On Police Scandals
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/04/ED48751.DTL
A POLICE CHIEF may wear stars on his shoulders but in no way is he a general commanding military troops. The chief is subordinate to a commission, mayor or city manager, and the police department is subject to state laws, civil service regulations, the courts and labor contracts. Nor is the mayor, the elected political leader of the city, the commander in chief. Furthermore, California's penal code vests enormous discretion in each county's elected district attorney on deciding whether or not a crime has occurred and whether or not it should be prosecuted. All of this complexity makes the charges and counter-charges surrounding the astonishing indictment of San Francisco's police chief, assistant chief, two deputy chiefs, a captain, a lieutenant, a sergeant and two officers an enormous mess that should have been avoided. An incident involving off-duty police must always be handled thoroughly so as to avoid subsequent accusations of favoritism. There were errors in the initial response to the street brawl that initiated this case. Apparently even more damaging, was the lack of good communication between the police top brass and the district attorney over the investigation. One widespread impression is that District Attorney Terence Hallinan got fed up with what he perceived to be stonewalling and personal criticism of him by the department. The cops involved apparently underestimated his willingness to put them under oath before the grand jury and to let the chips fall where they may. The result is 10 cops in deep trouble. Mayor Willie Brown, in an impassioned speech to the San Francisco Police Commission Friday night, gave the indicted brass a tremendous vote of confidence. He suggested to the commission that it not remove the brass on the basis that the indictments were a slur on their reputations and would impede the operations of the department. Not surprisingly, the Police Commission, which is appointed by the mayor, went along with his suggestions. The mayor's loyalty is admirable but raises questions as to whether he was being unduly defensive about a minor incident that got considerably more serious when assertions of a coverup were made. The personal attacks on the district attorney only increase suspicions that there may have been a coverup. People recall that obstruction of justice in the Watergate minor burglary ended up with the president resigning, the attorney general going to prison, the FBI director convicted and disbarred and a number of White House aides incarcerated. None of those punished were involved in the original third-rate burglary. The mayor and the police brass would have been better served to recuse themselves from commenting on the case as did Assistant Police Chief Alex Fagan. Monday, however, the mayor abruptly changed direction from his blanket support of the police and condemnation of Hallinan's motives. He announced that Chief Earl Saunders will take a medical leave disability and his top six aides will step aside during the probe. One has to view the "voluntary" stepping aside with skepticism. SFPD rules require accused officers to be placed on administrative leave. They don't place themselves on leave. If the SFPD failed to follow that course for the brass it would be a departure from procedures followed by other police agencies and create a nightmare of charges of favoritism when rank-and-file officers are accused in future cases. On the other hand, the mayor's untenable defense Friday night nevertheless gained him political and police union support. It also gave him a shot to denounce political rival Hallinan. In addition, the mayor provided a forceful reminder that an indictment is not a conviction. The charges against the indicted officers will be difficult to prove. It is unlikely that jurors will convict if it comes down to one cop's word against another's. No matter what the eventual outcome, there will be a period of suffering police morale and public confusion. Still, citizens can be certain that under the command of Acting Chief Heather Fong, the rank-and-file San Francisco police officers will still be doing their duty in protecting the public. Joseph D. McNamara, retired police chief of San Jose, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
Cops and robbers and many politicians Jon Carroll Tuesday, March 4, 2003 ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/04/DD118524.DTL
Let's see, the grand jury indictments of 10 San Francisco police officers is a political move by District Attorney Terence Hallinan against Mayor Willie Brown. No, wait, it's the natural consequence of Brown's cronyism and corruption. No, wait, it's a runaway grand jury determined to get cops no matter what the evidence. No, wait, it's really about the 2004 election. No, wait, it's really about racism. No, wait, it's really about loyalty. No, wait, it's really about volcanoes, Tibet, the Olympics, a new sewage plant, the opening of baseball season, the declining egret population. No, wait, it's really about Adam Snyder and Jade Santoro. No, seriously, that's what it is about. Snyder and Santoro are the guys who were beaten up on Nov. 20, apparently by three off-duty San Francisco police officers, including serial bad seed Alex Fagan