A Glimpse Inside the San Francisco District Attorney's Office: 90% Of Cases Drug Related

It occurred to me that by making a big deal out of episodes like this, which may have cost the taxpayers a thousand dollars, the media directs attention away from the big ongoing story: one-third of all San Francisco cops' pay is overtime. Overtime pay goes out to the vice and narcotics squads daily, in amounts that add up to millions a year. Because it happens every day, it's routine; it's not news. Thus the system is never exposed. A thousand dollars in bullshit overtime pay is news. A thousand thousand dollars in bullshit overtime pay is not news.

Seventy percent of the cases handled by the district attorney's office are for possession or sale of illicit drugs--mostly crack cocaine--and another 20 percent involve attempts by poor, desperate people to get money for drugs.

On a typical morning in Department 10, one of the four municipal courts on the first floor, 26 people wait patiently as the proceedings begin at 9:20 a.m. None appear to be affluent. Guessing from their demeanor and attire, six are regularly employed, including a muni driver and his wife. The rest are lumpen. There's a tall white man with dyed black hair, a Carl Perkins impersonator. Two Samoans, four Latinos, a white woman dozing, a white-haired Greek gent in his sixties. Everybody else is African American.

At the end of the day I debriefed the assistant DA--a self-described "progressive" hired by Terence Hallinan--who handled all those cases.

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