-ABC collaboration

Sasha Cuttler
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43
Lawsuit could expose SFPD-ABC collaboration

Imminent legal actions against San Francisco, its Police Department, and the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control could reveal whether a pair of undercover agents went rogue in harassing nightclubs and aggressively busting parties or whether they were acting at the direction of top officials.

Attorney Mark Webb – whose work on a racketeering lawsuit against the policing agencies was the subject of cover stories in the Guardian and the SF Weekly – told us that on Monday, he plans to file that racketeering claim against the city (which will then become a lawsuit if the city rejects it, as it routinely does) and a related lawsuit in Superior Court involving the rough, unnecessary arrest of bartender Javier Magallon and harassment of Mike Quan, owner of The Room, Playbar, and Mist. Narrated surveillance video associated with the case was posted on YouTube yesterday.

Central figures in the lawsuit are SFPD Officer Larry Bertrand and ABC agent Michelle Ott, plain-clothes partners in an aggressive crackdown on nightlife over the last year. Webb said he plans to immediately seek police records and communications and to depose Bertrand and Ott to try to determine who ordered the crackdown, why, and when higher-ups became aware of their aggressive tactics.

“I would like to know if Bertrand is being sent places or if he’s just a lone wolf, and the CADs will show that,” Webb said, referring to computer-assisted dispatch reports that track activities and communications involving individual officers. Those and other records that Webb can access through the court-ordered discovery process could finally shed light on what’s behind the crackdown.

Webb had sought to have Mayor Gavin Newsom mediate this dispute before the cases were filed, saying the racketeering lawsuit will be expensive and divisive, and all the nightlife community really wants is an end to the harassment and assurance that it wouldn’t restart once the media attention passes. And Webb did have conversations with top Newsom aide Mike Farrah and with Nicolas King, Newsom’s liaison to the SFPD, but neither indicated that Newsom was willing to get personally involved. Newsom spokesperson Tony Winnicker also told us Newsom preferred to let Police Chief George Gascon handle the matter.

So Webb said he now plans to move forward with litigation. “If they’re not answering the call at City Hall, let’s get into the arena,” Webb told us.

Webb is an experienced litigator who has won multi-million judgments and who started his career in New York City helping prosecute Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act cases against the mob, and now he plans to use RICO laws against what he says is a city-state enterprise to interfere with lawful nightlife activities in San Francisco.

“Webb gets it. It’s a weird mentality, the really good trial attorneys, and Webb is that,” said attorney Mark Rennie, who has spent decades working with the city’s entertainment industry and has helped advise Webb on the case.

Among the parties involved in the RICO claim are those involved in Webb’s other lawsuit against the city, as well as Club Caliente, its owner Maurice Salinas, Azul, its owner John Bauer, New York nightclub owners Phillipe Rieser and David Brinkley, Vessel, and Siobhan Hefferman, who was arrested by Bertrand and Ott at a private party. Others may be added soon.

Great American Music Hall, Slims, and DNA Lounge also claim to have been harassed by the ABC and have been involved in several meetings that led up to Webb’s lawsuit, but they’re not taking part in the lawsuit yet, partially because they fear retribution from the ABC.

“I probably would have jumped in, but I don’t want to walk into a hearing suing the ABC,” Slims and GAMH general manager Dawn Holliday told us, referring to Slims’ April 1 appeals hearing stemming from noise complaint citations triggered by one particularly cranky neighbor.

DNA Lounge, which has regularly documented the harassment campaign on its blog, decided to wait with the other two clubs before joining the suit. “We thought it was important to stand as a community and there were too many venues that were worried about retribution from the police or ABC if they joined the suit,” DNA general manager Barry Synoground told us. 

But Synoground said he’s anxious to see what Webb’s suit unearths, noting that Bertrand and Ott haven’t been visible in recent weeks as complaints against them went public, and saying he thinks Commander James Dudley and other top SFPD brass are really driving this crackdown: “We may have taken one of his tools off the street, but he’ll find another.”

Synoground said most SFPD officers are very professional and they have no problem working with them, but Bertrand and Ott have unnecessarily and aggressively interfered with their business. Holliday goes even further in praising the SFPD, saying she has a good relationship with Bertrand and everyone in Southern Station, blaming her clubs’ troubles on the ABC and the unwillingness of top city officials to stand up for them.

So the internal SFPD communications, and those between the city and the ABC, could prove revealing. “On April 17, I can send out subpoenas to the cops and I can take Bertrand’s deposition 30 days from Monday,” Webb said, citing statutory response periods.  

Webb expressed confidence in his case and said the police shakedowns and harassment fit well with the RICO statute, which has been used against a wide variety of enterprises over the years, including government agencies.

In fact, an American Bar Association book, “Civil RICO: A definitive guide,” by Gregory P. Joseph, seems to support Webb’s confidence. “Any person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation of Section 1962 of this chapter may sue therefore in any appropriate United States district court and shall recover threefold the damages he sustains and the costs of the suit, including reasonable attorney fees.’ This simple sentence has generated an avalanche of litigation,” the book begins.