Jr., child of Assistant Chief Alex Fagan Sr. Everyone seems to have forgotten about Snyder and Santoro. Brown in his many news conferences showed no concern for the two victims; statements from the Police Department expressed no regret about the fate of Snyder and Santoro. There was blood in the water and politics in the air, so the blood on the pavement of Union Street got overlooked. It seems likely that the grand jury was thinking about Snyder and Santoro. Of all the players in this drama, the jurors are the only ones with no stake in the outcome, no political turf to protect, no ambitions to nurture. I know the old line about a good district attorney being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, but it seems unlikely that Hallinan would want to reap the whirlwind by going after Chief Earl Sanders. He's got a great reputation and friends everywhere; it's not a fight any sane man would pick. No, I'm guessing the grand jury indicted Sanders because it thought he did something wrong. I know this is a quaint notion in a world where favors traded and deals cut is the only moral currency. The jury apparently concluded that Sanders knew about a cover-up and participated in it. Perhaps someone would want to address that issue. Perhaps someone would want to say why Adam Snyder and Jade Santoro are not entitled to the same justice as other victims of assaults. Willie Brown, as is his wont, saw racism in the indictments. Two of the 10 people indicted were black. It's kind of hard to find the racism there. It would seem that Brown uses "racism" to mean "stuff I don't like." The demagoguery around racism devalues the word. Every time it's used as a political weapon, the reality of racism gets easier to dismiss. Those who prefer to ignore the continuing discrimination against African Americans can point to Willie Brown and say, "See, it's all just hot air." If there is any racism in this story, it's that the big fuss started when the victims were white and the location of the assault was Union Street. There are lots of black victims of violent crime. The San Francisco Police Department has the worst record for solving violent crimes of any big-city police department in California; three-quarters of violent crimes go unsolved. Welcome to San Francisco, where you've got a 75 percent chance of getting away with it. Given that crime hits the black community disproportionally, you'd think that inept policing would be considered a racial issue. You'd think that black community leaders would be seeking changes and accountability. Some are, of course, but the big power brokers are apparently worried more about their place at the table. It's an ugly situation all around. Please ignore the body on the sidewalk; let's talk some politics.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/other/1110/3-4-2003/20030304014501_34.html Tuesday, March 4, 2003
S.F. Police in Shambles After Scandal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Indicted by a grand jury and warned by the district attorney that "no one in San Francisco is above the law," six of the city's top police commanders have stepped aside, leaving the department in shambles. Police Chief Earl Sanders was preparing to take a medical leave, and appointed an acting assistant chief Monday. The moves were the latest development in a police corruption scandal that erupted last week with the indictments of Sanders and the six other commanders for allegedly obstructing justice by hindering a police investigation into an off-duty brawl involving three officers - including a troubled rookie whose father is Sanders' top aide. The officers, who allegedly demanded two men hand over a doggie bag of steak fajitas Nov. 20, have been accused of felony assault and battery and were suspended without pay Monday, a police spokesman said. All were to be arraigned Tuesday. A contentious Police Commission meeting Monday illustrated how the scandal had rocked the city - both on and off the force. Rank-and-file officers lined up to praise their accused leaders, while some citizens pleaded for reforms for what they perceive as a pattern of police corruption. "This is a cautionary tale for police departments all over the country," said Jimani Jakada of the group Bay Area Police Watch, who criticized the police for closing ranks around the indicted chief. "They're saying they're blue, I'm blue, I'll stand with you." Officers representing various segments of the force - black, Hispanic, Asian, and gay and lesbian officers - urged the commission to keep the command staff intact. "This department is up and running and we'll continue to serve the people," said Chris Cunnie, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association. "We stand by these people." The mayor, who has steadfastly supported Sanders and the police investigation into the off-duty fight and the alleged cover-up, pulled back from the controversy Monday and did not offer public comment. But the mayor's rival, District Attorney Terence Hallinan said he was stunned by the latest turn. "I understand the public feelings of shock, outrage, anger and apprehension," Hallinan said. After the Police Commission meeting, its president Connie Perry announced Sanders had accepted the offers of the six commanders to "step aside and go on leave." Then