h. Brown
Photo by Luke Thomas
By h. Brown
April 29, 2008
MOCJ offers 250k bribes
Police reform in San Francisco is a casualty of Gavin Newsom’s run for governor. He needs the endorsement of not just the local POA (Police Officers Association) but also of the State prison guards’ union. He ain’t gonna do nothing to offend either group, like make cops in San Francisco actually walk foot patrols and meet the public.
Here’s what D-8 supe, Bevan Dufty said at yesterday’s meeting of the Board’s Public Safety committee: “We put out a hand to your department to shake and there’s no hand offered back. I’m told by captains and others that they are told by command staff not to talk to us.”
You figuring it out, Bevan? You aren’t the only one they don’t talk to. They don’t talk to the public either. They have zero street cred in the hood cause they don’t talk to us. Their idea of a ‘foot patrol’ is 4 cops holding hands blocking a sidewalk while drinking coffee. I shit you not. That’s what they do. Wanna know why?
Cause it’s safer. For them. That’s all they care about. A union’s job is to provide the best pay and safest work space for its members and the POA has certainly done that. Only problem is that when they hide in their cars, the streets and sidewalks become more dangerous for those of us who don’t carry guns and badges, or walk 4-abreast.
They have it all wrong.
We don’t want them on the street and talking to us as a shield. Even a traditional beat cop on walking patrol is only in your area for a few minutes an hour. What really helps is the relationships that cops build while pausing to talk with people along their beat. That little old lady you helped to carry her bag from the Farmers Market, might help you later.
Like, when gunshots ring out and you’re chasing a killer through a Tenderloin SRO, she might lean out her door and point the way the guy with the smoking gun went, and later even testify to it in court. If she likes you. If she knows you. If she trusts you. The department is not trying to build those kinds of relationships.
Yeah, it’s all about developing “witnesses that stick” as D5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi who hosts these updates told Commander Murphy and Lieutenant Staskoz, the new head of Homocide. They weren’t impressed. The increased murder rate has nothing to do with them not doing their jobs. No, it’s equipment failure and not the fact that their force is completely isolated, by design, from the people in the neighborhoods they’re supposed to protect.
Cops present a different idea
Kevin Ryan, head of Gavin’s MOCJ brought over an idea from the Feds. Bribe people to drop the lip. Not just a few bucks either. The forthright former Northern Cal U.S. Attorney announced he was offering a quarter of a million dollars each for ‘witnesses that stick’ for 10 murder cases.
It came from out of nowhere and none of the morning publications picked up on it. They should. It’s pretty radical. He couldn’t answer Sophie Maxwell’s questions as to where the money would come from or, pretty much, anything else.
These cops have taken to treating Maxwell like shit (witness Inspector Falzone last week) and I’m starting to think it’s racial and misogynist. Time for some kind of Board open letter to the cops to either respect the members of the Board or leave their guns at the door. Being disrespected is one thing. Being disrespected by men with guns is something else again, and the cops do this shit over and over. I watched on the tube as POA head Gary Delgnes literally threatened to “get” Police Commissioner Joe Veronese. Veronese told me later that POA officer, Kevin Martin had “assaulted” him at some point and that Chief Heather Fong refused to do anything about it. This is the same Kevin Martin who tried to run over a lawyer from the OCC (Office of Citizen Complaints) in the alley behind OCC headquarters which had just been burgled.
Let me bottom line this with my opening line. The cops are out of control because Newsom won’t rein them in (remember a couple of years back when he promised to “ride roughshod” over them?) … he won’t reform the force because he needs them in his run for governor.
Thus, murders in the street increase as cop salaries skyrocket. You suffer. Not Gavin. He has a half dozen bodyguards and a limo.
Today’s Full Board
Item # 16 – Sheriff’s Department Supplemental
Our jails are full and every member of the Board of Supervisors except their president, Aaron Peskin, realizes that opening more ‘pods’ and holding guards overtime costs more money. Inexplicably (also, without explanation), Peskin was the only member of the Board to vote against funding the added costs. Let’s see if he votes against it again this week and if he does, that he explains himself.
