Watching City Hall #341, 2-11-05
“It’s OK honey, you can search me. I’m a man, anyway.”
(Large breasted blonde to red-neck cop on ‘Cops’)
Well, well, well. Did you miss me like I missed you? Probably not. Nevertheless, here I be and I ain’t goin away. I still have 3 weeks of computer school remaining, so I won’t write much but I finally got my own dsl line hooked up last night (did it myself, one of those kits) and I want to try it out. Now I have my own place, a phone with an answering machine, a late model computer and a high speed line. I’m still trying to get Comcast to give me the sfgtv feed but after a month, they’re still lying their ass off and refusing to do it. … What else you need to know before we get started? … Hmmm. Yeah, my food stamps took a 25% cut when I got my room which was a surprise to me but I’m still happy as hell. Angela Alioto asked if I got all of this because of Newsom’s Care Not Cash and I replied in the affirmative but that the program is woefully underfunded. … But enough about me.
h. looks at the cops
Let me tell you a few cop stories. (Pardon the changes in styles of font and colors. I’m just practicing. JVS computer school is a real inspiration.)
The cops are simply too successful and powerful and the people of San Francisco are paying the price. In the struggle to increase safety and pay and decrease liability, the force has effectively disengaged themselves from the citizenry.
Fear of flying
The police need to get back in the air and back on the ground. Not only are they the only major American city without police helicopters, they even took the beat cop from in front of City hall. Strange shit. When they do walk the streets, they don’t know how. … Really. Watch em sometime. I walk a mile or so each way up and down Market street everyday which is about the only place you see em on foot. They cluster like ducks around the various Bart stations and only talk to one another. On the beat they’re in pairs and … only talk to each other. In most of the City you have a better chance of winning the lottery than you have of having a cop walk past your house alone.
European and Asian countries put little police kiosks in high traffic and crime areas. San Francisco did too but these areas were really dangerous and some of the little cop shops ended up with bullet holes. So? … So, Willie let them give up the tough turf to the gang bangers and drug dealers and get back in their cars. With the helicopters out of the air and cops out of dangerous locations, things were getting safer for them if not us.
The bunker mentality is so prevalent with the cops that you’ll notice that the last couple of stations they’ve built don’t even have windows. Now, that is more weird shit. When they were building the Tenderloin station, I remember thinking that at least there wouldn’t be a drug bazaar across the street from it in Boedekker Park. Man, was I wrong. Yeah, the dealing goes on and the cops hunker down behind solid cinder block walls there and at Northern station.
The results are counter productive for the cops too. Hell, no one knows them. It’s not like when I was a kid and the neighborhood beat cop entertained a street full of kids with tricks he could do with his Billy Club. Now they carry black jacks cause the clubs get in the way of your coffee and donuts in the car. I’ve never seen anyone do any tricks I wanted to see with a black jack. Now, when the cops respond to calls in their own districts, people won’t help them because they don’t know them. They have no personal relationships with the shop keepers and grocers and garbage men and postal workers and … and, these are the people who know what’s going on in the neighborhoods at the street level. Now, when cops come in to respond to an emergency, it’s like they’re in Baghdad. They’re hostile aliens with guns. That’s bad coaching.
Pain holds
The Chronicle ran a front page picture a couple of weeks ago that featured a couple of fat white cops with wrap-around shades, thick mustaches and sewn-on badges both applying pain holds to and rubbing the breasts of a pro-choice counter-demonstrator at a downtown rally. Her mouth was open in a yelp of pain. It looked just like the expression on the face of 6th District Supe, Chris Daly when the cops attacked him at a Hastings Law School sit-in a couple of years ago. In fact, I probably had about the same facial contortion when the two PD thugs attacked me in front of City hall on election nite.
Point is, the SFPD uses pain holds against political dissidents with whom they disagree. Oh, they do more. They stripped a 70 year old nun naked and stuck her in a cold cell all night. … These fuckers can be very Abu Grahib’ish. And, … they don’t want people to know about it so …? …?
Press Passes
So, they’ve come after the press passes of lefty reporters who cover them critically on the front lines. Thus far, they’ve attacked or pulled credentials from the Call (classy flagship of alternative news), Poor Magazine, the SF Progressive and the Bulldog. That’s the ones I know about. They don’t want us inside police lines photographing and reporting upon their behavior.
The solution is simple. They shouldn’t be in charge of issuing press passes. When they handled late night entertainment permits they simply didn’t give any. Those late nite parties the locals and tourists love so much made more work for them. Mark Leno (then, the 8th District’s supe) guided a piece of legislation through hearings and created a new Entertainment Commission. Great idea and it’s worked out great. I’m told that variations on that theme are bouncing around City hall as we speak.
They fear nothing. Their union created a short film attacking Professor Peter Keane who happens to be a sometimes critical voice on the Police Commission and circulated it to the precincts to stir up the troops. Internally, they’ve gone after Lt. Joe Dutto who led the investigation into the Fajitagate cover-up. ‘Honest’ Denis O’Leary, the Tenderloin Captain (transferred from Bayview where he refused to protect the Gonzalez headquarters during election day from goons paid for by the Newsom campaign through the A. Philip Randolph gang) … O’Leary took time off from patting the cops on the back who felt up the demonstrator (“She was resisting arrest.” – Anytime they use pain holds they have to say that cause they know they’re causing physical damage and are likely to be sued) … O’Leary took time off to tell some more lies about Lt. Joe Dutto whom they’re trying to railroad. The last thing they want around is an honest person.