It makes clear the intent of Congress that RICO laws “shall be liberally construed to effectuate the remedial purposes” of targeted individual seeking protection from harassment. A 1981 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (U.S. vs. Turkette) made clear even legitimate enterprises such as government agencies could be sued, and a 1994 ruling (NOW vs. Scheidler) settled a long dispute over whether the racketeering needed to be economically motivated, finding that it doesn’t.

Racketeering was defined by Congress as simply committing any of a long list of “predicate acts,” which include violence or the threat of violence, kidnapping (including false arrest), extortion, physical interference with business, malicious prosecution, and abuse of authority, all of which Webb says apply in his case. He is also reviewing the Guardian’s Death of Fun coverage from the last four years to find more examples of predicate acts involving the SFPD.

The hardest part of proving his case could be to show that it interfered with interstate commerce, although Webb said that’s met by efforts by Bertrand and Ott to prevent Rieser and Brinkley from transferring a liquor license from New York. But “Civil RICO” also said caselaw has established that “RICO requires no more than a slight effect upon interstate commerce,” citing the 1989 case U.S. vs. Doherty.

Like many who have had run-ins with Bertrand and Ott, Webb said he’s anxious to see what he finds in discovery: “What’s fascinating about this is you can uncover the whole system.”

Can Newsom save SF parties?

Sasha Cuttler
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Can Newsom save SF parties?

Why won’t Mayor Gavin Newsom save San Francisco’s nightlife and culture? That question was raised toward the end of this week’s cover story on party-crashing cops, but it’s worth highlighting here because Newsom seem uniquely suited to the task of mediating this damaging dispute.

Newsom owned a restaurant and bar before being elected mayor with the strong support of the San Francisco Police Officers Association. The business community is one of his key constituencies, and he constantly talking about the need to promote tourism, which relies on our cultural vitality. He’s the most natural, logical bridge for this divide.

That’s why attorney Mark Webb, who represents several clubs and individuals who have been harassed by SFPD Officer Larry Bertrand, has explicitly been calling for Newsom to get involved.

“I really believe his involvement could help us get to a place of calm,” Webb said. “We have to stop this petty infighting and we have to embrace the cause, which is to make San Francisco’s nightlife an inviting environment.”

DNA Lounge, which is not part of Webb’s lawsuit but has been fighting against harassment by Bertrand and the ABC, also wants to see Newsom broker some peace talks. 

“Absolutely, Gavin certainly has the juice to deal with this problem and we would welcome his involvement,” DNA general manager Barry Synoground told us. “We don’t know why there is such vehemence against nightlife and entertainment…What kills me is we have a large group of responsible purveyors, but we’re not being treated as such. We’re being treated like criminals.”

But Newsom has resisted the call, with his press secretary Tony Winnicker telling us, “I wouldn’t rule it out, but the mayor has department heads for that reason,” saying he preferred for Police Chief George Gascon to tell with it. But the problem is this isn’t a police issue, it’s a political one.

DNA Lounge (which has reguarly blogged the crackdown) has highlighted how SFPD Commander James Dudley sees nightlife in the city: as a nuisance to be abated, rather than an important culture to be embraced and celebrated. Winnicker claims that Newsom understands this: “The mayor understands the importance of a vibrant nightlife.”

But that understanding hasn’t translated into official city policy. Attorney Mark Rennie, who handles permitting and compliance issues for about 40 nightlife and culture clients, said that San Francisco has become notorious for making life difficult for club owners and other purveyors of fun. 

“The city has always had this love-hate relationship with nightclubs. But it’s really bad now,” Rennie said, noting how welcoming other local cities are toward nightclubs, which are important economic drivers. “Berkeley gets it. Oakland gets it. I don’t know why San Francisco doesn’t get it.”

Which is strange because, of all people, Newsom should get it. He should understand the natural tension between certain elements of both the police and nightlife communities and, valuing them both, try to find a way to solve this problem. So whatdaya say, Gavin? After you’re done try to clean up the mess you created with the labor unions, how about stepping in to address a problem that is closer to your sweet spot?

 

Image by Luke Thomas/Fog City Journal

Supes pass resolution protecting SF Patrol Special Police Officers

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Supes pass resolution protecting SF Patrol Special Police Officers

Jane Warner, or “Officer Jane” as she’s known throughout the Castro, had a rough Christmas Eve. It started when Warner, a San Francisco Patrol Special Police officer who was out walking the foot beat, was alerted that a fight had broken out at Trigger, a bar on Market Street. When she arrived, she says she encountered a drunk and belligerent man. “He got more excited and charged the doormen, he pushed me, I pushed him back, and I said, ‘You’re under arrest,’” Warner told the Guardian shortly after the incident occurred. “He started to walk away from me, I drew my baton, I hit him twice, and he turned around and he hit me and I went to block his punch and he broke my arm,” at which point she fell to the ground in pain. “It cracked the bone right between the elbow and the shoulder,” she said.