Item # 20 – Landmarking 900 Innes
Someone help me out on some research here. Shaw has a partner, a slum landlord, named Gianpolo Boschetti. Boschetti is listed as owner of record for the building in which Shaw’s THC is housed. I’ve been told for years that Shaw is a partner in the building and Shaw doesn’t deny it.
Tell me more things about this Boschetti guy.
I understand that Boschetti emptied the Verona Hotel at 317 Leavenworth for Shaw and it had to do with something about evicting 65 tenants from the Gates Hotel at 140 Ellis (now to be the ‘Fusion’, a boutique tourists place). You know anything about that? I’m told that Boschetti (and Shaw?) also is listed as owner of record of the following properties:
223 Leavenworth
317 Leavenworth
322-330 Eddy
471 Ellis
347 Eddy
222 Leavenworth
126 Hyde
355 Eddy
156 Golden Gate
You know anything about those properties? Let me know. And, for those of you who think I’m after Shaw cause he’s the biggest poverty pimp in town and cares zip about his tenants? Well, DUH!
Giants and Zito
Everyone’s a good winner. Character is measured best by how you take defeat. Do you do, like the SFPD, blame your lousy skyrocketing murder rate on anything but your own ineptitude?
Remember these lines?
“If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;”
– Rudyard Kipling
The giants are pure class. They paid an injured Robb Nenn for over a season without a murmer when he couldn’t throw a pitch. These guys are not Charlie Finley or Al Davis trying to screw everyone out of their last dime.
The demise of Zito is a cause for sadness, not anger. He’s not an A.J. Pierzinski whom you pray will take a fastball between the eyes (while he’s on your team). Zito’s class. McGowan is class. So’s Bochy.
Giants pitcher Barry Zito is in a temporary pitching funk.
He’ll bounce back when he figures out a way to overcome the pressure of expectation.
Photo by Luke Thomas
The fans are too. There isn’t a lot of booing when the kid gets shelled every 5 days. I mean, we aren’t Republicans here. Even the hyenas in the local press have resisted kicking the downed beast. Let’s keep it that way.
The team continues to entertain. They’re the Keystone Kops on a pop-fly one inning and turning amazing double-plays and stealing 3 bases the next. Mostly though, they stick together. Let’s stick with them.
Hell of a game last evening from Matt Cain. Nothing new there. He got the win. That’s new. He’ll get another 15 this year and Lincecum could get 20 but that’s really tough in the bigs.
I hold to my predictions. They’ll lead the league in doubles, triples, and stolen bases and their pitching staff will turn in 3 no-hitters.
Odds and ends and odd ends
Wanna see my SRO room? We’re working out an evening show made possible by my new birthday computer and webcam.
We go live daily at 7 pm. Here’s the link: http://live.yahoo.com/hbrown
Interesting world out there on the internet. As soon as we went live yesterday there were perverts from all over asking us to get naked. Imagine that! I think I’m gonna enjoy being live on the internet.
Will there be Sunshine in San Francisco?
10 seats on the Sunshine Task Force are up for appointment Friday. Doug Comstock, whom Pier and Elsbernd have been ripping for over a year is up for re-appointment as are Progressives Richard Knee and Sue Cauthen. I perused the list and the only one I’d oppose is David Pilpel who works for the Devil.
Sunshine is Item # 2 on Thursday, and grants from the Arts Commission are Item # 6. I’d watch # 6 too if you want to see the crème de la crème of the SF Art Community.
Lincecum throwing 7:15pm on AM 680
Mark Sanchez for D-9 City supervisor
Mary Mallen for Superior Court Judge
Joe Nation for State Senate D-3
Gimme info on Shaw and Boschetti
Go Giants
The Hunger Site
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