Wednesday, May 11, 2011

SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi Has Video, Alledges SF Police Misconduct

In a press conference today, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi showed a series of videos that, his office holds, shows the San Francisco Police Department conducting illegal searches and committing police brutality.

This is the second time in three months the San Francisco Public Defender has stepped forward with video showing SFPD misconduct. The first time resulted in a still-ongoing Federal investigation.

Mr. Adachi's department has provided this blogger with the videos, which were segmented. They are, as this is written, being put into sequential order to run as one video. That video will be ready this afternoon.

Adachi, along with his Chief Attorney, Matt Gonzalez, called for a zero-tolerance policy for police officers who commit perjury in San Francisco.

As to what happened, on December 30th, four San Francisco police officers - Ricardo Guerrero, Peter Richardson, Robert Sanchez, and Sergeant Kevin Healy - entered the residential hotel called The Jefferson Hotel. They were in plain clothes, without badges, and looked like, "thugs" to quote a person at the scene.

There, they illegally (without a warrant) searched the room of 48-year-old Fernando Santana, and in the process, they say, stole his property.

The officers claimed that crack cocaine was in his hands, outstretched, but the video shows Santana's hands in his pockets.

A bystander named "Joe," walked up to see what was going on. As the video shows, officers Ricardo Guerrero and Peter Richardson race to catch the man, after he realized he was going to be beaten up, as he believed. Remember, and he told this blogger, he did not know they were cops.

They caught him,and as the video shows, roughed him up and at one point choked him. They searches him and found nothing. The police report does not go into detail, calling it a brief "detention."

The main problem for the SFPD is explaining why Guerrero walked out of Santana's room with a black duffel bag. The bag was never booked as evidence.

Also, Guerrero found Santana not after "seeing him conducting a narcotics transaction" but after "casing the joint" that is the hotel, going from floor to floor, looking for trouble, armed with a residential master key that allows him to just walk into any room of the building.

This is the latest in a string of incidents where videos show a reality different that what is in the SF police reports.

Stay tuned.

Matt Gonsalez calls for zero tolerance of SFPD police misconduct
Matt Gonsalez calls for zero tolerance of SFPD police misconduct
Jeff Adachi talks new SF Police misconduct video now
Jeff Adachi talks new SF Police misconduct video now
@YouTube must block use of the N-Word in the comments of videos. It is out of hand.

GOP Sits on $31 Billion While Letting 99ers Starve

According to Keep America at Work and World Report today, the GOP is sitting on $31 billion dollars of paid in UI money, while they continue to let the 99ers starve daily.


From the article:

“The stated reason that HR 589 or a Tier 5 unemployment extension could not be introduced on the House floor was that neither could be financed, just another lie in a long stream of lies. Dave Camp, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee that is refusing to hear any legislation for unemployment extensions, has introduced his own bill, HR 1745 – Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Services (JOBS) Act of 2011.


Apparently there is $31 billion sitting in a bank account which is unemployment money we have paid in. Camp wants to take that money and turn it over to the states to use to give more tax cuts to the corporations that downsized our jobs. This is a diversion and misappropriation of public funds.


Camp is being supported by Human Resources Subcommittee Chairman Geoff Davis and Human Resources Subcommittee member Rick Berg. This group wants to steal more public monies to give to the filthy rich in a time when the filthy rich are making gluttonous profits while everyone else is going hungry in the cold.”

So the real question is how much more of this is hurting America willing to take, just sitting back idle or will the struggling millions finally get up and take a stand?


The article goes on to say:

“This country is ripe for revolution. Let’s do it. Let’s run these carpet baggers out of our country and our lives and restore our great Republic under our Constitution which will allow our free enterprise system to work again, and thus allow we the people to prosper again.”


How will things ever change for the better until good decent Americans stand up and say: ENOUGH! and do so out in public in huge massive demonstrations? But it must begin with the courageous few and spread like wildfire.


U-Cubed in a facebook posting today said of the GOP sponsored HR 1745: “The so-called "2011 Jobs Act" gives states permission to divert federal unemployment dollars to pay for things other than unemployment benefits. A better name for this bill would be the NO JOBS ACT..... Did we mention the so-called '2011 Jobs Act' would also deny unemployment benefits to workers who lack a high school diploma or GED?"


