San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

Really nasty weather hitting the California coast then moving inland. Starting Monday, the Bay Area is in for high winds and lots and lots of rain. The first storm coming in from the Pacific has already hit, and there are two more right behind it. It's a blessing for The City because it washes the filthy streets and drives the hordes of homeless into shelters that they refuse to use during better weather. Other parts of the state won't fare as well, since summer wildfires left hillsides denuded of vegetation which would normally hold back mudslides.

NOTE: Sadly, chickens are coming home to roost over the Board of Supervisors veto-proof majority passing an ordinance which prohibits the San Francisco police from reporting illegal immigrant "youthful offenders" to ICE and the local feds if they are under the age of eighteen and have not yet been convicted of a felony. A fifteen year old gang member known to the police as both a gang-banger and as an illegal alien has been arrested on two murder charges for holding down patrons at a local Pizza restaurant while other gang members shot them in the head.

Yes, there is the normal human revulsion at such a cold-blooded act of murder. And to his credit, Mayor Newsom has denounced the ordinance and refuses to order the police to enforce it while ordering the police to report all illegal immigrants who commit a crime to ICE, regardless of age. The "youth" had been sent home from O'Connell High School the day before the murders for being drunk and combative at school. The principal of the school made that decision, and seemingly knew about the illegal status of the young murderer.

So where is the indignation? Not where you would expect it to be in a normal city. David Campos, the Supervisor who wrote the noxious ordinance, is furious that somebody in the police department reported the kid and the murders to ICE. "I feel more comfortable with a judge who has all the history and facts making the call, rather than the police making it on the spot." You idiot. There is no "call" to be made but for your dangerous ordinance. The kid was arrested, and is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but his illegal status is not disputed.

Likewise, the principal's indignation is aimed at the police who came to the school and arrested the thug for the murder that occurred the same day that principal sent him home. "No one gave me a heads up that the boy was being called out of class, cuffed and taken into custody." Well, how about some racism charges to boot? Hard to do, since the thug, the gang, the victims and (reportedly) the police officer are all Hispanic and the crime was committed in the largely Mexican-Hispanic Mission District.

All of this is in the wake of the huge public outcry stemming from the double-murder last year of a father and son by another illegal "youthful" alien who was well-known to the police, but never reported to ICE or any federal agency during his long history of arrests and pending trials on both felony and misdemeanor charges. The illegals have been committing crimes ranging from drunk and disorderly to rape, felony assault, and murder. Still, it took a double-murder by the much-arrested "youth" of two innocent locals in an area completely unrelated in any way to gang territory to get the attention of the public. The "Sanctuary Board of Supervisors" had been keeping this cancer under wraps for years.

NOTE: Ever since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., there has been an annual commemoration called The Freedom Train. It's an actual train, dedicated to King's memory and achievements, and paid for by public donations. The train runs from Santa Clara to San Francisco, ending with an MLK tribute in The City. Every freedom-lover is welcome to come aboard. This year the train almost didn't run. The poor economy and other woes held the donations down to an insufficient level to support the hiring of the train. At the last minute, a $5,000 donation from the San Jose Police Officers Association saved The Freedom Train for another year.

However, this is the left coast, and some "civil rights" leaders attempted to derail the annual event anyway. Pastor Jethroe Moore II says: "My feeling is you can't buy civil rights; it's something you fight for. You don't honor someone just because they give you money." Never mind the obvious fact that it is the great civil rights leader who is being honored, not the police, this is nasty, divisive, racial politics at its worst. The reason the right reverend Moore is in such high and incoherent dudgeon is that race-hustlers have charged that the San Jose police and the Santa Clara Sheriff's department "treat persons of color more roughly than whites." The chief fomenter of the disparate treatment divisiveness is the San Jose Mercury News. The News not only has financial troubles. It has credibility problems. It is the same newspaper that continued to run "news" articles and editorials about the CIA running drugs into the ghettoes and barrios long after the charges had been completely disproven.

None of this "rougher treatment" has been proven of course, and both chiefs had already undertaken policies which would promote racial and ethnic sensitivity. Moore, incidentally, is also the president of the San Jose branch of the NAACP which finds racism everywhere. What else could be the justification for the organization's existence? Surely not education, charter schools, parental involvement in their children's lives, the promotion of strong families, or the squelching of gang activity. That's not dramatic enough, so let's go after the police.

There was a voice of sanity in this, though. The director and co-founder of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley is the Freedom Train's organizer. He denounced Moore's complaint and obstructionism. Says Hoffman: "If not for the police officers' donation, there would be no Freedom Train this year. The association came to our rescue at a time of dire circumstances and supported us. If the criticism directed at the police is to 'get out and help the community,' that's exactly what they did here." Too bad the racial victimologists don't see things as clearly.

NOTE: The San Francisco Police Department is hobbled in its decisions by the politically-correct left wing Board of Supervisors, the police union, and the overly liberal Police Commission. Getting rid of a bad cop has become nearly impossible. Until last week, no officer has been dismissed in over four years. Egregious misbehavior takes forever to wend its way through the machinery. The latest example is the final termination of Police Inspector Marvetia "Lynn" Richardson. The Commission simply couldn't find a way to ignore the overwhelming facts and testimony against the inspector.