commissioners adjourned until Wednesday evening, saying they needed to gather more information about the indictments. More details were expected to be released at the arraignments Tuesday. It wasn't clear Monday if or when Sanders might relinquish control of the department. Assistant Chief Alex Fagan and Deputy Chief David Robinson were also among those stepping down. Heather Fong, one of the few untainted police managers, was elevated to be acting assistant chief, effectively running the department. The turmoil began with a sidewalk confrontation between Fagan's son, Alex Fagan Jr., a 23-year-old rookie, and two other officers who had been drinking at a police banquet to celebrate the mayor's promotion of the elder Fagan to the department's No. 2 spot. At closing time, Fagan Jr. and officer Matthew Tonsing allegedly accosted Adam Snyder, 22, who tends bar nearby, and his friend, Jade Santoro, 25, as officer David Lee, the designated driver, pulled up in his pickup truck. Snyder, who said he had no idea the men punching them were police, called 911 on his cell phone. Police arrived and took the officers away before Snyder and Santoro could identify them. Fagan Jr., Tonsing and Lee also were allegedly allowed to change their clothes and drink lots of water before they were tested for alcohol, more than four hours later. It turned out Fagan Jr. had at least 16 violent encounters with suspects in a 13-month period, sending six of them to the hospital, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. But other higher-ups apparently took little action other than to counsel him about his conduct and order anger management training - a course he never took. --- On the Net: S.F. police: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/police Bay Area Police Watch: http://www.ellabakercenter.org/pages/police.html 2003-03-04 09:39:26 GMT
Copyright 2003
Lawsuits, complaints, jury awards no bar to promotions Susan Sward, Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writers Sunday, March 2, 2003 ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/02/MN192573.DTL
For decades, the San Francisco Police Department -- led today by a command staff under indictment -- has treated serious officer misconduct leniently and promoted cops with troubling records to top posts. Among the department leaders indicted last week are one man who was arrested after threatening California Highway Patrol officers during a roadside confrontation and another who cost the city of San Francisco more than $280,000 in jury awards and settlements during his career. In the eyes of critics, the fact that Assistant Chief Alex Fagan Sr. and Police Capt. Greg Corrales have risen so high in the department despite their records is just one measure of how the department is broken on many key levels, including its promotion process. The structure and track record of the department -- run out of its grim, hulking headquarters at 850 Bryant St. -- are now under a spotlight in the wake of Thursday's indictments of 10 officers. The case stems from a Nov. 20 street fight involving three off-duty officers and an alleged police coverup in its aftermath. One of the indicted off-duty officers is Fagan Sr.'s son, 23-year-old rookie Alex Fagan Jr. Fagan Sr.'s 1990 brush with the CHP earned him a 15-day suspension by the San Francisco Police Commission but didn't stop his climb up the promotional ladder. Corrales was named captain of Mission Station last year -- despite the cost of lawsuits against him in the 1970s and 1980s. In this permissive climate, an incident like the Union Street fight, the allegations of a police coverup and the indictments of Police Chief Earl Sanders, Fagan Sr., Corrales and seven others are not surprising, according to police experts and others familiar with the department. The problems within the department, according to experts, extend far beyond its promotion of officers with dubious records. "The San Francisco Police Department absolutely does not operate on modern management principles, and if they are telling people they do, they are being disingenuous," said Ron Martinelli, a Southern California police training expert and criminal justice consultant. Martinelli is a San Francisco native who worked as a San Jose police officer and once was a candidate to head San Francisco's Office of Citizen Complaints, the police watchdog agency, which is run by civilians. But Mayor Willie Brown defended the department and its record, saying Saturday: "This is a well-managed department. It's a professional department that protects the public safety of its citizens. There is no question." Just last year, though, a seven-month Chronicle investigation revealed that violent criminals in San Francisco have a better chance of getting away with their crimes than they do in any other large American city. A Chronicle computer analysis of records showed that between 1996 and 2000, San Francisco cops solved only 28 percent of the city's killings, rapes, robberies, shootings, stabbings and other serious assaults. Many of the department's long-standing problems fall into three areas:
discipline, promotion and training, according to a Chronicle review of
department records, Office of Citizen Complaints records, court filings
and interviews with law enforcement experts and department observers.
