Sunday, December 11, 2016

DA's New Delay Avoiding Indicting SFPD Killer-Cops

On George Gascon's watch, twenty civilians have had fatal encounters with cops in San Francisco and not one of the officers responsible has been indicted by the district attorney.

No slap on the wrist, no interviews with the cops, no nothing.

But Gascon has skillfully manipulated the situation to plead for, and get, private funding for a bullshit blue ribbon panel he ran from start to finish that generated much gushing media attention.

And more than $1.5 million in City money was allocated for Gascon's new Independent Investigations Bureau in September, so he gained dozens of new staffers to do what his already bloated existing staff supposedly couldn't do: look at officer-involved-shootings.

My recent public records request for emails related to the killing of Mario Woods produced a letter from Gascon which offered this explanation for new delays in potentially indicting the cops who gunned down Woods, as video cameras recorded the murder:

"I understand the need to explore these investigations and have created the Independent Investigations Bureau (IIB) to handle these types of [officer involved shooting] cases.

"Funding for the IIB was approved in October and I hope to have the unit functioning in the next couple of months."

First of all, the DA wouldn't need a panel and new funding if 20 civilians were killed by other civilians or if a police officer were shot in the line of duty.

Second, if the DA wasn't prepared to hit the ground running on receiving the one and a half million dollars in new funding, and he can't offer a guesstimate of when the IBB will be functioning, do you truly expect Gascon to ever deliver an indictment against a cop?

Please read his full recent letter regarding cop accountability.



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