Racist San Francisco Police Union POA Lashes Out Against Sanctuary City Policy, Takes Aim

Racist San Francisco Police Union POA Lashes Out Against Sanctuary City Policy, Takes Aim at Politicians, Public Defender, Sheriff
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/San-Francisco-Police-Union-Lashes-Out-About-Sanctuary-City-Policy-Takes-Aim-at-Jeff-Adachi-and-Ross-Mirkarimi-312207431.html
By Lisa Fernandez
Authorities say Kathryn Steinle was found suffering from at least one gunshot wound to her upper torso near the Embarcadero and Mission Street in the city's South Beach neighborhood, Wednesday, July 1, 2015.
Updated at 5:03 PM PDT on Tuesday, Jul 7, 2015
The San Francisco police union jumped into the national debate on immigration stemming from a random shooting that killed a 32-year-old woman walking along the pier by pointing fingers at the county’s liberal-leaning public defender and sheriff for their stance on sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.
In a Monday post, the San Francisco Police Officers Association took aim at San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi and San Francisco County Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, along with other unnamed local politicians, who by city and county law, don’t deport immigrants unless they have active warrants out for their arrests.
Adachi released a statement Monday expressing concern about what he called "POA rhetoric."
"The Police Officers Association must have forgotten that the city's current sanctuary policy was fully supported by the chief of police, the district attorney, the mayor, and all 11 members of the board of supervisors when it passed," Adachi said, adding that the union's post could harm the efforts to rebuild community trust between police and the immigrant community.
The city and county of San Francisco voted to become a sanctuary city in 2013.
In the case of Francisco Sanchez, charged with the July 1 murder of Kate Steinle along Pier 14, the jail, run by Mirkarimi, let Sanchez go without sending him back to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency despite a “detainer” request to do so. Sanchez is an undocumented immigrant, who has been deported from the United States five times, records show.
"Bottom line is a young innocent woman has been murdered in cold blood, in front of her father, by a 5 time deported illegal alien drug dealer," the union's Facebook post read. "He is an ILLEGAL ALIEN not an undocumented immigrant and if he was where he belonged (Mexico) this innocent victim would still be alive.”
Many of the comments on the post supported the union. "PC crap is out of control," Chris Tallerico wrote.
Others took a more nuanced view. Casey Grim wrote: "Terribly sad, but the truth is it would have happened in Mexico if he had been in Mexico. A pointless murder that isn't on our soil isn't any less terrible. Many illegal immigrants are farmers looking to make money for their families back home, often they travel back home after they've saved a decent amount. This tragedy is horrific, and heart wrenching, but we shouldn't blame illegal immigrants."
For his part, Mirkarimi has defended his position on not complying with ICE detainers, and has said that the immigration agency could have put a court order on Sanchez if the agency wanted him so badly. He said on Tuesday that his officers used to call ICE on a case-by-case basis, but he told them not to in March, to comply with city and county policy.
The union’s post also made reference to the “tragic death of Anthony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Mathew, 16, in 2008 by a previously deported ILLEGAL ALIEN.”
In that case, police believed that two suspects mistook one of the Bologna sons for a rival gang member. The triple-murder case brought national attention to San Francisco in 2008 because of the city's sanctuary policy, which shielded undocumented juveniles suspected of crimes from being reported to federal immigration officials.
One of the suspects, Edwin Ramos, 25, who was later convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, moved to the United States as a teen and remained in the country on an expired visa from El Salvador, was never reported to federal authorities despite multiple contacts with police as a juvenile.
The police union equated the same attitude toward sanctuary cities with the “tragic death of Kate Steinle. If this city and some of its elected official continue with this failed policy then it will happen again.”

The Police Officers Association is now attacking the SF Labor Council
http://www.48hills.org/2015/05/11/the-poa-is-now-attacking-the-sf-labor-council/
Posted on May 11, 2015 by Tim Redmond
Don’t these people know that they are just alienating their potential friends and allies?