PROMOTIONS
In July, Brown named Fagan Sr. to the department's No. 2 position. In his three decades in the department, the 52-year-old Fagan spent years in the narcotics division, was head of the department's fiscal unit and, more recently, was the Northern Police Station's captain. It was after a Northern Station party celebrating Fagan Sr.'s promotion to the No. 2 job that his son and two other cops, all of them off-duty, got in the fight on Union Street that led to Thursday's indictments. Fagan Jr. and his two cop friends were indicted on charges they assaulted two other men without provocation. Fagan Sr., Corrales, Sanders and four others were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. While Fagan Sr. has won praise from many for his intelligence and administrative abilities, he also had problems. His 1990 confrontation with the CHP occurred when the Highway Patrol officers responded to an argument between Fagan Sr. and a female companion alongside Interstate 280 in San Mateo County. Police records show the CHP arrested Fagan after he grabbed one officer, resisted another's attempt to put him in a hold and threatened to assault the officers. He was not charged in the incident, but the Police Commission suspended him and ordered him into an 18-month alcohol treatment program. Two years ago, Fagan Sr. was suspended for a month without pay after he got in two traffic accidents in one day and walked away from one of them, promising to return but failing to do so. Corrales, 54, was appointed captain of Mission Station by Chief Fred Lau last year. From his 1969 hiring through 2002, Corrales accumulated at least 80 misconduct complaints made by citizens and was a defendant in 18 lawsuits, according to court and department records. The last police misconduct lawsuit was filed against him in 1992, records show. Most of the suits alleged that Corrales and officers he worked with used unnecessary force in arresting citizens, often for minor crimes. City taxpayers have spent more than $280,000 in jury awards and settlements to resolve the cases in which he was a defendant. In one case, Corrales was accused of choking and clubbing a cabdriver who had committed a minor parking violation. An arbitrator who heard the case in 1985 ruled that the city should pay the cabbie $25,000 in damages and that Corrales should pay him another $15,000 personally. The city appealed the decision and later ended up settling for $45,000. In another case, the city paid $26,000 to settle a brutality lawsuit in which Corrales was accused of punching a motorist in the neck after detaining the man for double-parking. In a third, the city paid $12,500 for damage caused during an auto accident that occurred when Corrales suddenly made an illegal U-turn on the Golden Gate Bridge. According to court records, at one point in the early 1980s, Corrales was being sued three or four times a year. But the pace slowed after 1983. Despite his history, Corrales, a former Marine, was admired greatly by many officers on the force for his dedication to the job, and he won promotions to sergeant, lieutenant and captain. At a recent Police Commission meeting, citizens praised the hard work he was doing to clean up drug dealing in the Mission District. According to Police Commission records, Corrales has never been disciplined for a single alleged instance of excessive force. In fact, the only departmental punishment he has ever received was in the mid-1980s when, as a sergeant, he fired his handgun outside a bar opposite San Francisco's Hall of Justice, records show. After the incident, then-Police Chief Con Murphy suspended him for 10 days. Attempts to reach Fagan Sr. and Corrales were unsuccessful. Corrales' lawyer, Bill Fazio, declined to comment. But Gary Delagnes, a 25-year veteran of the department and vice president of the Police Officers Association, angrily dismissed any question about the department's promotion of cops such as Fagan Sr. and Corrales. Delagnes said when police officers work hard on the streets and make
a lot of arrests, people make complaints. "For all his warts, Corrales
is one of the best cops this department has ever seen," Delagnes said.
"He's done the job, and that's why cops respect and like him."