According to a police report, several San Francisco police officers arrived on the scene shortly after and arrested the man, James Crayton McCullough. But when they arrived at the police station and tried to get him out of the police car, according to the report, he wedged his body onto the floor of the vehicle and allegedly shouted at one of them, “I’m going to shoot you in the fucking head!” Later, he was transported to San Francisco General Hospital because he had a laceration on his head, where he allegedly threatened a nurse.

Before he was through that night, he’d amassed six felony charges and three misdemeanor charges, District Attorney spokesperson Brian Buckelew told us shortly after the incident. He somehow managed to make $250,000 bail. But he was issued orders to stay 150 yards away from Warner, as well as Castro bars Trigger and Badlands. McCullough also received an order to stay out of the entire Castro neighborhood — a move Buckelew says is highly unusual.

The incident prompted Sup. Bevan Dufty to introduce a resolution to encourage San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon to consider imposing an increase in penalties for an assault on a Patrol Special Police Officer. This past Tuesday, at the Board of Supervisors meeting, that resolution was approved.

Since Warner was assaulted, other incidents have occurred in which Patrol Special Officers were placed in harm’s way, according to a press release sent out yesterday by the organization.

San Francisco’s Patrol Special Police, roughly 40 strong, is a private force dating back to the days of the Gold Rush. In a rare arrangement, they’re authorized under the City Charter to patrol different neighborhoods, hired by private clients such as merchant associations, and they adhere to regulations set by the Police Commission. While they aren’t sworn officers, they undergo a training process similar to that of SFPD officers and they make arrests. Warner describes the patrol specials’ model as a form of “community policing” which she says emphasizes crime prevention.

When asked about Dufty’s resolution in an interview with the Guardian last week, Gascon was somewhat resistant to the idea. He said he had a problem with private policing in general. “This is more of a private police model,” he said. “Their uniforms are very similar to the San Francisco Police Department. So, quite frankly to the majority of the public, it is very hard to distinguish between one and the other.”

“I understand where Supervisor Dufty’s coming from,” Gascon added. “These are people that are certainly out there providing public safety services and they sometimes become the target of people that, for whatever reason or another, they don’t want to be subject to their authority. The problem that I have again is that it continues to blur the line of a very unusual process. … There’s no question that in some places there are people who certainly are in favor of having patrol specials. This is not to take away from the quality of service that patrol special officers provide because I think some of them are very professional and they are very courteous and very effective in what they do. ”

While it’s a felony to assault a San Francisco Police Officer, there are no special charges in the penal code for an individual who commits an assault on a patrol special officer. Dufty’s resolution asks the Police Commission and Gascon to provide Patrol Specials with “the same protections that San Francisco Police Department officers and a number of others who are protected under state code from being assaulted in the line of duty.”

Gascon’s remarks at press conference are stunning

Zelda Bronstein
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Gascon’s remarks at press conference are stunning

By Brady Welch

Police Chief George Gascon held a press conference Feb 25th to discuss his desire to arm his officers with Conducted Energy Devices (known to you and me as Tasers or stun guns) — and his comments demonstrated that the chief still doesn’t get it.

Gascon is arguing that Tasers could prevent some deadly police shootings. But there’s a much larger issue that he seems to be ignoring.

On December 28, 2009, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals right here in San Francisco affirmed the decision of a lower court that an unarmed man shot with a Taser can sue the city of Coronado, just outside San Diego. The zapping caused Carl Bryan to fall face first into the pavement, thus knocking out his four front teeth. To add insult to injury, one of the Taser probes lodged in the man’s flesh, requiring a doctor’s scalpel to remove it.
And what was this citizen’s crime? Getting upset with himself for being pulled over twice in the same day for routine traffic infractions. According to court records, the 21-year-old Bryan was driving home on a Sunday morning after a long night with friends and got pulled over for speeding. Later that same morning, he got stopped again, this time for not wearing a seat belt (which he forgot to put back on after initially getting stopped).

Bryan pulled to the curb and started punching the steering wheel, shouting expletives at himself for being so careless. He then got out of the car “yelling gibberish and hitting his thighs,” the court decision reports. The officer yelled at Bryan to get back in the car, but Bryan apparently didn’t hear him. Then the cop, without warning, shot the kid with his Taser gun.
Bryan didn’t die. He also wasn’t on drugs (Tasers are particularly dangerous to people under the influence of stimulants). But he was hurt — and at least according to the court files, there’s good grounds to argue that he should never have been zapped in the first place.

Gascon acknowledged that Tasers can be dangerous, although he offered a somewhat morbid justification of taser-implicated deaths—loosely paraphrased, he suggested that if you ask a crackhead to run around the block, that person would probably suffer cardiac arrest anyway. And he talked about special training to avoid police Tasing of drug-addled and mentally ill people.

But what he’s missing — and what has a lot of community activists concerned — is the situation in Coronado: The Taser shooting of someone who should never have been shot with anything. Two police commissioners, Petra DeJesus and Vincent Pan, have expressed concerns over whether people can trust a San Francisco police department armed with semi-lethal weapons that officers might feel inclined to used in decidedly less than semi-lethal situations. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion is only the most recent and ballyhooed case.

