A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE SAN FRANCISCO HALL OF JUSTICE, WHERE 90 PERCENT
OF THE CASES ARE DRUG RELATED

One afternoon in February 2000, when I was learning the ropes at the
district attorney's office, I got a call from Phil Matier of the
Chronicle who wanted to talk about police chief Fred Lau. On Chinese
New Year's the SFPD's Lion Dancers had performed at a party in
Brisbane, for which they got four hours of overtime pay, authorized
by Lau. Matier wanted to know if the DA's office was investigating
the episode; if a complaint had been received; and the section of the
law pertaining to misuse of funds. I said I'd look into it.

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.

FG: One third of the cops pay is overtime. That's a big story. And
the people of San Francisco do not know it.

ADA: As you saw today, they don't always earn it. A lot of times they
get a subpoeana returned and they drop a card upstairs to get paid
- -they have an expression, "drop a card." I believe that happened
today. I know that they were under subpoena and didn't appear. That I
know. At least one of the officers who didn't appear had a partner
sign in for him. I asked his partner, " Where's Joe?" He said, "He
can't be here today he had me sign in for him."

FG: Sign in so he could collect his overtime pay?

ADA: I can't think of any other reason. And that's the core of what's
wrong here. That's where the real reform needs to happen, but nobody
says it The cops have a financial interest in not ending the war on
drugs. A lot of them make substantially more in overtime than they
make on their base salary. They even have a word for these cards they
drop -they call them "salmon." The cards are kind of salmon colored.
The cops say, "I gotta get my salmon." Meaning: "I gotta get a big
stack of these overtime cards I can drop upstairs. "

(The Assistant DA flicks open a computer print-out): Look at the
cases: drugs, drugs, drugs These are the prelims I had scheduled today.

FG: Do you know what drugs and what quantities are involved?

ADA: Very small quantities, typically. For example, this is an eleven
three fifty, We wound up putting on the hearing and it was less than
a gram of cocaine base. So they charged 11350, which is simple
possession of cocaine. This is a 52 which is a sales.

FG: To make a sales bust do they have to catch someone with a certain quantity?

ADA: No, it's the conduct. Most of the sales cases we get are
hand-to-hand sales from an undercover buy officer -a police officer
posing as a willing customer. Although we're getting an increasing
number of what they call observed sales where the cops are hiding
somewhere with binoculars in a high drug area and they watch people
make transactions and then they arrest them and they seize the drugs
and the money on them and they file those cases. So, drugs, drugs,
drugs, drugs -all four of the cases on this page are drugs. Drugs,
that's the fifth one.

FG: Are they all cocaine? Can you tell?

ADA: Yes, every one of these is cocaine and I believe every one is
cocaine base. Most of our cocaine cases are cocaine base, as opposed
to cocaine salt or cocaine powder. Drugs. Maria's case was not drugs.
I think it was a robbery case.

FG: Which could be to get money to buy drugs.

ADA: Yes, that's typically what a defense attorney's going to tell
you. (finds case on print-out) Yes, it's a robbery. Mr. E. is on two
grants of probation for narcotics-related offenses, which makes it
seem likely that that's what he was doing. They call it "drug-seeking
behavior." And if you're to believe anecdotally what defense lawyers
tell you, what defendants tell the police, what defendants say on
probation reports, Yeah, the vast majority of burglaries and
robberies are done to obtain money for drugs -an overwhelming
percentage of them. I'd bet it's more than 75 percent; it may be more
than 90 percent.

FG: Make a ballpark guess, what percentage of cases handled in the
Hall of Justice are drug cases?

ADA: Eighty percent. Maybe more.

FG: What else is there?

