S.F. Chief Seeks to Expunge Record

Alleging misconduct, political gamesmanship and retaliation by Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan, this city’s police chief petitioned a judge Tuesday to erase all traces of the criminal conspiracy charges the prosecutor obtained against the chief but then dropped for lack of evidence.

Chief Earl Sanders asked Superior Court Judge Kay Tsenin to declare him “factually innocent” and to order the sealing and destruction of arrest records related to charges that he obstructed the investigation into a brawl involving three off-duty officers over a bag of steak fajitas.

The filing is one of the most bitter broadsides in a case that has pitted the city’s top law enforcement officials -- the San Francisco Police Department’s first black chief and a fiery liberal district attorney -- against each other in public and in court.

Sanders argued that his reputation built during nearly 40 years of police work was unfairly tarnished by a prosecutor who magnified a common street fight into a scandal in order to enhance his reelection chances this fall.

In a declaration, Sanders alleged that Hallinan had improperly tried to get him to broker a deal with the officers involved in the beating case.

He said Hallinan suggested on Dec. 2, 2002, that the officers could enter pleas to a misdemeanor charge, just as Hallinan’s son Brendan did after allegedly assaulting a man while intoxicated in September 2001. To avoid a conflict, Hallinan’s office had referred the case to the state attorney general’s office.

Sanders said Hallinan told him, “I’ll give them [the officers] a slap on the wrist. They can do some community service hours and all this will be over. That’s what my kid did.” The offer was repeated, Sanders said, during a Jan. 13 meeting at a hotel coffee shop.

The chief said he rebuffed Hallinan’s overtures to avoid jeopardizing either the criminal investigation or an administrative investigation of the officers. Sanders said he thought it “bizarre” that the prosecutor who has discretion in filing charges was attempting to cut a legal settlement with the police chief who was overseeing the police investigations.

Hallinan spokesman Mark MacNamara said the district attorney would have no comment on the police chief’s petition until he could review it and its several hundred pages of attachments.

Law Dean’s View

Joseph Russoniello, a former U.S. attorney here who is now dean of San Francisco Law School, said that Hallinan’s overture, if described accurately, was unethical. “The district attorney is attempting to use the influence of the chief as a superior to three criminal defendants to encourage them to plead to cheap charges in exchange for a prosecutorial decision to terminate an investigation,” Russoniello said.

After publicly complaining about the police probe, Hallinan took the case to a grand jury. The panel on Feb. 27 charged the three officers with felonies, not misdemeanors, and indicted Sanders and several of his top aides on conspiracy charges.

Sanders’ attorney, Philip Ryan, said that Hallinan in his meetings with Sanders clearly considered the beating case against the three officers a misdemeanor matter, yet allowed the case to go forward as a felony.

“One can only presume this was a retaliatory and unethical response to the rejection of his improper proposal,” Ryan said in the petition.

In March, Hallinan moved to dismiss charges against Sanders and Deputy Chief Alex Fagan. Tsenin later threw out charges against five other police supervisors, reserving scathing words for both Hallinan’s and the Police Department’s handling of the case.

The grand jury indictment cited only one overt act by the chief in the alleged cover-up -- approving the transfer of a police lieutenant who was overseeing the beating probe. Sanders said the transfer of the lieutenant was part of a larger reorganization and came only after the chief had submitted the report on the case to the district attorney.

Sanders’ petition argued that the 1,352-page grand jury transcript showed no evidence that he committed any crime and that Hallinan had an ethical obligation to prevent the indictment against Sanders from going as far as it did. It also alleged that Hallinan withheld exculpatory evidence from the grand jury by not providing the complete 481-page police investigative report Sanders submitted to him on Dec. 11, 2002 -- and by not revealing his private contacts with the chief.

A hearing on the petition was scheduled for July 15. If Hallinan does not stipulate to Sanders’ innocence, Ryan said, “he will be the first witness called by Chief Sanders.”

Sanders, who says he suffered a possible stroke and other ailments after being indicted, walks with a cane and is on medical leave. Fagan is the acting chief. And Fagan’s son, who recently was removed from the department, still faces charges, along with two rookie officers, for allegedly accosting and beating two strangers over a bag of food on Nov. 20.

The case against Sanders and other police brass arose after the chief and Hallinan argued over the adequacy of the police investigation.

Hallinan has criticized the department for failing to conduct an identification of the suspects on the street and for affording the police officer suspects special treatment, such as allowing them to use their cell phones after being taken to a police station.

Sanders in his declaration said he argued that an on-scene identification was unnecessary because the alleged victims had pointed out their assailants and no one denied being in an altercation. He said he told Hallinan, “Terence, this is not a ‘Who done it,’ it’s a ‘What happened.’ ”

Another point of contention, Sanders said, was that Hallinan wanted to interrogate the suspects. The chief said all the officers had invoked their Miranda rights and that the Peace Officer’s Bill of Rights and a U.S. Supreme Court decision afforded the officers special protection while they were under both criminal and administrative investigation.

“I pointed out that police officers are compelled to answer their superiors’ questions in disciplinary proceedings, but may decline to answer questions in a criminal matter,” Sanders recounted.

Sanders said in an interview Tuesday that he especially wants to cleanse his record because, as a teenager, he had promised his mother on her deathbed that he would never go to jail.

Deathbed Promise

“Jail is a real stigma for my generation in the African American community,” said the 65-year-old chief.

Last week, Sanders collected information on retirement benefits.

City retirement board chief Clare Murphy said Sanders will be eligible on Aug. 2 to collect 90% of his salary, which is $209,687. If he goes out on a disability, Murphy said, his retirement payments would be the same but there are some tax advantages and survivor benefits.

Sanders, who took over the 2,300-member department only a year ago, said he intends to return to work when his doctors allow him. He is scheduled to undergo an angioplasty later this month.

“I am a person who likes to finish what I start and want to do it with as much grace and style as you can,” he said.