What was particularly galling during the chief’s press conference was when Taser-supporting commissioners Tom Mazzucco and Jim Hammer came forward to plead the case for using Tasers on the mentally ill — as opposed to real bullets — almost as if to say, Certainly, we can all agree on this.

Well, maybe not. Here’s what the Ninth Circuit had to say:

A mentally ill individual is in need of a doctor, not a jail cell, and in the usual case—where such an individual is neither a threat to himself nor to anyone else—the government’s interests in deploying force to detain him is not as substantial as its interest in deploying that force to apprehend a dangerous criminal. Moreover, the purpose of detaining a mentally ill individual is not to punish him, but to help him. The government has an important interest in providing assistance to a person in need of psychiatric care; thus, the use of force that may be justified by that interest necessarily differs both in degree and in kind from the use of force that would be justified against a person who has committed a crime or who poses a threat to the community.

In other words: Cops shouldn’t be shooting mentally ill people anyway, with Tasers or with pistols.

And if you give the cops Tasers, it’s almost certain that they’ll zap a whole lot of people who were, as one critic put it, “guilty of nothing more than mouthing off to a cop on the bus.”

BTW, there’s an interesting Amnesty International report on Tasers here

 

 

 

The attack on the SF left

Zelda Bronstein
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The attack on the SF left

If I were a political consultant hired by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the big developers and the landlords and Mayor Newsom, and my job was to launch an effective attack on the progressive movement in the city and undermine progressive control of the Board of Supervisors, here’s what I’d do:


1. I’d attack district elections. See, every time the downtown folks have tried to run candidates in swing districts under the existing system, they’ve lost. That’s in part because the business types can’t seem to find decent candidates, and part because money doesn’t rule in districts, so progressives who can mobilize at the grassroots level have a better chance.


So when you can’t win the game you try to change the rules. You can’t do it too directly, because the polls show that people like having district supervisors, so I’d come up with a “hybrid” plan — say, seven districts and four at-large supervisors. Since anyone who runs at large in this city needs gobs of campaign cash, that would pretty much guarantee that four board members would be accountable to downtown. Then draw the districts to create two moderate-conservative seats, and the progressives have lost control.


I’d launch this by planting stories in the San Francisco Chronicle about a “growing movement” to change the way the supervisors are elected — even thought there is no real grassroots movement.


But that creates the appearance that’s needed to begin raising money and preparing for a ballot initiative. It’s not hard to get the Chron to bit on something like this; C.W. Nevius, the local columnist who lives in the East Bay suburbs, never liked district elections, so he’ll play along and the Chron’s corporate ownership, which is close to the Chamber folks, never liked the system either. You can expect an editorial from the Chronicle Feb. 28th calling for a partial repeal of district elections.


The argument won’t have anything to do with the fact that the Chron doesn’t like the policies this particular board has passed; it will be all about the need for a “citywide perspective.” Now, that’s just horseshit, since the district boards have done an immense amount of work on citywide issues (like mininum wage and health care) that the at-large boards would never do.


But “citywide perspective” is a term that’s been focus-group tested and sounds good.


2. I’d look for a nice wedge issue for the November elections — something that could be used against progressives in swing districts. When Newsom ran for mayor the first time, he used “care Not Cash” — a well-funded attack on homeless people.


And gee, guess what? There’s another nice anti-homeless measure that’s recently been floating around, and it comes from the media-savvy police chief, George Gascon. It’s called a “sit-lie” law — legislation that would criminize the act of sitting on the sidewalk. It’s got a lot of populist zing to is, particularly since Gascon is talking about the need to clean up Haight Street, where some ill-behaved young people have been bothering the merchants and shoppers.


A November ballot initiative on a sit-lie law would allow downtown to raise a lot of money — and attack people like Rafael Mandelman and Debra Walker, candidates for supervisor in districts where a simplistic attack on the homeless might play. 


3. I’d try to split the city’s labor movement and drive labor away from the progressives. The obvious tactic: Construction jobs. I’d get every construction trade union member to campaign in District 10 for a supervisor who will support Lennar Corp.’s redevelopment project, and I’d attack any supervisor or candidate who supports limits on, say, buildings that shadow the parks and call them anti-jobs.


4. I’d launch a quiet effort to raise a big chunk of money to push pro-downtown candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee. The DCCC used to be something of a political backwater, but under progressive control, it’s become a significant force in local elections. The DCCC controls the local Democratic Party endorsements and money — which can be a big factor in district supervisorial races.


Now: I have no evidence that any individual consultant has created any such plan — but it’s sure an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?


What I see right now is a coordinated, orchestrated attack on the left — and I’m getting a little nervous that our current leadership on the Board of Supervisors isn’t doing enough about it.


 

Taser trouble

Zelda Bronstein
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Taser trouble

You can say this for Police Chief George Gascon: He’s not shy. He’s pushing so many things, on so many fronts, that it’s hard to keep track, and some of them are real problems. One example: The Feb. 17th Police Commission meeting, where Gascon paraded a bunch of experts to talk about how great it would be if the SF cops had tasers.