DISCIPLINE
"The crucial point is how do you screen for problem officers, and this is a department that has shown absolutely no interest in this," said Jeff Brown, who was the city's elected public defender for 20 years before he was appointed to the state Public Utilities Commission in 2001. Sanders and Fagan Sr., both appointed by Brown last year, have shown no signs of departing from the path of their predecessors when it comes to discipline. In the six months Sanders and Fagan Sr. have been at the helm, the department has sent only one case to the Police Commission for a hearing on whether to impose discipline. In contrast, former Chief Lau's administration forwarded about a dozen cases a year to the commission. In January, the Office of Citizen Complaints' acting director, Jean Field, wrote Sanders complaining about the department's lack of action on cases that her office had recommended for disciplinary action. The department said it was processing cases faster than the OCC believed. However, it also acknowledged that five cases the OCC asked about had been dismissed because the department failed to act on them within the one-year period set by state law. The disciplinary showing by the Sanders-Fagan administration mirrors the department's longtime practice of imposing little discipline on its officers. Annual reports by the OCC show that it found significant evidence of misconduct in 1,156 citizen allegations against city police between 1995 and 2001. Only two police officers involved in all those cases were fired; an additional 20 received lengthy suspensions. The voter-approved measure that created the OCC in the 1980s gave the office investigatory powers but left the punishment of officers to the chief and Police Commission. OCC reports also show the department delayed 99 cases for so long in that six-year period that they had to be dropped because the statute of limitations for disciplinary action had expired. So far, Fagan has signed off on only one serious disciplinary action against an officer, although several cases on his desk are awaiting action. Another way an officer can be disciplined is through an internal investigation by the department's Management Control Division. In fact, the vast majority of complaints heard by the Police Commission are generated by the unit. But even when Management Control finds that misconduct has occurred, the Police Commission -- which generally imposes a penalty recommended by the chief -- often appears lenient. For example, in 1996, Egnacio "Nash" Balinton, a member of a special department homicide unit, was charged with stalking and harassing his former girlfriend, stealing jewelry from her and trying to persuade her not to cooperate with department investigators. Balinton pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor counts of false imprisonment stemming from his domestic disputes and was placed on six years of probation. Part of the settlement in the court case called for Balinton to give up his gun under the terms of a new federal law designed for individuals convicted of domestic violence. Despite the department's orders that he have no further contact with his victim, Balinton phoned her about 30 times during the following year. Balinton could have been fired, but the Police Commission gave him a
month's suspension instead. After Sanders became chief, Balinton was given
the right to carry his gun again, a department spokesman said. He is assigned
to Mission Station under Corrales.
TRAINING
In 1996, a Chronicle investigation revealed that scores of the officers who had been placed in the elite position of field training officers had been disciplined by the Police Commission for official wrongdoing or successfully sued by citizens for misconduct. Field training officers, who are supposed to act as role models for rookies and gauge their performance for their first 14 weeks as street cops, were in a critical position, because the department was then hiring 180 new police officers -- the largest number in San Francisco's history. One of the trainers had punched a woman during a melee outside a tavern; a second had smashed his girlfriend's face into a windshield: a third had beaten his stepdaughter; and a fourth had fired a shot at a motorist. Of the 298 members of the department's field training program, 65 had been named in lawsuits alleging battery or excessive force, and 25 had been sued two or more times. After The Chronicle's story, the department resolved to reform the program to eliminate officers with problem records. But it took the department more than two years to make the changes -- by which time the largest influx of rookie cops in the city's history already had completed field training and were on the streets. "In San Francisco, the lack of accountability, the lack of emphasis on discipline, the tendency to minimize problems when making selections of training officers or promotional decisions -- I think reflects an attitude where too often police officers on the force have talked themselves into believing the end justifies the means," said John Crew, who was the American Civil Liberties Union's police practices expert in Northern California for 15 years before he left the ACLU in 2001. Dennis Ray Martin, a spokesman and past president of the 11,000-member National Association of Police Chiefs, said as San Francisco's Police Department heads into the future, it faces a difficult challenge. When police brass and internal affairs investigators look the other way at conduct problems, attempting to sweep them under the rug, they may buy some time, Martin said. "But in a case like this, that approach catches up with them sooner or later -- as it has with these indictments. "The public's trust is the backbone of the department and whenever there is deception -- as is alleged here -- it will break that trust," Martin said. "This is very destructive for the department and for the morale of officers who are trying to do what's right." Chronicle staff writer Jaxon Van Derbeken contributed to this report. / E-mail the writers at ssward@sfchronicle.com and bwallace@sfchronicle.com. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
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