The chief's other legal problem

By A.C. Thompson

FEB. 28 , 10:43 a.m. The rapidly ballooning media mob squeezes into the elevators at the Hall of Justice and spills out onto the fifth floor – police headquarters – where a plainclothes detective greets us by barking, "The vultures are here! The vultures are here!"

The top cops are gone, perhaps preferring to be busted in the relative privacy of their own homes, so the TV shooters are reduced to aiming their cameras at San Francisco police chief Earl Sanders's empty office.

It's a media circus. The indictment of Sanders and nine other cops is the biggest news story to hit the city since 1989, when the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta quake killed 62 people and obliterated $6 billion worth of property. And around the San Francisco Police Department, the disbelief is palpable.

Police Commission secretary Lt. Ed Geeter's eyes are moist. In the SFPD's Public Affairs Office, Sherman Ackerson, normally a jovial, upbeat character, is silent, his face pale. "We really never expected it to come to this," another SFPD employee says.

The tension doesn't let up: later that night, at an emergency Police Commission hearing, a couple of undercover narc cops threaten to eject community activist Van Jones, who is loudly declaring District Attorney Terence Hallinan "a hero."

Is Sanders a saint?

The criminal charges causing pandemonium at the SFPD stem from a now infamous brawl in November 2002, during which three young off-duty cops reportedly pummeled two civilians leaving a trail of blood splattered along Union Street and sending one to the hospital with a shattered nose and a lacerated scalp. After months of speculation, Sanders and company stand accused of obstructing justice in connection with the investigation of the beating.

And while some of the indicted officers have been behaving badly for years, Sanders, the city's first African American police chief, enjoys a storied reputation as a heroic, squeaky clean cop, and the press has largely given him a pass. The day after the scandal broke the San Francisco Chronicle described him as a "consummate professional" and "legendary investigator." The 65-year-old chief, friends and fellow officers say, is a conscientious cop who would never try to bury the truth.

But the truth is, this is not the first time Sanders has allegedly been involved in a major-league cover-up.

There is evidence, reported here for the first time, suggesting Sanders illegally and improperly hid crucial facts in a high-profile 1990 murder trial.

[cont. at: http://www.sfbg.com/37/23/cover_sanders.html]