Golden Showers Rain On Castro

You don’t need to be a weatherman to which way the wind blows and Citizens for Halloween are forecasting golden showers, predicting a thunder clash of party revelers and cops with no port-a-potties in sight.

Co-founder and SF Party Party blogger, Ted Strawser, reached out to Castro resident and Port-a-potty guy, Michael Staley, in an effort to dam the urine river before it starts, offering outhouses to neighborhood homeowners.

But, on Tuesday, the Department of Public Works informed him that it would violate city bylaws to issue him a port-a-john.

Instead, The City hopes to stem the tide with a combination of lame PSA Announcements, Aggressive Law Enforcement, and Intimidating Bar Owners.

The No Halloween In the Castro Ads urge partiers to stay home or head somewhere other than the Castro:

“Because this year, the Castro is not where it’s happening”

The City’s Law Enforcement Plan includes:

• Deputy Chief David Shinn says Capt. John Goldberg will head the Mission Station, will receive reports every half hour from command stations throughout the city to deploy police as needed. He Shinn described a “aggressive enforcement” policy for drunkenness, public urination and other likely offenses.

• Shinn and at least half a dozen other officials made pains to note that Muni buses and drivers will be available to ferry “platoons” of cops around town like troop transports.

• Unlike the past, the streets will only be barricaded on an as-needed basis. Also, less of the Castro will be off-limits for parking than in the past.

• Large numbers of Meter Maids and Tow Trucks will be on-scene, to expedite the towing of cars in the no-parking zones, driveways or sidewalks.

• California Highway Patrol officers will be manning DUI checkpoints.

Joe Alioto Veronese, a civil rights attorney, also pointed out that by canceling the official Halloween event and opting not to barricade streets, the city had no legal right to subject random citizens to a weapons check as it did last year.

A number of Castro denizens went on to angrily accuse Supervisor Bevan Dufty, the mayor’s office and the police of attempting to intimidate local businesses into closing on Halloween – as the Weekly noted in its latest print edition.

European in the Castro?

I guess Gavin’s PSA’s don’t include subtitles - lol. Seriously, get your nose plugs out. No rain ’til Wednesday - peewww-eeee!

Complete Article: 100,000 People Are Coming: Where Will They Urinate? by Joe Eskenazi, SF Weekly

Breakin News: Castro Business Owners Forced to Board Up by Traci Grant, NBC11

Related Post: Smashing Pumpkins with Gavin Newsom

Tent City

While San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom roundly criticizes the war on drugs of robbing our prisons of precious cell space, Sheriff Michael Hennessey echoes his sentiments quietly freeing violent offenders back onto the streets.

That is, until Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio rides into with some old fashioned justice.

Last week,Hennessey said, “his hands are tied" by overcowding; and I say his early releases are effectively unknotting the mayor’s “services or citation” arrests, locking us into vicious cycle of “catch and release.”

It's like losing an old fashioned shootout by slightest margin of points - heartbreaking. The mayor lights up the scoreboard with huge numbers in his reelection bid; nevertheless, we lose as vegabonds play trading spaces with addicts and theives - not to mention overworked and under appreciated SFPD.

Enter Sheriff Joe, just in time to save the day with a temporary, permanent solution – Tent City.

Sheriff Joe says, If you can’t beat ‘em in Golden Gate Park, then join ‘em!

Pitch a Tent, Portable Fence and Toilets too.

Where the buffalo roam, polo horses play, windmills curn and rose gardens flourish stands a temporary solution to a permanent problem, economically and compassionately providing food, shelter and directing the homeless into programs they desperately need and desperately reject.

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• No Vacancy!


• Officer Suspended for Criticizing Mayor


• Wait and See


• Liberals March 'Right' Over Progressives


• Bum Fights


• Care Not Recycle


• Care Not Carts


• Chasing The Dragon


• Mayor Closes Golden Gate Park


• National Guard Deployed to San Fracisco


• Escape to New York

Video:

• Night of the Living Homeless - South Park


• The Homeless Return - Stanley Roberts, KRON 4


• Shame of the City - Stanley Roberts, KRON 4

Gavin Sucks Polls:

• Vote: Do you agree with Newsom's “Services or Citation” Homeless Plan?