I’m not against tasers per se; I’d rather the cops were shooting people with less-lethal weapons than with pistols. Quite a few people might be alive today if the more trigger-happy among Gascon’s force pulled a trigger that didn’t send a deadly bullet into a suspect’s body.

But you have to remember that a taser can be a lethal weapon, too; people die from taser blasts.

And when I talked to the folks in the SFPD public affairs office recently, they told me that the chief was drafting guidelines on the use of tasers, and that the taser would fall somewhere in between the use of a baton (non-lethal in all but the most exceptional cases) and a gun (lethal). That’s the wrong approach — and it’s what’s missing from Gascon’s argument.

A cop is only allowed to pull a gun in a situation where lethal force is justified; that is, when the officer’s life of the life of another person is in imminent danger. Same rules should go for the taser. That’s where the commission has to come in, because I don’t think Gascon is going to make that policy.

In fact, I’m getting the impression that the chief doesn’t like anyone else to make policy for him. That’s why he’s got an oped in the Chronicle today that goes after two proposals from Sup. Ross Mirkarimi. Gascon:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has proposed two pieces of legislation that would directly impact my ability as chief to provide effective and efficient public safety. One of these pieces, which would establish a community-based foot-beat patrol program, directs subordinates under my command to establish staffing levels absent my direction or control. The second, which seeks to require the police department to itemize the cost of dignitary protection, would jeopardize the safety of public officials who receive valid threats against themselves or their loved ones. These legislative proposals directly circumvent my ability to lead this department effectively. This ultimately makes the goal of making San Francisco the safest large city in America more difficult to achieve.

Translation: I don’t like the San Francisco supervisors setting law-enforcement policy. But actually, that’s the board’s job — to set the rules for how all city departments, including the SFPD, operate.

I can’t figure out why Gascon is fighting this foot-patrol legislation. He admits that foot patrols are a good idea and would solve a lot of crime problems. He just says he doesn’t have the budget. So take that to Mirkarimi and the other board members; tell them you’ll do foot patrols if they’ll fund it. Discuss the police budget in open session with the Budget and Finance Committe (which Mirkarimi sits on) and look for ways to make it work.
That’s how things get done in this city.

Day laborers protest U-haul and police crackdown

Sasha Cuttler
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Day laborers protest U-haul and police crackdown

Every day, on my bike ride to work, I see the day laborers lined up along Alameda Street across from the U-haul office, hoping to get work. It’s a great little community, full of friendly people (mostly Latino men, but sometimes a couple young African-Americans as well), and they wave, smile, and try to get me to jingle my bell or honk my horn at them as I pass, which I always oblige.

But a couple months ago, the scene changed. Police officers now show up more often to hassle the day laborers, often demanding they clear the street. So they linger on adjacent streets, still trying to make themselves available for work, but clearly intimidated and wary of getting busted.

Well today, the workers pushed back, with the help of La Raza Centro Legal’s Day Laborer Program and nearly 100 supporters, who came to chant and protest a new U-Haul manager who they say constantly harasses them and calls the police three times a day. That manager, who was chatting with two cops at the scene, refused to identify himself or speak with me, referring me to their corporate flak (who hasn’t returned my call).

Anecdotally, we’ve heard that day laborers around the city have been rousted by police far more often in recent months, just one more of the SFPD crackdowns under new Police Chief George Gascon, which include raids on pot growers in the Sunset, mass arrests in the Tenderloin, regular raids of underground parties in SoMa, and lots more citations for drinking in Dolores Park and other parks.

The Taser problem

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By Tim Redmond

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Still not a lot of details on the machete-wielding man shot and killed by the SF cops this weekend, but the incident is once again renewing the discussion of Tasers.

In the wake of a study written by Assistant Chief Morris Tabak that says that some fatal shootings could have been avoided if the cops had less-lethal alternatives, the Police Commission is going to look at the use of the high-voltage stun guns. Chief George Gascon favors equipping officers with the weapons.

It’s probably true that Tasers would have saved lives if the cops had zapped some suspects instead of shooting them. In the Asa Sullivan case, for example, an unarmed mentally ill man died when officers opened fire; a less-lethal alternative would have been more than adequate to subdue the guy.

But Tasers have their own problems — particularly if officers are authorized to use them in situations where drawing a firearm would be prohibited. Consider the case of Oscar Grant, killed by a BART police officer who later argued that he thought he was pulling a Taser, not a pistol.

Grant clearly wasn’t enough of a threat that the BART police should have used lethal force to subdue him. But using a Taser apparently seemed just fine. See, once you give the cops Tasers, they’re going to see them as a simple way to incapacitate unruly people — unless there are very clear rules. Tasers can kill people, too, and should be treated as an alternative to lethal force — not an alternative to handcuffs.

Why foot patrols make sense

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By Tim Redmond

I had lunch with the chief of police yesterday. George Gascon is far sharper than the past few people to occupy that office, and seems to understand the need to reach out to the news media and to people who don’t agree with him. He’s actually a pretty skilled politician — which is a bit scary to folks who think he’s going in the wrong direction

And on a lot of things, I think he is.

