Some inside gossip from the S.F. Police.
San Francisco has a problem with its police. The police are constantly being abused and insulted by public figures. The City has been telling the police to be more involved in buggery -- basically to fuck themselves. The Board of Supervisors seems to say it once a month and the Mayor seldom misses a chance to say it. (This is the same mayor who yesterday told the hotel owners, who are locking out a suicidal union, to take back their employees now, with no conditions.) Mayor Newsom thinks he is President Carter telling the Israelis to accept whatever nonsense he wants them to accept. (Carter forced Israel to take Gaza in the Egyptian pseudo-peace settlement.)
As a consequence the S.F. Police have very little interest in their jobs or protecting San Franciscans. The police usually order a couple more coffee and donuts before responding to an urgent call from any gang related neighborhood.
One source of police distress is the Office of Citizen Complaints. It’s both good and bad to have many complaints filed against you if you are a cop. Bad, because the OCC harasses you. Good because of the following weirdness.
The Public Defenders Office has made it a policy to have every defendant they deal with file a complaint about the cop or cops who arrested them. The PD then uses the complaint in the trial when the cops testify.
The consequence is that the cops who do the most arrests have the most complaints against them. Many complaints mean a police person is honored among cops, abused by the OCC.
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Turns out the new District Attorney, Kamala Harris is not as hated as her eight year predecessor, K.O. Hallinan. The reason is simple. Kamala, Lefty Fundamentalist that she is, doesn’t come to work drunk every day and manages her staff. When a deputy DA is supposed to be in court, the deputy DA is in court. That was seldom true under her predecessor, Hallinan.
Things were so bad before that S.F. cops who were tailing a particularly bad guy always arranged to have him arrested in some other jurisdiction. That way the bad guy would be tried in San Mateo County, Los Angeles or by the Feds. Catching and booking a bad guy in San Francisco often resulted in the bad guy walking because the DA was so unreliable and incompetent he might not have anyone at the preliminary hearing or the bail hearing.