• Vote: Would You Dump Daly?

Turf War In The Tenderloin

Haight Drugs, Heart Newsom!

Mayor Gavin Newsom launched another operation targeting the drug trafficking in the Tenderloin, Mission and Market Street with a weeklong crackdown in which SFPD arrested over a hundred suspected drug dealers!!!

The latest sting went Monday to Sunday and involved officers posing as drug users seeking heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine.

Captain Tim Hettrich of San Francisco police narcotics detail said the price of drugs on the street is going up.

"That means there is not as much of it, or we are making a dent in making these buys."

Hettrich added nearly three quarters of the dealers were from outside the city and the narcotics unit seized $1.5 million in methamphetamine in the first six months of the year, and the price on the street has gone from $12,000 a pound to $17,000 a pound.

"It's like a farmer's market out there - a pharmaceutical market - it's non-stop. We are out there every day, week in and week out.”

With a price increase, he added, more dealers are coming from out of town and drug-related violence has increased as dealers fight over turf.

Complete Article: Tenderloin Drug Sweep by Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle

Gavin Newsom's Report Card

As Written by Chronicle's Cecilia M. Vega:

From behind the desk in his stately City Hall office, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom looks back on his first term and says the "chattering class" - his term for political insiders - got it all wrong when they thought they had him figured out.

When he was elected in 2003, Newsom was the young, rich entrepreneur who made his political name with a plan to slash welfare checks to the homeless. He was expected to serve the downtown businesses that helped elect him and not disturb the patronage politics of his predecessor and political benefactor, Mayor Willie Brown.

"There was a characterization that was advanced during the campaign that was quite difficult for me, being painted as ... disconnected from the challenges of reality, real people."

Four years later, San Francisco's youngest mayor in a century still contends with the Pacific Heights liberal label, thanks to his society wedding to prosecutor-turned-TV commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle, his posing for fashion magazine photo spreads with her at the Getty mansion before their 2005 divorce, and the playboy-ish pursuits that have followed.

But Newsom has surprised observers by being far more politically progressive than many anticipated, displaying an eagerness to clear the air of cronyism and influence-buying that long hung over the mayor's office and showing a willingness to put his political future in jeopardy by taking a stance on same-sex marriage that, while popular in San Francisco, was eschewed by many, including key Democrats on the national scene.

Newsom is a politician who seems to revel in the world of policy, a technocrat who praises managerial "best practices," who rattles off statistics in almost robotic manner, who seems to announce a new program or initiative every week - from the big, like universal health care, to the small, like visits to schools. But at times his follow-through has fallen flat.

Complete Article: Newsom Reflects On 4-Years of Ups & Downs As Election Approaches

On Deck: Cecilia Covers the Other Mayoral Candidates

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Gavin Sucks Polls:

• Vote: Do you agree with Newsom's “Services or Citation” Homeless Plan?


• Vote: Would You Dump Daly?


• Vote: Is Cecilia M. Vega Your Favorite Gav Girl?

City's New Sit Down, Shoot Up Drug Cafe

The Associated Press reports about 150 people gathered in the Mission District to build community support for a city-funded safe-injection center, including backing from Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors.

Heroin and Cocaine aren’t cheap and sort of addicting. Good luck keeping a job to support your habit. Shooting drugs is a real slippery slope:

A) AIDS
B) Homeless
C) Thievery
D) All of the Above.

If you answered “All of the Above,” you were correct.

Why spend taxpayer's money to sit and watch junkies kill themselves, when we can build a jail complete with a rehab center?

The law is supposed to be blind; not us citizen's who trip over these chalk outlines on our way to work. Junkies are just as responsible for upholding the law as the people they rob. Enough of this preferential drug treament, jail them! If mayor’s new “services or citation” sweeps don't net these zombies, then holding, selling illegal should.

Sure, zero will want to participate and few will succeed. Yet, better behind bars, than in front me. The chronic users return to the streets,only long enough to violate their probation and earn longer and longer sentences.