Richardson worked for the department for fifteen years. In June of 2007, the Antioch police attempted to arrest her for creating a domestic disturbance at her home there. She became loud and abusive, and they finally used a taser to subdue her. Though she sued the Antioch police chief,the officers and the city, the case is still pending before a federal magistrate. But long before she filed the suit in 2008, the SFPD's internal affairs division had already determined that she had lied about the entire incident. Internal Affairs also found that in 2007, Richardson had used the police records system to track down and send a letter to a woman she was sexually interested in claiming that the woman's husband was cheating on her. The husband intercepted the letter and filed a complaint with the department.

And then there's the $26,000 worth of stolen checks that Richardson accepted from her tenant in payment of rent. The checks belonged to the parents of the tenant. Her denials of any knowledge of the criminal nature of the third-party checks didn't hold much water with I.A., since Richardson was an inspector in the SFPD fraud unit. In addition, there were 29 charges of abuse of sick time rules. She denied those charges as well, but has been unable to produce any substantiation of the illnesses of any kind.

Any one of these multiple charges should have been enough for a suspension from duty and a quick hearing to determine the validity of the charges, followed by a dismissal. Instead, she was suspended (without pay, amazingly) in 2008 by then-chief Heather Fong on what had already come to be 11 disciplinary actions. Street cops hate this kind of infestation of political correctness and layers of officials and boards standing between them and the performance of their duties. It also seems to favor retention of officers so bad that any child could figure it out.

NOTE: The Prop 8 trial continues to drone on. More testimony about matters that have little or no bearing on the meat of the case, which is "is Prop 8 federally unconsitutional?" The first cross-examination by the defense of any interest was when David Boies asked several gay marriage advocate witnesses if they saw anything unconstitutional about President Obama's campaign statements that "marriage is between a man and a woman." He pointed out that 7 million Californians had voted in agreement with those statements. Perhaps there was some confusion on the part of the constitutional law teacher Obama, when he also said "Prop 8 is divisive and discriminatory" in a private letter to a gay rights group.

Of course that automatically brought on the argument that gay marriage denial is the same as interracial marriage denial. The judge in this non-jury trial has shown extreme deference to the anti-Prop 8 cause. When the plaintiff was done asking questions about this issue, the judge began asking the same and similar questions. When the defendants' counsel finished cross-examination on the issue, the judge once again asked questions that at least sounded like he agreed with the plaintiffs and was trying to lead the case down that road. Judges are entitled to ask questions, and often do. But the questions are supposed to be for the purpose of filling in gaps in testimony that the lawyers may have missed, not to emphasize his perceived agreement with one side or the other. In a jury trial, it might even be grounds for appeal on the basis of judicial misconduct designed to influence the jury. But convincing himself is probably not a solid ground for appeal.

Judge Vaughn also made a few non-question comments about how the proper scope of marriage has changed over time, then went back to discuss the "same as racial restrictions on marriage" theme. Not to be outdone, plaintiffs' attorney Ted Olson went on to point out that President Obama's African father and white mother could not have been legally married in Virginia in 1961. OK, and what does that have to do with the price of eggs in lower Slobbovia?

One other piece of testimony stirred up some heat. The head of the Traditional Family Coalition will be called for the purpose of questioning him on his campaign statement that "other states would fall into Satan's hands if Prop 8 lost." A videotape of Tam's statements was played in court prior to his being called as a witness next week. He had added that "San Francisco's government, under the rule of homosexuals, would legalize sex with children and prostitution and more children would become homosexual." It's the closest thing to actual testimony that would indicate that Prop 8 was motivated by hatred of a protected group, but it's hardly dispositive. Still, I don't see how equal opportunity hatred throughout the entire campaign on both sides proves much of anything that goes to the subject matter of due process.

NOTE OF TRIUMPH: Right in the middle of four huge storms making their way through the Bay Area, the Scott Brown returns started coming in from Massachusetts. Suddenly, the skies cleared, the sun came out, the rain and lightning stopped, the birds sang, and the next storm stopped in its tracks outside the Golden Gate. It was downright eerie. The locals on the other hand, went into a mass blue funk (present company excepted, of course).

Says San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom: "We better get our act together - and quickly. Voters are so angry. They don't feel that we're paying attention to their needs, in terms of their jobs, and what's going on at the grassroots, in their neighborhoods." Now he figures that out? On the other hand, addressing Obama's ambiguity on same-sex marriage (sexual ambiguity?) Newsom also just said: "But I am very upset by what he’s not done in terms of rights of gays and lesbians. I understand it tactically in a campaign, but at this point I don’t know. There is some belief that he actually doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. But it’s fundamentally inexcusable for a member of the Democratic Party to stand on the principle that separate is now equal, but only on the basis of sexual orientation. We’ve always fought for the rights of minorities and against the whims of majorities." So maybe his opinion doesn't really count for much.