The Hill today also had a story on this ridiculous sham of a bill. From that article:

“The legislation, called the JOBS Act, would provide states the leeway to spend unemployment insurance funds on other things, including tax cuts.


Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that with unemployment still soaring at 9 percent, the bill represents "an assault" on the millions of Americans who rely on that safety net.


"It doesn't make an awful lot of sense to throw them out in the cold and not have them be able to pay their taxes, buy their food, pay their rent," Larson told reporters in the Capitol. "When we peel away the veneer of what the proposal is — aka 'We're going to reduce the deficit' — really what we find here is an ending of the social compact between the people and their government."


House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also took a shot at the proposal:

"They are referring to one of their bills on unemployment — to end benefits for long-term unemployment, taking away the assistance to 4 million people who are going to run out of unemployment benefits — they are calling that the JOBS Act," Hoyer said Tuesday. "I am very interested to see how eliminating unemployment insurance is going to be a jobs bill."

Well I sure am NOT interested in seeing anymore UI exhaustees suffering in the streets. All this bill is doing is wasting precious time that the 99ers and other hungry, homeless Americans do not have. This bill is nothing more than a diversion for the GOP to once again fool the people (who do not actually read what is in the legislation) into believing they are actually doing something - when all they ever really do in Congress is take vacations and not work at all for “We The People” even when in session.


Isn’t that the truth? But what we have all come to expect from the GOP, right? Face it folks, this Congressional session is a wash already and nothing will get done in Congress this year to make conditions better for anyone except America’s wealthy elite. Why is the American public at large so afraid to do something to stop the systematic extermination of the “Have nots”?


If you want to die a slow miserable death due to hunger and homelessness, then just keep doing the same thing: NOTHING! But, if you want to survive - you had better get up from your lethargy and do something, ANYTHING and fast!


[If you like what I write please donate so I can keep on fighting for the 99ers! Thank You!]



Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Recalling an excellent salmon salad at the Capital Grill across Broadway and 1/2 down 50th from Radio City in NYC
Recalling an excellent salmon salad at the Capital Grill across Broadway and 1/2 down 50th from Radio City in NYC

What the NFL and the Homeless Have in Common

doc gurley, health journalism, health reporting, traumatic brain injuryWith a traumatic brain injury, as can happen in the NFL, you feel yourself slipping away. You can't remember things that used to come easily, things like how to find the grocery store - acts and details that live, mocking, at the edges of your thoughts, just outside your grasp.

You know there's something wrong, but you have a sense that it's all your fault. Rage bubbles and pops to the surface, the only emotion that seems to escape the thick stew of depression that dulls your days.

You make lists and lists, trying to get your life under control. But two days later, you stare at pieces of paper, trying to remember what the scribble meant, which thing it is that you were supposed to do next.

Chronic pain is there all the time, and you try to plan and wait and be patient and stick with a process, but then you find yourself sitting, head in hands, unable to remember what's next. All you know is that something's wrong. And the rage squirms and writhes, trying to bubble up again.

The behavioral changes and impaired functioning caused by post-traumatic brain injury aren't poignant science fiction. They're real.

Traumatic brain injury, especially from repeated concussions, has become a pivotal topic in sport, particularly in the National Football League. Watching a game on TV, it used to be easy to scoff at the concept, as you watched players collide a million times and heard the dull thud of plastic against muscle, bone against bone. You've seen players get up and walk it off. How could it be life-damaging? And even if it is, didn't they kind of ask for it?




Background red color represents the proportion of homeless people by supervisory district in San Francisco. Individual dots represent reported assaults to SFPD during three weeks, April to May, 2011.




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Disclaimer: Identifiable patients mentioned in this post were not served by R. Jan Gurley in her capacity as a physician at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, nor were they encountered through her position there. The views and opinions expressed by R. Jan Gurley are her own and do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the City and County of San Francisco; nor does mention of the San Francisco Department of Public Health imply its endorsement.

Photo credit: dbking via Flickr