We talked a lot about the sit-lie law that he’s been pushing, which I wrote about this week. Gascon insisted that he doesn’t want to use the law as a way to sweep homeless people off the streets; in fact, he told me, he doesn’t want to put anyone in jail, not at first, anyway. He’s rather use the law as a tool to get the young bullies and thugs (who are, by the way, a real problem on Haight St.) into the criminal justice system, where they might get access to services that could help them change their behavior.

I don’t see it working. What I see is either (a) the troublemakers will simply stand up when the cops arrive and walk to another part of the street or (b) some will get arrested, released, arrested, released, etc. — rejecting or ignoring all possible services — then ultimately, on the fourth or fifth offense, wind up in jail.

And all of of those arrests and court hearings are expensive.

In fact, Gascon and I agreed on two central points: (1) Putting two cops on foot patrol on Haight Street, between Buena Vista Park and Golden Gate Park, 13 hours a day, would end the problem pretty quickly and (2) the cost of doing that, which he put at close to $1 million a year (a bit high, I think), is probably lower than the cost of arresting, prosecuting, defending and incarcerating the Haight bullies.

This is something to look at.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to hold a hearing on the issue, and I think he ought to ask the controller or the budget analyst to examiner the real costs: What’s the price tag of foot patrols in the Haight? What’s the cost to the district attorney, the public defender, the courts and the Sheriff’s Office of implementing a sit-lie law? And could the foot patrols be a cheaper way of solving this problem?

And whatever Gascon says about his intent, once you pass a law like this — a law making it a crime to sit or lie on the sidewalk — it’s there, on the books, ripe for abuse. Gascon won’t be the chief forever. And he has to answer to the mayor, who may want to use the law a little differently.

So before we go that route, why not try foot patrols? According to Gascon, the department can’t afford it; with a huge budget deficit and cuts on the way for every agency, spending a million bucks on Haight Street doesn’t make sense. But the supervisors should look at this citywide; spending $1 million on preventing crime with foot patrols (if that’s what it would really cost) may be a lot more cost-effective than spending $2 million arresting, prosecuting, defending, sentencing and incarcerating people.

It’s at least worth a try.

Police chief: SFPD dignitary security costs were a mystery even to him

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By Rebecca Bowe

San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon offered an explanation yesterday for why it took so long for the San Francisco Police Department to provide any figures whatsoever on how much it spends on security detail for elected officials: Apparently, no one really had any idea what the costs actually were.

“Quite frankly, when I first came here I asked multiple times, how much are we spending in dignitary protection? And I could not get the answer within my department,” Gascon told the Board of Supervisors yesterday.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi first began asking for this information back in July. “When we got the first cut of information approximately two weeks ago, I looked at it and I said, this information does not seem right,” Gascon recounted. “Go back and work on this.”

When his staff finally produced a figure of around $2 million for all dignitary security costs for the budget year ending in June 2009, Gascon says he immediately shared that figure with the media and members of the Board. This past weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story about the cost, which includes protection for the mayor, politicians visiting from outside San Francisco, and others.

“I don’t believe it is copasetic to allow a black ops budget to exist” within the SFPD, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said at yesterday’s Board meeting, during a discussion about legislation he introduced to require elected officials to reimburse the city for the cost of bodyguards on the SFPD payroll when they’re out on the campaign trail.

Guarded secrets

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By Rebecca Bowe

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How much did the mayor’s security detail cost when he campaigned outside SF? SFPD isn’t telling.

When San Francisco Police Department Assistant Chief Jim Lynch spoke before the Rules Committee this morning, he mentioned that the Police Chief George Gascon was unable to attend because he was at the swearing-in ceremony of Los Angeles’ new police chief.

“Out of curiousity,” Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier asked Lynch, “How many officers went to L.A. with Chief Gascon?” She was referring to his security detail for an event that was clearly unrelated to San Francisco city business.

Lynch replied that he could not say. When pressed whether security had in fact been provided for him by SFPD, he gave the same response. Sorry. Can’t tell you.

It’s the same response that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi received for months when he tried in vain to get the dollar amount for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s security detail for campaign-related events outside city and state borders. According to the SFPD, divulging that information could compromise security tactics.

The discussion at this morning’s Rules Committee focused on legislation authored by Mirkarimi, co-sponsored by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Chris Daly, which would require elected officials to reimburse the city for the cost of “dignitary security” (think bodyguards) when that protection is provided on the campaign trail outside San Francisco.

“It’s not about one elected official,” Mirkarimi noted, while acknowledging that Newsom’s frequent travel had sparked interest in the issue. “It’s about reviewing standard operating procedure,” he said, and creating a system for cost recovery when taxpayer dollars are used to send SFPD forces off to campaign-related events. With the General Fund already in rough shape, Mirkarimi added, “fiscal vigilance is demanded.”

Newsom’s back — and so is the budget axe

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By Tim Redmond

The mayor is speaking to the press again. Oh goodie.