ADA: Robberies. First and second-degree burglaries. Auto burglaries
and auto thefts. Then you have your murders, your attempted murders,
your rapes, and your assaults. Less than five percent for all those
things. And combined less than 20 percent for all those things. (He
focuses again on the print-out) So, we have one narcotics, two
narcotics, three narcotics, four narcotics, five narcotics, six
narcotics, seven narcotics, eight narcotics I'm keeping a record to
show how often no one shows up. Here: I have Officer X, who never
showed up. The other officer who signed him up appeared for the first
time at 12 noon to sign in, and he had no dope and no 115 form. It's
a massive problem.

FG: When Dr. Mikuriya didn't make it up to El Dorado county to
testify in a case recently, officers from Alameda County gave him a
citation. He now has to go up there and deal with a contempt charge.
Why isn't there an equivalent response when a cop who's subpoeaned
doesn't come to court? Isn't that against the law?

ADA: That's what it says on the subpoena form.

FG: Well, they're not supposed to be above the law. Justice is
supposed to be even-handed. If the cops routinely don't show up when
subpoenaed, why isn't that a scandal?

ADA: I try and get along with these guys and I try and accommodate
them. So on this case, I was able to get it continued. I covered for them.

FG: Did you cover for them all today?

ADA: On this other case the officer had a pretty good excuse -he was
testifying in another department. And, to his credit, he checked in
first thing in the morning and wrote "jury trial, city hall." I have
no problem with him -he's a professional. (Reviewing the "Preliminary
hearing sign in sheet.") This guy showed up first thing with no dope,
told me he couldn't be here after 11 o'clock, and then disappeared.
Said he was gonna come back and disappeared. So when his partner came
back I told the partner to go get the dope. Turns out the other guy
had already taken the dope and had disappeared with it. So, this guy
was useless to me and the other guy was missing. I managed to get it
continued This case went without a hitch No cops ever showed on this
case and I don't know where they are When I come down in the morning
I spread the files out in numeric order and I have my calendar and I
have this sign-in sheet. The police know it's standard practice to
sign in with their pager number and their location, or their
extension number if they happen to be inspectors who are upstairs.

FG: What are they getting paid at this point?

ADA: They get paid for three hours just for signing in.

FG: Three hours overtime?

ADA: Unless they're on duty. Most of the cops today were getting
overtime. And I covered for them, I'm complicit.

FG: Are you afraid of them? Why go out of your way to cover for them?

ADA: Well, if we're getting along the cops will be more likely to
sign off on my dispos. If I give some guy a third referral to
diversion, he won't start complaining to the community, "Hallinan's
giving away the store." Most cops don't like the idea that diversion
exists. So to refer someone three times, you have to sell them on
that The bulk of our cases are 11350s -simple possession of cocaine.
An 11350 doesn't get me worked up. I see it for what it really is: a
bottom-feeder case, usually Cocaine base -crack- and cocaine salt
combined has to be at least three-quarters of our cases -mostly base.
Then comes marijuana, then heroin. Ecstasy and those things you don't
see much at all.

FG: What kind of marijuana cases do we see?

ADA: In prelim court you only see sales or possession for sale,
because simple possession is a misdemeanor in California. The typical
marijuana case that we get is a Haight Street caper or buy bust where
a cop goes undercover and buys a baggie, usually a $20 baggie of
marijuana from some kid on one of the corners and then the arrest
team's there and they arrest the person and charge him with sales.

FG: And they do that at the behest of the Haight St. merchants.

ADA: They certainly hype that in their reports that they've received
numerous citizen complaints about narcotics trafficking on Haight St.
A lot of cops write that in the body of their police reports. They
indicate that there's a great hue and cry for their services out
there. There's a lot of narcotics busts out there for marijuana.

FG: How many heroin cases do we get?

ADA: We apparently have an epidemic problem vis a vis other American
cities, but still vis a vis those other drugs it's not a huge amount.

FG: Isn't it obvious that making opiates available through doctors'
offices would solve the problem just like that?

ADA: What you saw today on the micro level with these individual cops
exists on the macro level. Individually and collectively have a
tremendous interest in maintaining the war on drugs. They're part of
a whole complex that includes the religious right and politicians who
want to pander to them. This system is so entrenched and so
calcified, it now has a life of its own.