The SF police union is calling out the ILWU over a Black Lives Matter protest. Why?

By Tim Redmond

MAY 12, 2105 – The San Francisco Police Officers Association, not content to bully the Board of Supervisors and the Democratic County Central Committee, is now attacking the San Francisco Labor Council and the ILWU.

And once again, it’s all about a rather mild set of statements that never criticized the SFPD or any local officer.

POA President Marty Halloran sent out a missive yesterday to Tim Paulson, the executive director of the Labor Council, and Mike Casey, the president, denouncing the council for even considering a resolution endorsing the ILWU’s May 1 action in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

The resolution was introduced by ILWU Local 10 member Marcus Holder, and called for “support of the May 1 union action to stop police killings of people of color.”

The longshore union moved a scheduled work-stoppage day to May 1 to close down the Port of Oakland for about eight hours to support the protests.

Nothing in the resolution mentions any specific police department. It simply notes, correctly, that “there is an epidemic of police killing of people of color, mainly black and brown people, across the country.”

It simply asks the Labor Council to “endorse this critical labor action.”

The measure never got to a vote because the Labor Council was unable to get a quorum at the April meeting where it was introduced. It was tabled at the Executive Committee. So the thing never passed.

Meanwhile, in the days before the May 1 action, an ILWU organizer, Stacey Rodgers, made a fairly straightforward statement to the Chronicle about why her union was working with the activists demanding an end to the brutality and killings:

“I am proud of my union’s history of resistance, and I felt it was time labor came out loudly against police terror,” union organizer Stacey Rodgers said in a statement.

That’s it.

But the SFPOA was incensed, apparently, and the letter that appeared on the group’s May 11 email blast called out Paulson, Casey, and Rodgers, denounced the local labor leaders as “unprofessional” and railed against the ILWU organizer by name:

Dear Mr. Paulson & Mr. Casey,

The recent comments made by Stacey Rodgers, in SF GATE on April 28th, and language within the Labor Council resolution of May 1st, are simply unconscionable.

As brothers and sisters within the Labor community, it is hard to fathom why you would choose not to pick up the phone to discuss this with me first. I understand politics, I understand the need to send messages to your constituency, but this is fear mongering and not constructive in any manner.

I would expect a greater sensitivity and understanding of the work we do every day to keep San Franciscans safe. This is immature and lazy and if you were truly interested in a discussion around how to work together on these issues you would not have taken this approach.

I expected more from you both. Casting negativity on an entire department based on individual actions, especially one that promotes diversity and support for affinity groups within our organization is both unprofessional and reprehensible.

Martin Halloran

SFPOA President



Now: Let’s remember the resolution never even came to a vote. And it never said a single word about the SFPD or suggested that a single SFPD office was guilty of anything (although some of them clearly were, and are).

“A lot of resolutions come before the Labor Council,” Paulson said. “This one was tabled.”

There was no “negativity on an entire department” – no department was ever mentioned.

I called Rodgers, and she told me she was baffled, particularly since she said she doesn’t know anyone at the SFPOA and never said anything about the department. “It’s unconscionable for them to call me out like that,” Rodgers told me. “But the ILWU is not in the least bit intimidated by this.”

Casey said he would like to see the Labor Council be able to work with the POA. “We believe that black lives matter, and we will stand up for that, and we can do that in a way that doesn’t alienate and demonize every cop in the city.”

Yes, that’s entirely possible. If the POA wouldn’t be so reactionary. This stuff can’t be good for the members of the union – or for labor in San Francisco.

Tim Paulson, Executive Director

Mike Casey, President

San Francisco Labor Council

1188 Franklin Street, Suite 203 San Francisco, Ca. 94109

Dear Mr. Paulson & Mr. Casey,

The recent comments made by Stacey Rodgers, in SF GATE on April 28th, and language within the Labor Council resolution of May 1st, are simply unconscionable.

