Bikers Of America, Know Your Rights!: San Francisco, CA

Friday, July 15, 2011

San Francisco, CA - How do we police the police?

OFF THE WIRE
BY: Ali Winston
sfgate.com

In theory, police are the arbiters of acceptable behavior in our society. When someone violates the rules of conduct defined by our laws, the police are responsible for apprehending them and bringing them to justice. But what about when the police officers themselves are the ones violating those rules? How are we to hold accountable the very people tasked with keeping us liable for our own behavior?
This dilemma has been around as long as the institution of law enforcement itself, but it's come into Bay Area consciousness this year as a spate of police scandals rocked the region, from the Peninsula to the East Bay.
KALW's Ali Winston takes us through the myriad of police scandals currently affecting the Bay Area, and the existing oversight measures intended to keep law enforcement in check.

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ALI WINSTON: The scene is the San Francisco Public Defender's annual summit. The topic: law enforcement misconduct. The speaker: San Francisco County Judge Lee Baxter.

JUDGE LEE BAXTER: First, I think the first real scandal that broke several months ago was the theft of drugs from the police department drug lab. Then we had the raiding of residential hotel rooms without search warrants. These, of course, are all allegations.

We had lying on police reports, surveillance camera videos showing officers removing items from hotel rooms. We had drug theft by officers. We had the so called dirty DUI's, the drunk-driving set-ups, and the one that just beats all is the one of setting up a brothel. Now, if I saw a movie that included all of these things, in a movie, I would think, "Well, this is not realistic, it just doesn't happen this way." But apparently it does.

As incredible as it may seem, Baxter's list is real. And it's all happened since the turn of the year. The brothel is part of a sprawling corruption investigation into Contra Costa County law enforcement. San Francisco police officers are behind the alleged illegal searches and property thefts - and those were recorded on video.
The videos, discovered by Public Defender Jeff Adachi's office, have led to the dismissal of 119 felony cases in the city.
While the Office of Citizen Complaints is the official independent watchdog agency in San Francisco, state law bars it, or any other independent watchdog, from disclosing misconduct allegations against police officers.
Not so. San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi says his office is looking into more than 7,000 cases of alleged misconduct, and he believes SFPD's problems are too widespread to be dealt with internally.

JEFF ADACHI: In order to have justice, you have to have people who are operating under the same rules, and the same law. You can't have a different set of laws applying to the police. You can't allow the police to run amok, and at the same time try to hold other people accountable.

SFPD Chief Greg Suhr maintains his department is handling the situation appropriately.

GREG SUHR: There has been no expense spared in investigating these as expeditiously as possible. All the investigations on our side have been completed and forwarded to the FBI for review as they had the first case, and then we're waiting to see what they think after they look at it and then the action that I will take will be immediate.

Suhr has already transferred some officers away from plainclothes duty. The department's Internal Affairs Division is conducting investigations, as is the FBI. Regardless, Suhr says Public Defender Adachi's concerns of a department "running amok" are overblown.

SUHR: This is not a cultural problem, as Mr. Adachi would suggest. I find it a bit disingenuous that the same person who is a true believer in "all people are innocent until proven guilty," and that to do perp walks or to display people in an unfavorable light before court is to cast them in a light that there's an assumption of guilt ... and then to turn around and do the exact same thing to the police department without affording the officers the same presumption of innocence.

John Burris, an Oakland attorney who specializes in police misconduct cases, says guilty or not, the current wave of scandals is nothing new.

JOHN BURRIS: I think the unusualness of it is that it's just being disclosed, okay. There's always been this level of misconduct that is occurring. Officers taking personal items from individuals without recording it, taking money from them, taking whatever they can. I've been involved in a number of cases like that.

STUART HANLON: These policemen don't think the citizens in hotels, SROs, have the same rights as people in Pacific Heights. And they think it's okay to break down their door.

San Francisco attorney Stuart Hanlon used police misconduct to help overturn the murder conviction of a Black Panther after he'd been in prison for 27 years. He says class issues contribute to a lack of trust in police in poorer parts of the city.

HANLON: Because they're drug dealers or they're drug users. And the problem we see is that the community lose faith in the police department.

Local law enforcement officials have welcomed outside involvement by federal investigators to ensure allegations are thoroughly reviewed. That can be effective. In New Orleans, for example, more than 20 officers have been charged with criminal and civil offenses by federal prosecutors for beatings, theft and murders that took place in the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. However, attorney John Burris says such investigations can be swayed by political winds.

BURRIS: I think that the feds should just do their job, you know, which is a challenge because the fed's positions are political. It depends on who's in office at the time.

San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr has undergone his own investigations in the past. In one instance he was charged with obstruction of justice in 2003 after three off-duty officers beat up two men over a bag of Mexican food - a case famously known as "Fajitagate." Suhr was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing then, and he's made it clear he's behind his officers now.

SUHR: I believe that 99.9% of the men and women of the San Francisco Police Department are of the highest character.

That's subject to investigation. And how Suhr handles the latest scandals will help define his term as San Francisco's newest chief of police.
In San Francisco, I'm Ali Winston for Crosscurrents.
Have you witnessed a member of the force behaving objectionably? Or are you a police officer and want to share your perspective. Call us at 415-264-7106, or comment on our Facebook page.