FG: Do you see any chance for opposition to the war on drugs
developing within the law enforcement community?

ADA: I think there'd be tremendous peer pressure for them not to.
I've had conversations with cops who say the war on drugs is fucked.
But then they say there's no better solution that's tenable or
acceptable to them The cops are human beings. There's lesbian cops
and black cops and Democrats and Republicans. There's people who are
angry and probably shouldn't have a gun; there's people who probably
wouldn't use a gun even if they had to. They run the whole continuum.
A lot of them have a lot of humanity and a lot of decent intentions.
And by and large I think they have a hard job. But there's some real
rot at the core of the way we're administering justice here. It's
money more than ideology.. I've got to believe that one of the
reasons the POA doesn't like Mr. Hallinan is that they see Mr.
Hallinan's narcotics policies as a threat to salmon. You'll never
convince me otherwise.

FG: So you might say the cops are in the "save the salmon" movement.

ADA: But if you ask them they'll say that they're doing the right
thing and they're trying to protect the neighborhoods they work in.
They have these community meetings and we get invited to them and
they bring in people who own businesses and they say, "Why are these
hookers and drug dealers allowed to hang out and do business on our
streets?" The cops blame the DA.

FG: Could you make any generalizations about the defendants coming
through today?

ADA: Most are these marginalized characters, mostly charged with
simple possession or sales of a very small amount. They're clearly
not big fish, they're clearly not major traffickers or drug kingpins
or anything like that. Most of them have drug addictions themselves.
No money. No education. Most of them have health problems. A lot of
them have psychological problems.

FG: What was the story of the man and woman where she was out of
custody and he was still in?

ADA: We had done a search of the house and found drugs in the house
and found them there. We had a CRI -a confidential reliable
informant. The drug cases that don't involve us doing either a buy
bust or an officer-observed sale typically come by way of warrant. In
order to get a warrant you have to demonstrate probable cause to a
magistrate. The typical way you demonstrate it is by police officers
staking out an area and recording their observations; and police
officers receiving information from CRIs. These are people who
anonymously give the police tips which cause them to further
investigate and prepare a warrant package and come to us. We
typically sign off on them. Sometimes we'll say "this is
insufficient," and sometimes we'll say "this is bullshit." And then
they go to a judge and try to get a judge to sign the warrant.

FG: Why was he in custody and she not?

ADA: My recollection is that he was on probation I think for a
narcotics thing, what's called a 1203 hold. When you're on probation
and pick up a new arrest there's typically a hold placed in superior
court. And typically if you're on felony probation it's a no-bail
hold and you're stuck.

FG: Do you know the drugs involved and the quantities?

ADA: I have it back in my office. I can tell you some of them were
under a gram. Amador was under a gram. Kosyn was under a gram. I
believe two of Logan's cases were under a gram.

FG: What did you make of the domestic violence case where you got
bail of $40,000?

ADA: That is a really hot issue in his building. Terence deserves a
lot of credit for sensisitizing the judges. When we came here they
were diverting domestic violence cases and a lot of people were
getting Ored. Now, if you're charged with felony DV you're almost
definitely not going to get Ored and you're certainly going to have a
reasonably high bail set.

FG: What was the Elvis impersonator charged with?

ADA: He was charged with mnisdemeanor stalking. 646.9 of the penal
code. One of the more intrepid misdemeanor deputies decided that the
conduct was actually felonious and took it upon themselves to amend
it to make it a felony.

FG: What about the Muni driver?

ADA: Domestic violence case.

FG: He was accompanied by a woman.

ADA: Very good chance she was the victim. Standard custom and
practice is for them to reconcile shortly after he's taken into
custody. And henceforth they work at cross-purposes with the
prosecution. They create problems for us in prosecuting their batterers.

Fred Gardner is the editor of O'Shaughnessy's Journal of the
California Cannabis Research Medical Group.