As brothers and sisters within the Labor community, it is hard to fathom why you would choose not to pick up the phone to discuss this with me first. I understand politics, I understand the need to send messages to your constituency, but this is fear mongering and not constructive in any manner.

I would expect a greater sensitivity and understanding of the work we do every day to keep San Franciscans safe. This is immature and lazy and if you were truly interested in a discussion around how to work together on these issues you would not have taken this approach.

I expected more from you both. Casting negativity on an entire department based on individual actions, especially one that promotes diversity and support for affinity groups within our organization is both unprofessional and reprehensible.

Martin Halloran

SFPOA President

Statement By Transport Workers Solidarity Committee To SF Labor Council Delegates
Dear Labor Council Delegates,

In a recent letter dated May 11, the President of the SF Police Officers Association, Martin Halloran, attacked comments made by sister Stacey Rodgers, ILWU Local 10 Executive Board member in SF Gate on April 28. Halloran also sharply criticizes the Labor Council resolution from Local 10, “Resolution in Support of May 1st Union Action to Stop Police Killings of People-of-Color”, as “unconscionable”.

Halloran said these comments are “fear mongering”, “not constructive”, “immature” and “lazy”.

It is almost unbelievable that Mr. Halloran can write these words with a straight face and expect the Bay Area to take them seriously. Just last month, the SFPD was forced to fire six police officers for sending disgusting, outrageous and racist material to each other on text messages. Here is a selection of what those messages contained:

• “Yeah, we burn the cross on the field! Then we celebrate Whitemas.”
• “Its [sic] worth every penny to live here [Walnut Creek] away from the savages.”
• “The buffalo soldier was why the Indians Wouldnt [sic] shoot the niggers that found for the confederate They [sic] thought they were sacred buffalo and not human.”
• “White Power.”
• In response to a text saying “Niggers should be spayed,” one cop wrote “I saw one an hour ago with 4 kids.”
• “I am leaving it like it is, painting KKK on the sides and calling it a day!”
• “Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!”
• In response to a text saying “All niggers must fucking hang,” one cop wrote “Ask my 6 year old what he thinks about Obama.”
• In response to a text regarding the promotion of a black officer to sergeant, one cop wrote “Fuckin nigger.”

Brothers and Sisters, it is outrageous that the San Francisco Police Department continues to devalue the lives of people of color and allows such racist behavior to go unpunished. Mr. Halloran says that these are based on “individual actions”, but any thinking person with a conscience knows the police union defends racists like the ones who wrote these text messages. There are police like the ones who were fired working on the streets of San Francisco, and other cities in the Bay Area, right now.

How many have died because of police violence in the past few years? So many have been killed, just in the Bay Area. Oscar Grant, Alex Nieto, Alan Blueford, Andy Lopez, Raheim Brown . . . the list goes on and on. How can anybody with a heart say that is not racism? Is it not police terror when the murderers walk free with impunity? And then, when working people decide to do something about it, how can somebody turn around and say this is “fear-mongering”?

Mr. Halloran is just like Baltimore police union president Gene Ryan, who called people protesting the police murder of Freddie Gray “a lynch mob”. Who did the protesters in Baltimore lynch? Did protesters kill Freddie Gray, or was it the Baltimore police? Who is fear-mongering here?

The unions in this country have to stand up against the epidemic of police terror and mass incarceration. The 1934 San Francisco General Strike happened because of the outrage after police killed two striker on Bloody Thursday and attacked hundreds of striking maritime workers. Whenever a strike occurs, it is the police who break the picket lines. Working class people are the ones who suffer from mass incarceration and police brutality and it is the role of a labor movement committed to social justice to put an end to that oppression.

We proudly defend the comments made by Stacey Rodgers and the Local 10 resolution presented to the San Francisco Labor Council. It's time to implement labor's slogan "An injury to one is an injury to all"!

In solidarity,

Transport Workers Solidarity Committee