First, Hank Plante of KCBS TV gets a sit-down interview that’s stunning in its lack of substance. Newsom gets all pissy and defensive about his trip to Hawaii, says he doesn’t read the newspapers and complains about inaccurate reporting without ever saying what’s inaccurate. (I like Brock’ suggestion at sfist:

Why couldn’t Newsom tell CBS 5’s Hank Plante, “Yeah, I took off to Hawaii. And what, hooker? Somebody hold my earrings.”

Then when Plante finally starts asking about the budget deficit, the mayor totally ducks and won’t say anything except that it’s going to be a lot of work to resolve.

Then the mayor’s office kicks the press out of a department head briefing on the budget and follows it up with some brief public remarks that show:

1. Newsom would much rather downplay this and say it’s no big deal, and

2. There’s no serious talk about raising new revenues (except from selling off the city’s rental housing stock and creating lots of new condominiums) and

3. Every department is being asked to cut 20 percent and prepare for as much as 30 percent cuts — but that’s going to mean really, really ugly decisions that Newsom can’t possibly make. For example, the Sheriff can only cut 20 percent by letting people out of jail — many of them the same people who Newsom’s new police chief, George Gascon, just put in jail with his much-lauded Tenderloin busts. Then the Tenderloin crackdown will become a joke, because nobody arrested will actually do any jail time, because the city can’t afford to lock them up. Oh, and there won’t be enough cops to arrest them, anyway — unless Newsom has Gascon pull cops out of other, richer neighborhoods to patrol the Loin, which may be a fine idea but will create such political backlash among Newsom’s allies that he won’t dare do it.

And closing fire stations seems to be political poison, so the mayor won’t want to do that.

Which means public health and human services and rec-park will have to cut way more than 30 percent to save police and fire, which means we won’t really have much of a public health, human services or rec-park system any more.

4. The mayor is doing nothing to prepare the public to face the fact of life — we’re going to need significant tax increases, or we’re going to see the devastation of the public service sector in this city.

Welcome back, Gavin.

Oh, and by the way: The last chief executive I remember saying that he didn’t read the newspapers was Ronald Reagan. Great role model. Either Newsom is lying (which I suspect; I can’t believe the mayor of San Francisco actually avoids reading the daily newspaper) or the guy is more out of touch, arrogant and clueless than even I am willing to believe.

The cops are killing SF’s public parties

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Story and photos by Steven T. Jones

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Cops immediately shut down the street party outside the Ferry Building…

While there are some good things about the engaged style of new Police Chief George Gascon, it’s been a major disappointment to watch the SFPD take a zero tolerance approach to public partying in recent weeks, making San Francisco less hospitable to the fun, free, grassroots events that make this such a great city.

On Halloween night, the cops shut down the Take Back Halloween Flashdance party before organizer Amandeep Jawa even turned on his stereo (luckily, that resourceful crew stealthily relocated to Pier 7 and threw a great dance party that didn’t hurt or offend anyone).

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…so Deep secretly moved it to nearby Pier 7.

The next day, the Brass Tax Halloween Renegade dance party – the highlight of Halloween for many lovers of the beat — got shut down by the cops in each of three remote spots, for no good reason.

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The victimless criminals of Brass Tax covered a lot of ground yesterday.

Mystery of the missing de la Plaza coroner’s report

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Text by Sarah Phelan

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Rumors mount that a third review of Hugues de la Plaza’s death exists, this time concluding it was a homicide. If true, these rumors also means his killer could still be walking the streets of San Francisco, knife at hand.

By most accounts, there exists a third but as yet undisclosed coroner’s report on the 2007 stabbing death of Hugues de la Plaza, a San Francisco resident with French and American dual nationality. Only this report allegedly concludes that de La Plaza’s death was a homicide, a finding that puts this review on the same page as a report that the French authorities released last year, and at odds with the findings of the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office, which classified it as “undetermined” cause.

According to de la Plaza’s ex-girlfriend Melissa Nix, the SFPD and Medical Examiner Venus Azar, are sitting on this third review which was carried out, over 18 months ago, in Feb. 2008 by Marin County Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Ferenc (who used to work with the SF Medical Examiner’s office) at the request of SFPD Deputy Chief of Investigations David Shinn (who is headed to SFO thanks to SFPD Chief George Gascon’s command staff shuffle).

Nix claims Ferenc completed his report pro bono in March 2008, gave it to both Shinn and Azar, then made repeated calls to Azar, but allegedly never heard back.

And the Chronicle cites Bill Fazio, the attorney for Hugues’ parents, saying that Ferenc’s report concludes that de la Plaza’s death was a murder.

But Fazio told us today that he has not seen the report, but simply heard about it from Ferenc, a few weeks ago.

“I need to get a copy,” said Fazio, adding that he hopes to have a three-way video conference between Azar, the French authorities and Ferenc, in the near future, third review in hand.

“Ferenc concludes without doubt that this was a homicide and doesn’t understand how anyone could think otherwise,” Fazio asserted.

While on the phone, Fazio pointed out that while the SFPD made a big deal of the fact that de la Plaza never called 911, as they sought to explain the SF Medical Examiner’s “undetermined cause of death” ruling, they did not make an equally big deal of the fact that de la Plaza was bleeding profusely and had a collapsed left lung, thanks to his knife wounds,.

