Department Rocked by Scandals : Question Gnaws at S.F.--Are Police Out of Control?

A troubling question is gnawing at this city, a question that cuts to the core of its legendary tolerance and openness:

Are San Francisco’s police out of control?

Politicians and others are asking that question just so bluntly as the San Francisco Police Department struggles to right itself after a yearlong series of sex scandals, brutality complaints and controversial arrests.

The answer, coming as it does after charges of gross mismanagement at city-run San Francisco General Hospital and questions over the cost and quality of the reconstruction of the city’s fabled cable car system, could tarnish Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s keenly cultivated image as a skillful city manager.

A majority of the city’s 11 supervisors already has recommended that she either replace the civilian Police Commission that oversees the department or fire Police Chief P. Cornelius Murphy, her own appointee and ally.

When she resisted, Supervisor Harry Britt suggested a ballot initiative to strip the mayor of some of her power over the department.

But Feinstein insists that the furor has been caused by “a few bad apples” and said the department can handle its problems by itself. Murphy agrees.

“I think it is unfortunate that the phrase that keeps coming up is that the department is out of control,” he said after one recent meeting with the mayor. “The department is not out of control. In every (misconduct) case that has come down the road since April 25 of last year, the department has taken appropriate action.”

He said the current wave of criticism gives the mistaken impression that the entire Police Department is undisciplined and unprofessional.

Called Unfair

“Let’s say all those things happened just as they were reported,” he said of the yearlong litany of problems. “You are only talking about 30 officers, and you . . . paint the other 1,940 officers with the same brush. It is just not fair.”

But others say problems within the department, which received more civilian complaints last year than any other department in the state, run deeper than a few highly publicized gaffes.

“That department is probably 25 years behind the times,” said former Police Chief Charles Gain. “It is a clannish, laissez-faire, politicized department.

“It belongs with Chicago and other Eastern departments when it comes to resisting change. San Francisco is a peninsula, but it might as well be an island in the middle of the ocean when it comes to progressive policing,” added Gain, whose reform efforts made him unpopular with the rank and file and led Feinstein to oust him in 1980.

The scandals began last April 26 at the Rathskeller, a restaurant near City Hall where veteran and rookie officers were honoring the latest Police Academy class. During the fete, two vice squad members paid a prostitute $55 to orally copulate a bashful recruit who had been handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the room. Five officers eventually were fired over the incident.

On Aug. 31, a squad of plainclothes officers burst into a popular bar on a busy Friday evening, holding 60 patrons at bay while searching for evidence that the owner had once assaulted someone. Half of the customers filed claims against the city, accusing the police of using unnecessary force; a dozen went on to file suit. The case against the owner was dropped.

Then, last Feb. 1, five vice officers--backed up by four others outside--went into an adult entertainment emporium to arrest adult film star Marilyn Chambers for allegedly letting customers fondle her. Chambers, who said she declined one officer’s invitation to ride naked to jail, was booked on a charge of prostitution. After questions were raised about whether so many officers should have been deployed this way, the case was dropped.

Less than two weeks later, on Feb. 13, police officers arrested caustic San Francisco Chronicle columnist Warren Hinckle, a frequent critic of the police. The charges: walking his dog without a leash and having an outdated car registration. Both charges normally result in citations, not arrest. Hinckle was released after paying a fine.

On Feb. 27, Assistant Public Defender Peter Keane accused police computer experts of snooping through public defender computer files. Police officials conceded they had special access to the files, but insisted nothing improper had occurred.

At the same tine, Keane said a police lieutenant informed him that improper computer files were kept on gay and environmental groups. Murphy conceded that a file was started, but denied any impropriety because “it was stuff we could have gotten out of the phone book.”

Then, in March, Officer Niall Philpott pleaded guilty in court to felonious assault and false imprisonment after being accused of dragging a homosexual man off a city bus and beating him.

Both Officers Resign

Philpott’s partner, Officer Scott Quinn, was tried on similar counts and convicted of felonious assault. Witnesses said they had heard Quinn scream “Die, faggot!” as he brutally clubbed the man with his night stick. Philpott and Quinn later resigned.

Controversy erupted again a few days later when it was discovered that two rifle-wielding officers had commandeered an elementary school classroom during a police training exercise on March 13. Even with the principal’s permission, the maneuver violated department rules and frightened several students, one of whom told a reporter: “I thought they were going to kill me.”

