A conversation with the mayor
Newsom backs police crackdown, defends budget

By Steven T. Jones

Mayor Gavin Newsom offered his most extensive comments yet on recent San Francisco Police Department scandals and the most controversial aspects of his proposed city budget during an extensive June 15 interview with the Bay Guardian.

Newsom said he supported a recent police crackdown in Bayview-Hunters Point known as Operation Impact, which had sparked accusations of racial profiling and civil rights abuses, and he declined to criticize provocative statements that have been made by the Police Officers Association's leadership.

"You should come out to Bayview-Hunters Point and truly walk the streets. I would say the overwhelming majority of people I talk to one-on-one support [Operation Impact]. But some in the community, some of the more vocal people, opposed it," Newsom said.

Similarly, Newsom defended the city's heavy-handed approach to preventing protesters from shutting down the recent biotech conference, blaming arrests and conflicts on protesters rather than on police overkill.

"The police did a remarkably good job. And the protesters were remarkably civil with, again, some exceptions, who were there purely to break the rules, break the laws, in order to send some statement of their dissatisfaction with probably not only the biotech conference but their own view of the world," Newsom said.

On his budget proposals to contract out city functions such as jail health services and pursue consolidations that many feel will result in reduced service levels, Newsom said he wants to pursue the changes but will be flexible about reversing them later if they don't work out.

"If the notion of change is that we can never imagine doing more with less, never imagine doing better, then there's no progress," Newsom said.

Among the other topics covered in the 40-minute interview were gay marriage, business taxes, budget priorities, homeless services, and public power. To read the full interview text, complete with links to background information, click here.

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