But these two factors would have made it difficult for de la Plaza to breathe and speak, let alone call 911, before his death, Fazio said.

Noting that SFPD was also never able to explain why there was no knife in the apartment, if de la Plaza stabbed himself, then locked himself into his apartment to die, as was suggested, Fazio said, “I don’t understand why they don’t treat it as a homicide.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi also believes the Ferenc report exists and he wants to see it released as soon as possible.

“There are a number of independent testimonies that speak to its existence,” Mirkarimi said. “What’s unconscionable is if SFPD has been sitting on it all this time and not disclosing its existence. I think it’s stunning how these events have unfolded and been treated since day one. I am now wondering if there is an effort to cover up the dysfunctionality of how this case was treated.”

“As I have tried to stay on top of all the violent crimes in my district, this one never added up,” Mirkarimi continued. “It needs to be dealt with in an honest and professional way.”

Mirkarimi also noted that the unresolved status of the de la Plaza death speaks to a larger worry: the role of unresolved homicides in the SFPD.

To date, no one at SFPD has given up the alleged Ferenc report, or made its contents public. But the SFPD released preliminary findings from a report by the LAPD—carried out at the request of newly sworn-in SFPD chief and former LAPD member George Gascón– earlier this year, at which time SFPD claimed the LAPD report was leaning towards calling it a suicide.

But as Fazio notes, the LAPD report itself has not been made available nor has LAPD commented on it.

And as Fazio observes, at the very least, the release of the Ferenc report would constitute a tiebreaker, in a world where the French say that de la Plaza was murdered, the SFPD can’t say, and LAPD calls it a suicide.

And it would also offer de la Plaza’s family, who don’t believe he killed himself, some long-sought solace. Assuming the Ferenc report exists. On the other hand, if it exists and its findings prove true, then this means that Hugues de la Plaza’s killer may still be on the loose. Stay tuned.

Rhetoric and reform at SFPD

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EDITORIAL We’re glad to see San Francisco’s new police chief, George Gascon, is talking about reform. He’s talking about opening up the mediaphobic culture at the SFPD, bringing in new blood at the management level, shifting schedules so more experienced cops are available at night (when most crime takes place). He wants to focus the discipline process on the most serious departmental offenders — the handful of officers who are responsible for the majority of the misconduct problems.

Those are, generally, good signs. If he’s serious about changing the moribund, sometimes corrupt, and generally toxic climate in the department, though, he’ll need more than promises. Over the next few months, he needs to take action on a few key fronts.

•Send a clear message about discipline. The weakest link in San Francisco’s civilian oversight system has traditionally been the police chief. The Office of Citizen Complaints has its problems, and some valid cases get dismissed, but overall, the agency investigates and recommends disciplinary action in most of the serious abuse cases. But the former chief, Heather Fong, repeatedly declined to impose credible discipline, either dismissing or ignoring the OCC’s findings. One single officer, Jesse Serna, has so far cost the city $580,000 in legal settlements stemming from improper conduct — but he’s still on the force.

Yes, the OCC has a huge backlog, and some of the cases the agency presents may be weak. Gascon has proposed dismissing about 75 cases now before the Police Commission — mostly, he says, minor offenses like failing to file a proper police report. But the cases that have gone before the commission typically aren’t minor — offenses that could result in as much as a 10-day suspension are resolved by the chief. The commission gets cases that are more serious — or that the chief refuses to act on.

Before Gascon starts talking amnesty and clearing minor cases, he needs to demonstrate that he’s going to take a hard line on the serious cases. He claims that "a very small group" in the department has a history that’s "irredeemable." Once he’s helped the commission fire those officers — and sent a clear message that abuse won’t be tolerated — he’ll have the credibility to talk about dismissing less-serious cases.

•Don’t be afraid of the POA. There are some good, honest, experienced, qualified officers in the management and command ranks — but there are also people who hold powerful positions because of their union and political connections. And frankly, the Police Officers Association has been a major obstacle to reform. The POA doesn’t run the department, shouldn’t get to chose managers, and needs to be informed by the chief that the needs of the current (sometimes abusive) union leadership are not going to drive department policy.

•Take a public stand against secrecy. Under Chief Fong, the San Francisco Police Department seemed terrified of sunshine. The media relations department acted as if releasing any information to the media was a terrifying prospect. Officers and detectives were told to avoid talking to reporters. And the cops — who, for reasons we still don’t understand, have the authority to unilaterally decide who qualifies for a police press pass — use the most narrow interpretation and keep bloggers, small publications, and nontraditional media out of the information loop.

Gascon has done the right thing by bringing in outside help and vowing to expand his definition of news media. But given the stifling climate of secrecy in the department, he needs to do more. Directing his staff to cooperate with the press (through a public general order) would be a big step. Announcing that all police reports (unless they involve a confidential source or situation) will be posted on the Web would go even further.

Chief Gascon has the chance to completely turn around a dysfunctional department. But small steps aren’t going to do it.

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