Alive in jail or dead on bail - don't care! In fact, 911 should answer overdose calls with two options: prison time or funeral parlor?

The only good junky is a dead junky. The problem is the addicts living amongst us; and the solution is jail. My 'soul' goal is clean, safe streets for taxpayers and voters who've had it with vagrancy, panhandling, defecating in doorways and other quality-of-life crimes:

• Dirty Needles in Golden Gate Park


• Busted Car Windows


• Muggings at Knifepoint


• Constant Paper Cup Jiggling Change


• AIDS, Hepatitis C, Etc.

But seriously, I agree with Gavin Newsom's assesment of the war on drugs as well as these services from police to facilities to counselors won't be cheap, but the status quo is more costly - maybe, your life? Have you walked the Tenderloin lately... It looks like a third world country and now the City want's us to add a drug den?

I'm not a social worker, but I know how to tie my shoes and wipe ass; and this drug den idea stinks - flush it!

One alternative to overflowing jails is to build a “Tent City” in the Golden Gate Park in which to incarcerate ‘low risk’ inmates with the autority to funnel these addicts and eyesores into mandated programs and out of my face!

Complete Article: San Francisco Considering Safe-Injection Center For Drug Users

Breaking News: SF Injection Center Draws Support & Doubt

Photo Credit: MESH Magazine

No Vacancy!

Full Jails + Tight Budgets = Early Releases.

Okay, we get it. Gavin’s got no room and no budget to house the homeless (behind bars).

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey says he's forced to let theives and addicts go free - essentially reversing the Mayor's "services or citation" programs into a "catch and release" revolving door.

Only, Homelessness, Drugs and Homicides aren't going away.

Nor are the Drugs, Prostitution, Panhandling and defication that seed AIDS, Malaria and TB outbreaks associated with the squalar, squatting under bridges, over sidewalks and in our doorways - thereby living amongst us in our living rooms and at our throat.

Just like subsidized flu shots, helping alcoholics, addicts or otherwise helps everyone – most importantly voters!

Not just San Franciscans stand to benefit by helping those who don't want our help. Slightly, this is a national issue central to our City in which Gavin most stands to profit.

Neighsayers, would argue Gavin’s criminalizing the homeless in order to serve big business or ride the pendulum swing of public reaction.

They’re right, but with a caveat...

• Firstly, the “Services or Citation” approach is completely appropriate. It takes a badge and a stick, not a carrot to pull this rabbit out of a hat. Nine out of homeless refuse housing and shelter.


• Next, it's Gavin's not the Chaplain on M.A.S.H or Mahatma Gandhi. He's a politician running for election - four year's from now! San Francisco 2007 was never a question: rather, he’s running for the next big thing far outside The City limits with a constituency infinitely more conservative... and we all stand to benefit!


• Lastly, it behooves San Franciscans to help Gavin, help us by harnessing these quality-of-life arrests to not only make a difference in the perpetrators (them) lives, but to make a difference for the victims (us).

“We want to walk down the street with no danger on our back and no hand out in our face!”

I propose we benevolently house the homeless in a tent city at Golden Gate Park for the duration of their sentences. This way we can minimize cost through centralizing volunteers and professionals to feed, clothe, shelter the homeless and beyond – diagnosing and counseling individuals towards behavioral, drug and educational programs they would otherwise reject.

Homelessness is at epidemic high impacting everyone in any endeavor. You can’t run from it, so stand up and fight... and help our fair mayor get re-elected anyplace, but here.

Truth is I like Newsom. I recognize myself in his mistakes. I think he's reconciling the not so distant past and is finally acting with the urgency and leadership we need. Hopefully, he's making some noise at Federal and State level too.

Matier & Ross writes:

While the public clamors for safer streets and a crackdown on quality-of-life crimes, San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey is quietly allowing scores of drug users and petty thieves to walk out of jail early so they don't have to sleep on the floor.

The early releases were ordered last week even as all but one wing of a 360-bed County Jail at San Bruno sat empty, the result of budget and staff shortages.

