Posted on 03/01/2003 7:15:05 PM PST by Sir Francis Dashwood
"I'm the commander in chief of this goddamn place, and there is no way the command staff of my Police Department is going to step down at this time," Brown said. "It's a matter of public safety."
San Francisco -- From the get-go, Mayor Willie Brown made it clear that regardless of any grand jury indictments, he had no intention of having the city's police chief and half the command staff step down.
"It doesn't matter who said what," Brown said Friday shortly after getting word that Police Chief Earl Sanders and three other top staffers were being indicted on charges of obstruction of justice.
"I'm the commander in chief of this goddamn place, and there is no way the command staff of my Police Department is going to step down at this time," Brown said. "It's a matter of public safety."
And Brown wasted no time making sure his indicted command staff -- Sanders, Assistant Chief Alex Fagan Sr. and Deputy Chiefs Greg Suhr and David Robinson - - stayed put.
At 4 p.m. Friday, he met privately with Sanders, and a half an hour later, he invited the rest of the top brass facing indictment down to his office for a pep talk -- where he also advised them to get themselves good lawyers.
In fact, we're told Sanders already had retained Brown's old law partner, Phil Ryan, along with Oakland attorney John Burris -- who, ironically, had just won a big settlement in Oakland for citizens wrongly arrested by rogue cops.
Then, at 5 p.m., the mayor headed down to the Hall of Justice, where -- with the TV cameras rolling -- he urged the Police Commission not to use its authority to remove the chief and command staff.
It was just one of the strange scenes being played out Friday in what has become San Francisco's latest three-ring circus.
Earlier in the day, the mayor was on the phone with both state Attorney General Bill Lockyer -- with whom the mayor has had a long relationship -- and City Attorney Dennis Herrera, with whom he is barely on speaking terms.
The mayor wants Lockyer to conduct his own internal investigation -- but not to supersede the criminal probe.
"Brown thinks Hallinan is a total lunatic," said a source close to the attorney general. "He wants to know, 'How do I get control of this guy?'
"Lockyer says, 'There's nothing I can do because this is the D.A.'s case.' "
The source added that the mayor "is not trying to protect Earl Sanders. He's just trying to get control so you don't have San Francisco crumbling into the bay."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
There are a number of cities that are this way to one degree or another, especially in California. Perhaps now that we have a real U.S. Attorney General, some of this will get cleaned up a bit since it is obvious the current California attorney general is incapable of doing so.
Can you imagine San Francisco if Tom Ammiano were elected mayor instead of Willie Brown?
Have you ever been to Hollywood?
It is questionable. The Left is on a Jihad against the police, so when any real corruption arises, it is difficult to recognize legitimate complaints over the manufactured ones.
My point in posting this absurdity is to illustrate just that. In California, it has gotten so bad, the corrupt municipalities are using the police departments as revenue generating agencies, the California legislature is now requiring police officers to record ethnicity of motorists ticketed and the policemen who ticket them.
Everytime a crimminal is arrested, you have all manner of speculation by race baiting "civil rights" groups, not about the crimes that occurred, but about whether or not the cops are racists.
This Left wing subterfuge originates, in part, from "hate" crime legislation, "racial profiling" legislation and all the other ACLU inspired attacks on the police by trial lawyers and other minions of perverts in municipal and state governments.
It does, thanks.
In cases like San Francisco, why don't Republicans boycott the elections and focus their efforts elsewhere?
Yes, I can. Every last child in the SF public school system would be aggressively indoctrinated into homosexuality.
The case looks much stronger, and the culpability far more serious, in this case. Mayor Willie Brown is protecting his friends, which is the same thing these cops were indicted for.
Old habits die hard. They must think they are still immune from any prosecution and are proceeding like Janet Sterno is still A.G.
Much to the chagrin of others, I have always advocated mandatory drug testing for all public employees, elected officials and all employees of 501(c) tax-exempt corporations as a condition for their "non-profit" status. The 501(c) drug testing could be implemented as an IRS code. The Leftist non profit scam would dry up and blow away like aging dung, this is where such Leftist get their political power.
I also favor mandatory drug testing as an OSHA requirement. This includes testing for marijuana and alcoholism. The party is over. Let's have a real war on drugs, because this is at the root of a lot of the nonsense.
This is in addition to the rampant drug abuse that is already advocated...
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