Compounding these matters were charges in newspapers and at public meetings of other abuses, from drug use by police officers to the punching of a man for not emptying his pockets quickly enough during a search.

Murphy, using an appropriately San Franciscan analogy, likened the incident at the Rathskeller to a major earthquake that shook the department, and called the other problems “aftershocks” that normally would receive scant notice.

He said the school incident “was blown completely out of proportion” and that the Chambers arrest was both justified and proper.

However, he has agreed with department critics on some points, calling the Rathskeller party “criminally . . . morally and ethically wrong.” The bar raid and the arrest of the columnist, he said, were “poor judgment calls.”

Called of Little Concern

In any case, he and other police officials discount their current problems as a series of one-time mistakes of little concern to most San Franciscans.

“Where is the graft? Where are the cops on the take?” asked the department spokesman, Inspector John Hennessey, listing charges not made. “That is what people care about, not whether some one-eyed columnist (Hinckle, who wears an eye patch) gets arrested on an old dog-leash warrant. . . .

Still, a poll commissioned last month by the Police Officers Assn. showed that while 50% of San Franciscans think the police are doing an excellent or good job, almost as many--47%--believe they are doing only a fair or poor job.

Fully 42% of those polled said the recent scandals had cost them at least some confidence in the police. Those polled blamed Murphy most often for the troubles; rank-and-file police officers finished a close second.

Even without sagging public support, city officials have reason to believe that the Police Department’s troubles run deeper than even the long and well-publicized series of scandals would indicate.

For example, the force receives more civilian complaints than any other in the state--2,287 last year alone, according to its own Office of Citizen Complaints. By comparison, the Los Angeles Police Department received 697 complaints in 1984, even though it is more than three times as large.

Murphy discounts such comparisons because he said not all departments count complaints alike. “San Francisco reports everything-- everything, “ he said. “If you don’t like my mustache . . . that’s passed on as a complaint.”

Dan Silva of the Office of Citizen Complaints said that all but 32 of the complaints filed last year were classified by his agency as “unwarranted.”

But San Francisco also paid a lot of money last year--$1.2 million--to settle claims and suits by people alleging police abuse. Los Angeles in 1984 paid out $2 million in claims and suits against its much larger police force.

Department spokeswoman Carri Lucas said the 1984 total was unusually high because of two extraordinary events--1979 riots after the killing of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and disturbances after the San Francisco 49ers won the 1983 Super Bowl.

“We don’t have a brutal department,” said Murphy, adding that the number of complaints about the use of excessive force by police officers is shrinking.

Murphy does acknowledge some problems, and both he and the mayor attribute them in large part to a decade-old discrimination suit and its 1979 out-of-court settlement.

The suit had stopped recruitment and promotions within the department for several years, causing an experience gap illustrated by the fact that nearly 40% of the patrol officers have less than five years of experience. In addition, there is a shortage of sergeants to supervise inexperienced recruits.

The settlement also prevents managers from using seniority or disciplinary records to decide promotions. For example, one man was promoted last year even though he was named in more than 100 complaints and half a dozen lawsuits and once got drunk and fired his pistol into the air outside police headquarters.

Murphy already has instituted changes designed to improve the department’s performance. He has, for example, split the department into two divisions to improve accountability and plans to retrain and reshuffle personnel to improve the ratio of patrol officers to sergeants.

The department also has begun counseling officers who are named in a lot of public complaints, warning officers daily of potentially nettlesome situations they face and restructuring the police academy to emphasize service and ethics over what Murphy described as “cops-and-robbers stuff.”

Other ideas, however, have been blocked by the influential Police Officers Assn., including Murphy’s bid to suspend some officers for more than 10 days and attempts by the independent Office of Citizen Complaints to hold hearings on nearly 100 police-abuse allegations.

‘Mayor’s Problems’

Many people, however, say the problems with the police rest primarily with the mayor--not the court settlement, police union or other outside influences.

“The mayor runs the Police Department,” said Supervisor John Molinari, a frequent Feinstein supporter. “She appoints the police chief . . . and has to decide if the chief stays or goes. It’s really up to her.”

Gain, the former chief, agreed. “Whatever problems there are,” he said, “are the mayor’s problems. She has made the Police Commission a nonentity; she tells the chief what to do. She essentially runs the Police Department.”