CALL TO RAISE BAIL OF S.F. CRACK SUSPECTS

Lenient bail decisions by San Francisco judges lure crack dealers to The
City and plague residents with revolving-door justice, police and
prosecutors say.

Law enforcement officials appeared before a Board of Supervisors committee
Thursday to urge City Hall to press judges to get tougher.

They called on the courts to increase the bail that suspects must post in
San Francisco to be released from custody. The City generally has the lowest
bail schedule in the Bay Area, which critics contend makes San Francisco a
magnet for lawbreakers.

"We keep arresting some of these same subjects over and over, and we do see
this infusion of out-of-town dope dealers who find it far less risky to deal
narcotics in San Francisco than in other cities," said San Francisco police
Capt. Dennis Martel, commander of Southern Station.

"Not only do we suffer frustration, my heart goes out to the residents of
this city and the commercial districts in this city that suffer from a
concentration of narcotics trafficking because they see these dope dealers
on their street corners, in front of their homes, in front of their
business, creating extremely unsavory conditions."

The presiding judge of the Municipal Court said she's heard similar
complaints in discussions with community groups since she took over the
court's leadership post last summer. Judge Donna Little said, however, that
individual judges decide on a case-by-case basis what the bail should be.

"We look at several issues," she said. "Do they have a prior record? How
long ago since their last arrest? Was there violence or weapons involved?"

Privately, other judges grumbled that they weren't given the courtesy of an
invitation to appear at the hearing called by Supervisor Jose Medina to
explain in general terms just how they decide these matters.

Little, however, struck a conciliatory tone, saying she intends to ask her
colleagues to focus specifically on crack cases when they hold an annual
meeting this year on the court's bail schedule.

Medina vowed to step up pressure on the courts, and plans to introduce a
nonbinding measure to the full board Tuesday that would put the supervisors
and mayor on record supporting higher bail for some drug offenses.

"We are a bargain basement when it comes to bail," he said.

The bail schedule, set by the judiciary, is used as a guideline for judges
when a defendant first appears in court.

All counties must have one, according to state law, and all defendants,
except in capital murder cases, are entitled to the setting of bail.

In San Francisco, for example, the bail schedule is comparatively soft in
cases of crack cocaine sale and possession. The schedule calls for a bail of
$2,500 for each count, although judges are free to depart from that figure,
setting either more or less bail.

In Alameda County, for the same offenses, the schedule calls for a bail of
$20,000. In Santa Clara County, it is $15,000. In Contra Costa County, it is
$30,000.

To illustrate the problem, local police and prosecutors cited examples of
drug dealers at the Daly City-San Francisco border near the Cow Palace
scrambling to make sure that if they do get arrested, they're popped in San
Francisco territory.

"A lot of the narcotics dealers that we would encounter even on the
larger-scale deals say they would much rather do the deal in San Francisco
than outside the county," said police Capt. Greg Suhr of Mission Station.

Law enforcement authorities said the benefit of forcing suspects to post
higher bail in San Francisco would be immediate.

"If we were able to rewrite the bail schedule, we would eliminate the
incentives, we would be able to keep people in custody, we would have fewer
cases as a result and the standard of living for citizens of this county
would be dramatically improved," said Vernon Grigg, managing attorney for
the San Francisco district attorney's narcotics unit.

But the proposal has its foes. In an interview, San Francisco Public
Defender Jeff Brown ripped the critics of the status quo, calling their
accusations politically expedient.

"It is very easy to make judges the whipping boy," Brown said. "But police
and prosecutors have ready access to the courts, and frankly I have not
heard the district attorney complaining until now."

To the contrary, Brown said, District Attorney Terence Hallinan has been an
advocate of alternatives to incarceration, including a program that gets
young dealers out of jail and into intensive counseling, educational and job
training.

John Shanley, Hallinan's spokesman, said the district attorney agrees with
police, but didn't mean to blindside the courts, either.

While the office disputes bail in individual cases, it has not raised the
overall issue with the judges. Shanley said there may be blame to be shared
on that score.

Shanley said San Francisco's low bail schedule is, in large part, a product
of inertia from earlier in the decade when the entire criminal justice
system was looking for answers to jail overcrowding -- a problem that has
waned since a new lockup opened three years ago.

Brown added he doesn't believe "bail policies in San Francisco are lenient"
and in fact the "decisions appropriately reflect the dangers the defendants
pose and the likelihood they will return to court" when their cases are called.

But hotelier Steve Raymond, representing the U.N. Plaza-Mid-Market Merchants
Association, disagreed, saying that firsthand experience shows him that
change is needed.

"Many of the drug pushers that stand in front of our doorways all day come
into San Francisco on BART from other cities around the Bay Area," said
Raymond, marketing director for the Renoir Hotel on McAllister Street. "When
the dealers are arrested, they are always immediately able to post bail or
they are released on their (own recognizance) and by the following day have
returned to our doorsteps. The effect of this policy is to put us all out of
business." Raymond noted that at least two foreign governments, Japan and
the United Kingdom, have warned their citizens to steer clear of the area
because of the illegal drug activity.

©1998 San Francisco Examiner

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett