Local Groups Demand More Charges for SFPD Chief

For more info:
Van Jones, Bay Area PoliceWatch Attorney (415) 336.7688, 951.4844x225
Ying-sun Ho, Bay Area PoliceWatch Attorney (415) 305.1201

Explosive New Charges Against Indicted Chief Sanders Pressed By PoliceWatch; Group Demanding New Inquiry

Watchdog Asks DA To Investigate Press Reports That Sanders Improperly Hired Lawyer To Derail Grand Jury

Group Also Pressing DA To Re-Open 3 Homicide Cases Involving Cops

PRESS CONFERENCE LOCATION & TIME: The press conference will begin today promptly at 11 a.m. at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights at 54 Mint Street, on the Third Floor. Mint is a side street off Mission Street, between 5th and 6th Streets, in downtown San Francisco.

Bay Area PoliceWatch is calling for SF District Attorney Hallinan to open a new criminal investigation into further potential misconduct on the part of embattled SFPD Chief Earl Sanders.

"The one misdeed for which Chief Sanders is almost certainly guilty is the one misdeed for which he has been neither criminally charged nor disciplined," PoliceWatch founder Van Jones said.

According to a Tuesday, March 4, 2003, investigative column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sanders conducted an "unauthorized end run - to try to derail the grand jury probe into his Police Department."

Investigators Matier and Ross reported last week that: "Mayor Willie Brown was livid when he learned over the weekend that Sanders ­ without clearing it with anyone ­ had hired ex-Brown law partner Phil Ryan last month to build a case for the state to take away the investigation into the Union Street brawl from District Attorney Terence Hallinan."

"If the Chief spent unauthorized public money to derail the grand jury, then the Chief acted criminally," Jones said. "If he did it with private funds, then he violated department protocol. So ­ if this article is accurate ­ either the DA should prosecute him, or the Police Commission should discipline him, or both. And yet, so far, no one has charged him with anything. We demand action."

BAPW SAYS 'RE-OPEN THREE HOMICIDES CASES INVOLVING COPS'
Additionally, PoliceWatch is asking Hallinan to re-open criminal
investigations into three homicides in which police shot civilians, yet escaped prosecution. One of the homicides was investigated by an officer ­ David Robinson ­ who is presently under indictment. PoliceWatch suspects that police were involved in cover-ups in all three cases.

The cases are:

* The 1998 police shooting of17-year-old Shelia Detoy: To arrest 22-year-old Raymondo Cox for missing a court date, plainclothes officer Gregory Breslin rushed toward a car full of unarmed youth with his gun drawn. As panicked driver Michael Negron sped around Breslin, the officer opened fire, killing
Detoy and hitting Negron in the back. Breslin, who previously had been disciplined for covering up police brutality, said he fired in self-defense as the youth tried to run him down. Within hours, the lead SFPD homicide investigator David Robinson was in the media pronouncing the shooting ³justifiable.² But later evidence showed that Breslin had fired from a position of safety, not in the path of the car but beside it and behind it. Yet Breslin was never prosecuted or disciplined, and was later promoted.

* The 2000 police shooting of honorstudent Idriss Stelley: Police fired more than 20 shots at an African-American honor student who was having a nervous breakdown in the Metreon. The cover-up in this killing case was so total that the family could not get a police report or even any information about which officers were on the scene for nearly a year. And the mother had to
sue to get that.

* The 2002 police shooting ofGregory Hooper: While on a date with his girlfriend, off-duty officer Steve Lee got into a fistfight with Hooper, a black street vendor. Eyewitnesses reported that after the fight ended, Lee shot the unarmed Hooper four times in the chest at point-blank range. Numerous witnesses told the San Francisco Chronicle that Lee fired not in self-defense but in revenge. AndLee had a record of off-duty misconduct, having been cited previously byOffice of Citizen Complaints. But the SFPD quickly exonerated the officerfor this off-duty killing. The circumstances are disturbingly similar tothe Fagan Junior matter, except in this case a civilian died.

"These three cases show a pattern of police lawlessness and cover-ups after the fact," PoliceWatch attorney Ying-sun Ho said. "The SFPD's problem is bigger than one well-connected rookie behaving badly. Police have killed San Franciscans under very suspicious circumstances, and then gotten away with it. We call upon the DA to broaden and intensify the effort to clean up this
department."

PoliceWatch attorneys asked Willie Brown¹s Police Commission to take action in the matter of Sanders hiring Ryan at last week¹s meeting. But the Police Commission neither took action nor calendared action. The Commission has come under increasing fire in the media for its total inaction during the present crisis.

Bay Area PoliceWatch, founded in 1995, is a project of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.