March 5 2003

By Savannah Blackwell

The grand jury indictments of 10 police officers last week instantly transformed the political landscape in San Francisco, shifting the ground under this year's campaigns for the top jobs at City Hall and the Hall of Justice.

As they handed 10 indictments to Judge Anne Bouliane, the 19 citizen jurors sent the district attorney's race to the top of San Francisco's political radar. At the same time, the jurors shifted the hot topic of the mayoral race from the budget crisis and homelessness to systemic corruption – which, some candidates already are charging, starts deep in the plush offices of the current mayor, Willie Brown.

"The major issue that will drive the mayor's race has gone from Care Not Cash to the broader issue of corruption," Rich de Leon, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, told us. "And it's going to have real momentum, because the issue has been raised in such a dramatic and explosive way."

The district attorney's race is now focused on the credibility of the San Francisco Police Department and the mayor, who has rushed to defend the indicted brass and denounced incumbent D.A. Terrence Hallinan for "vilifying" Police Chief Earl Sanders and his colleagues.

Hallinan, who was running a remarkably low-key campaign with little staff or money, has suddenly been thrust into the middle of a prime-time political battle with the mayor and machine. And the D.A. is framing the issue in the broadest possible terms.

"What we are talking about now are basic civil liberties," Hallinan said in an interview with the Bay Guardian. "Here's this madman [President George W. Bush] in Washington throwing the U.S. Constitution out the window. And we're supposed to do that here in San Francisco? No way, not while I'm district attorney."

Hallinan suggested that the corruption case will be at the center of his campaign, saying that his two main opponents, deputy city attorney Kamala Harris and defense lawyer Bill Fazio, couldn't be counted on to pursue the indictments. "This case won't be over by November," he said. "If either Kamala or Bill wins, that's the end of the case."

Ishmael Tarikh of Bay Area PoliceWatch warned that Harris, who attended church March 2 with Sanders, and Fazio, who is representing defendant Capt. Greg Corrales, are headed into dangerous territory.

"For Fazio and Harris, they need to be careful about how quickly they are to embrace this department, which is in total disarray," he told us.

Jim Stearns, who is running Harris's campaign, told us his client's presence Sunday with Sanders was not a statement about his guilt or innocence.

"She works in the office of the city attorney [who is advising the police commission on the matter], and therefore she cannot comment," Stearns said. "But she would be the kind of D.A. who believes no one is above the law."

For his part, Fazio said that he thought the case, at least against Corrales, would be settled quickly, well before November, and that if he were elected district attorney while the case against his client was ongoing, he would turn the matter over to the attorney general.

Hallinan is also taking a huge political risk – and more than his career is at stake. If the prosecution fails and the defendants go free, it could set back police-accountability efforts for years. And if Hallinan loses the election, all of the progressive reforms he has tried to institute may be lost.

Willie won't go

Meanwhile, longtime Brown watchers suspect the mayor's obvious anger at Hallinan stems from his desire to keep a strong hand in local politics even after his term ends next January, a notion some dubbed "reigning from the grave." Brown has indicated he'd like Harris to be district attorney and Gavin Newsom to succeed him in Room 200.

Besides, some observers say, Brown is nervous about what a truly aggressive (and unfriendly) D.A. might dig up in the future. "Nobody knows the full extent, but there's been a sense that it's been about who you know and what you can do for those in power," gay activist Jeff Sheehy noted. "We've had lobbyists becoming city contractors and getting rich. I think the enormity of the unraveling of the empire has taken [Brown] by surprise, and if [Hallinan] stays on as D.A., the whole mess could end up emptied out on the steps of City Hall."

Former supervisor and current mayoral candidate Angela Alioto added, : "Willie Brown needs Newsom to be mayor to perpetuate the waste and corruption."

For Newsom's part, his public statements have been limited. First, his office issued only a terse statement supporting the mayor's push to take the case away from Hallinan and give it to Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Then on Monday he started talking to reporters and saying he wanted to see some sort of new computer system put in place that would better track crime statistics.

"Newsom has said it is important to solve the problem, not just exploit the problem. And he is addressing that," his campaign consultant, Eric Jaye, said.

Treasurer Susan Leal acknowledged that the scandal will shift the focus of the race: "It comes down to whether someone is willing to bring about accountability."

And as for Sup. Tom Ammiano, he's the only mayoral candidate who said the mayor's control over cop activities should be shared. He said the mayor shouldn't get to appoint every member of the Police Commission. "This has been like a comedy of errors, and everybody is fed up with it."

Hallinan is also preparing to run directly against the legacy of the mayor. "The city is going through a major transition," he said. "And there's a major fight going on to determine what sort of transition that is. Are we going to shed the shackles of Willie Brown or aren't we?"

And some say it won't be hard to make the case for a post-Brown era. "The sad thing is that Willie Brown could have been the greatest mayor the city has ever seen," Sheehy said. "Instead, he ran it as his own personal ATM machine. And here we are with a massive budget deficit and a police department in shambles. Somebody ought to recognize the moment and send Willie a fiddle."