March 18 2003

THE SAN FRANCISCO police scandal has its roots in secrecy, and the last thing the city needs is more of the same. Judge Kay Tsenin did the right thing last week in refusing to issue a gag order, and she should continue to uphold the public's right to know the details of this scandal by refusing to seal the grand jury transcripts.

If the San Francisco Police Department and the Mayor's Office hadn't tried to keep the lid on this case from the start – if the brass hadn't tried to obscure what happened that night and the Police Commission had demanded public hearings and public accountability, if the district attorney had been more open about his investigation, if the whole thing hadn't left the public with the (accurate) impression that the department had something to hide – then the affair wouldn't have become such a horrible embarrassment.

D.A. Terence Hallinan shouldn't have sought a gag order. A coalition of media organizations, including the Bay Guardian, fought that order and won. The coalition's next battle: fighting the defense lawyers' order to keep the grand jury transcripts secret.

There is more at stake here than narrow legal issues: the credibility of this entire case, and public confidence in the ability of the legal system to start to clean up this awful mess in the SFPD, hinges on the outcome. Tsenin must deny the motion to seal the transcripts and let the public be the final judge of the record.