It's just the latest wrinkle in San Francisco's revolving-door justice system, and it helps explain why - despite the public furor - it's so hard to keep petty criminals behind bars.

"If they keep bringing more people in for low-risk crimes, at some point I'm not even going to take them, and that point is coming up pretty darn soon."

The sheriff says he's housing about 2,100 prisoners in a 2,000-bed jail system. For the past few months, an average of 50 to 60 prisoners have slept on the floor, with others stashed in temporary police lockups.

Hennessey says his hands are tied. In fact, he says the jailhouse crunch would have been far worse had he not already shaved as much as 30 days off the sentences of thousands of other low-risk prisoners over the past two years under a parole program that most other jurisdictions rarely invoke.

To help ease crowding, Hennessey has opened one 60-bed wing of the empty County Jail No. 5 in San Bruno - but in the process is burning up his overtime budget. The jail, built in 1989, had been shut since the city opened a state-of-the-art replacement last year for the 550-bed Jail No. 3, a Depression-era hulk that was the subject of prisoner-rights lawsuits.

"You can't continue to crack down on drugs, crack down on the homeless and make more typical drunk-driving and violent-offender arrests without having the jail space to put them in; and you can't keep hiring more cops - who if they're doing their jobs are going to make more arrests - without having the space."

For his part, Mayor Gavin Newsom is "committed to pursuing a variety of options" to address the overcrowding, a spokesman said. Those include home detention monitoring and residential drug treatment.

"It's not just a matter of locking them up," spokesman Nathan Ballard said.

Until the city finds the money and answers, however, Hennessey says he'll keep releasing prisoners early.

Complete Article: S.F. jails' tight budget means early release for petty criminals

Related Articles:

• SFGate: After A Month, Park's A little Less Of A Mess - Major Homeless Campsites Cleared, But Some Have Just Shifted Position by C.W. Nevius, San Francisco Chronicle


• SFGate: City Says 167 Homeless Camps Removed From S.F.'s Golden Gate Park by Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer


• Gimme Shelter by Sarah Hromack, CurbedWire

Related Posts:

• Officer Suspended for Criticizing Mayor


• Wait and See


• Liberals March 'Right' Over Progressives


• Bum Fights


• Care Not Recycle


• Care Not Carts


• The Mayor's Chinese Dragons


• Mayor Closes Golden Gate Park


• National Guard Deployed to San Fracisco


• Escape to New York

Video:

• Night of the Living Homeless - South Park


• The Homeless Return - Stanley Roberts, KRON 4


• Shame of the City - Stanley Roberts, KRON 4

Gavin Sucks Polls:

• Vote: Do you agree with Newsom's “Services or Citation” Homeless Plan?


• Vote: Would You Dump Daly?

Newsom Suspends Whistle Blowing Cop

San Francisco police officer, Sgt. John Lewis of Park Station, wants to turn back time to get a jump on the homeless.

Lewis is under departmental investigation - and could be suspended - for writing a letter to The Chronicle criticizing the way Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Police Department are handling the homeless problem in Golden Gate Park.

According to police sources, Sgt. John Lewis of Park Station is being investigated for authoring a letter that "undermines the efficiency of the department."

Lewis' letter, published on The Chronicle's editorial page Aug. 15, questioned the Newsom administration's tactic of sending cops and outreach workers into the park before dawn to steer campers into social programs or, if they refused, cite them for quality-of-life crimes.

"Instead of sending a horde of people into the park at 4 a.m., the city should be sending this same horde into the park from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., when the real problems exist."

Lewis, who has 20 years with the department, wrote that the campers were neither interested in programs nor concerned about being cited, and that the real problem was during the day when drug use, drug dealing, drinking and fights were commonplace.

What's the big deal? Instead of citing the fast asleep and drunk, operate at a decent hour and arrest the wide awake and drinking. This way, we'll have more to prosecute!

Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes said that if charges are filed and upheld, Lewis could face anything from an admonishment to a suspension.

Complete Arcticle: SF Cop On Hot Seat For Writing Sizzling Letter About Homeless by Matier & Ross

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