Cops on trial is bad for morale
The two most despised groups in San Francisco are developers and the homeless. The cops come in third (the Niner ownership is 4th incidentally). Now, two of these lots of folks aren’t accustomed to being challenged. Especially on television. That’s what has made the SFGTV Planning and Police Commission shows so popular. It’s finally an opportunity to watch powerful representatives of the poor and oppressed go after bloated realtors like Angelo Sangiacomo and gladiator wanna-be cowboys like Alex Fagan Jr..
So, having been two of Gavin Newsom’s strongest supporters, the cops and developers went to Newsom for relief. He responded by taking both Commissions off the air. At the same time, Newsom appointee to the Board, Sean Elsbernd from District 7 announces a $400k grant from the Department of Homeland Security. I’m told it’s for more surveillance equipment. Major media outlets extol the ability of new cameras installed by the national Brown Shirts to pick individuals out of a crowd. It’s ‘Enemy of the State’ shit. They want to watch you but they don’t want you to watch them.
It’s a regular full-court press on the 1st amendment. Say the wrong thing and they’ll come after you and they’ll get away with it. Oh yeah, since the amped-up punk cowboy cops who helped Alex Fagan Jr. steal the waiter’s fajitas found a friendly judge and beat the rap, cops can beat the shit out of you when they’re off-duty too. And, get away with it. POA (their union) boss, Gary Delagnes recently noted that no one paid any attention to the Board of Supervisors anyway.
The press, the Board, demonstrators, police commissioners, honest voices from their own ranks, television coverage … what will these bastards go after next?
Medicinal Marijuana
Don’t that send a chill down your back? Yeah, there’s a narc named Halloran whose picture is posted in all of the pot clubs. Despite the City’s policy supporting medicinal pot, the people that smoke it, the clubs that sell it and the growers who grow it … this narc has infiltrated sessions in which growers are schooled by the City as to just what they can and cannot do. He never identifies himself as a cop. He just meets people, gets their addresses and then turns them over to the DEA. He has confiscated legal cards of patients and caregivers and … ? … yeah, he hands them over to the DEA.
Now, isn’t that against City policy? … Of course it is, but they don’t care. These people do not share our values. This is the town that instructed its cops and hospitals and other agencies not to cooperate with the feds on matters regarding illegal immigrants. For God’s sake, we are a refuge! The cops are cracking down. They’re calling in their campaign debt from Newsom and he’s giving them what they want. It’s a bad scene.
Solutions
There are some. We have to change the character of the department and the best places to start are at the top and at the bottom. The department wants to add 250 more officers over the next 3 years. We could demand that they all have college degrees. We could reconstitute the boards who choose recruits, filling them with activists and queens and hippies and, if possible, activist hippie queens.
Clearly, the Police Commission and the Planning Commission have to get back on the air. The gutted Telecommunications department needs to be restored with money taken from the police budget and Homeland Security grants. Good luck with that one, Tonto.
At best, it will take a decade to create a police department that actually shares the values of most San Franciscans. We could bring a measure to the ballot allowing neighborhood councils to interview candidates from their own neighborhoods for the positions. That would be a good start. That way, when the applicants came back later (of course you assign them to their own districts) you’d know them. They’d owe you for picking them, not, for instance, someone likeTony Hall who spent years sitting on a committee that interviewed cops.Now, Tony is a great guy who most definitely represents the people of District 7’s views but, … we’ve got enough jock cops.
Ever watch ‘Law and Order’? Sure you have. It struck me after watching hours of the thing that the way they handcuff suspects ain’t nothing like you see here in San Francisco. They don’t use pain holds. … That struck me as so odd that I turned to the Court Channel to watch a couple of episodes of ‘Cops’ to see how other cops in other parts of the country treated their citizens. That’s where I saw the busty blonde I led the column with getting arrested. It was quite a scene and it made me think.
Florida cops
There were around a dozen cops involved in a sting operation in this little Florida town. Four or five of the cops were enormous black men who hung around this seedy neighborhood drinking beer and being loud and waiting for customers to buy their little bags of pot. Yeah! It was a pot thing. … But it really wasn’t. The more I watched the show, the more it became obvious that the real crime here was car theft and fencing stolen cars.
What happened was that these poor suckers drove down this mostly dirt road where they knew you could buy pot and the cops flagged them over and sold them pitiful little plastic bags of pot for $30 (you get triple that in quality pain reliever here at clubs) … they’d hand them these bags and then the white cops rushed in with the cameras for the bust. Wait, it gets better.
After they pull these people out of their cars and frisk them (that’s why the blonde made the comment – the arresting officer had said he’d get a female cop to search ‘her’) … after they handcuff them, they tell them that they are confiscating their cars too and they can buy them back if they want.
What do you tell your mate when you come home from work if you’re one of those cops? … “I’m sorry I’m late honey, I spent all day selling pot and stealing cars.” … Maybe our cops ain’t that bad after all.
Deny everything!
Bulletin: Comcast telephone sales people are telling people they have to buy the $46 package to get SFGTV. This is not true. It is supposed to be on the $16 package. If you’ve been a victim of this scam, write me.
