Watching City Hall #351, (3-12-05)

“Cameras. We need more cameras.”

(Asst. Cop boss, Greg Suhr)

That was Suhr’s answer when asked how he wanted to spend some incoming funds from the Department of Homeland Security. It was weird shit coming from a department that wasn’t even allowed to film demonstrations before 9-11. I’m guessing that by coordinating with Homeland Security, they get access to all the intrusive intelligence gathering mechanisms that required a judge’s consent before. They can always say: “Hey, we just showed them where the best places to put cameras are. They installed them by authority of the Patriot Act.” Yeah, and let you monitor them, provide everyone’s name and connections. The testimony came on March 8th or 9th before Rules Committee or Audits. A friend in-the-know strung together recent events and came up with a chilling scenario.

“The Patriot Act gave them the right to record the image and bug the communications of everyone in the world they consider suspicious. It’s just a short step to including everyone who voted against Bush on that list. God knows how many hit lists are out there. Many are probably just anyone ever arrested in any kind of political demonstration. They’ll have squads trained to go for these perceived ‘leaders’ first. Various agencies with access will use the surveillance equipment for their own purposes. They feed this into a data base that sorts thousands of faces in a demonstration, choose the ones they want busted and coordinate their capture. They’ve boosted the City’s emergency warning system to include a capacity to pass individual orders to crowds in each block. from the Embarcadero all the way to the Castro. You’ll hear orders coming from polls high over the crowd instead of from a bullhorn on the ground. They’re preparing for huge demonstrations that they expect to turn violent. None of this is new. They’re just much better at it now and they don’t have to deny they’re building a police state. They simply justify it by saying the same thing over and over … ‘9-11’ … ‘9-11’.”

I guess I should be happy that I haven’t been kidnapped and taken away to Egypt for torture. … Shit, I’ve become the de facto watchdog of the SFPD here and that was never my intention. I’m certainly the only writer in town who attacks Homeland Security. … Did you know, for instance that there are guys in black uniforms (no guns) who wander through the U.N. Plaza Farmers Market telling people that they are from the Department of Homeland Security and are guarding the government buildings around them from would-be-terrorists amongst the shoppers who might attack the government buildings around the market?

I live next door to the 100 year-old Hibernia Bank building which neighborhood drunks and junkies use as a toilet while the cops watch. I’ve counted up to 8 undercover cops at various positions around the bank and through the Burglar’s Bazaar across the intersection & wandering through the halls of my hotel where they peer off the roof. … I mean, shit!! Unlimited surveillance and manpower and the place is still a bee-hive of drugs and disease where muggers and burglars sell their ill-gotten merchandise for all to see. A friend came to see me the other day and said she’d watched a huge black guy huddle in a corner by the door of the Civic Center Residence where I live. She was amazed to see him pull a woman’s purse from under his jacket and go through the contents of the thing, emptying most on the sidewalk. What are the cops doing?

Anything on earth that keeps them from putting shoe leather to pavement. My trips for morning coffee and food provide glimpses of the way O’Leary allows his officers to patrol their beats.

7:30am, Wednesday, March 9th. I’m passing the Golden Gate bus stop alongside the donut shop at 7th & Market eyeballing the sexy Latino maids waiting their morning transport up to Marin & Sonoma where they will work for less than minimum wage. A cop on a bicycle jumps the curb and head right into the door of the donut shop. I assume his problems are genetic and he’s simply going for a staple and will take his bike inside with him. (leave it on the sidewalk and it will be for sale across the street inside of 60 seconds) …

No, that’s not it. He’s seen a guy sleeping sitting on the side of the doorway (same guy, every morning – coat over head). Cop decides hitting the guy with the front tire of his bicycle is good police work. He whacks the guy a few times until he wakes up.

Guy wakes up, pulls coat off head and stares at cop. Cop does bit of jawing and backs off to peddle down the sidewalk (they do have a built-in instinct to protect donut shops) … guy goes back to sleep.

Less than a block away, I hear the roar of mountain bikes. It’s 2 cops up on the sidewalk hassling a guy trying to sell the last contents of his SRO life on the sidewalk. Apparently, he’s a threat to Nordstrom’s. He won’t sell anything to the yuppies headed downtown today. The cops make him wrap it up. They never leave their cycle. Cops around here have a thing about actually putting their feet to the pavement. Stay on rubber, is their motto. Bike tire, motorcycle tire, car tire. Any mother-fucking thing but shoe leather and personal contact.

On the way back from breakfast (I eat at the Victory Diner at 6th & Mission – they take our ‘Diner’s Club’ card & give plenty of food. … I hear the voice of a cop on a loudspeaker. There’s another guy trying to sell his last possessions; displaying the goods at almost the same spot on the sidewalk the guy was working on my way to breakfast.

This cop is in a car. Talk about impersonal! The cop is alone. He’s a 30’ish Asian and has the door open with one foot in the street while he speaks through the mike. Herding the poor fuckers like cattle. If the cop were on foot, he could meet and talk with the guy selling his fucking toothbrush and ask why. He could, perhaps direct the guy to some services. But, he does as he has been trained. He hassles the desperate entrepreneur, makes another enemy for the department and drives away.

The Tenderloin has one cop on foot and as best I can figure, he works for a half hour every evening during the time I leave my hotel and walk over to my buddy Jens’ place across from Mitchell Brothers. … Oh, I’ve seen them walking 5 abreast along Market, laughing and ignoring the public. That’s 5 guys fulfilling their ‘beat’ requirements together on their way to donuts. Two mounted cops came across 7th and Market around noon today and I loved that. Lot better than a car. Probably practicing for tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. I’ll have to cover that to see how the cops set up and if they practice with their new sound systems. … Enough of that.

No sense bitching without offering remedies. So, here’s one. Combine the police, fire & emergency medical services. It’s been done all over the country. Put em on 8 hour days and keep em on the streets. They’re called ‘Public Safety Officers’ and every single one of them are firefighter/police officer/paramedics. Room 200 should research this and provide it’s occupant with a list of ‘best practices’ in how to get the biggest bang out of your combined public safety dollars.

What I’m saying here is that Mayor Newsom wasn’t far off base when he mused that perhaps firefighters could contribute more to public safety than sitting in engine houses for days on end eating ice cream and planning how to fuck over paramedics. Hey, I was a firefighter for 5 years way back when (Webster Groves, Mo. 71-76) and we practiced hard and fought fires with the best of em but, like most firefighters, we spent most of our time on our asses waiting for the bell to ring. Naw, the increasingly prickly boy monarch was on target with out-of-the-box thinking like that. Yes, Gavin, there are places where only one officer stays in the fire house for each truck and the others are on police patrol and join them at any emergency. It is, in fact, the very foundation upon which most of the volunteer fire departments in the world work. Firefighters are indeed, underutilized in San Francisco.

Give it a test run. I even have a new motto for their badges:

‘To serve … to protect
…
To eat, drink & make merry’