District Attorney George Gascón says the 130 attorneys in his office lack the technology to effectively track and analyze the more than 12,000 cases that were arraigned last year, leaving them to navigate blindly while deciding which cases to prosecute and when.
Gascón, who served as the police chief in San Francisco from August 2009 to January 2011, wants to take a system that analyzes crime data and use a version of it in his office to analyze trends in criminal cases. Such a system would be the first in the nation, Gascón said.
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Before he was elected as San Francisco’s district attorney, George Gascón promised to resolve all the homicide cases that had languished in the courts for years, prolonging the horror for victims’ loved ones.
When he made the pledge, 14 murder cases remained unresolved even though the defendants had been arraigned at least four years earlier. Three more cases subsequently reached that unsavory milestone.
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A March domestic violence conviction remains a heavy weight on reinstated Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who responded defiantly when District Attorney George Gascón recently called on him to abandon oversight of rehabilitation programs for batterers until completing his probation.
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Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s reinstatement served as a dramatic conclusion to his nine-month domestic violence scandal earlier this month, and he wasted no time extending an olive branch to Mayor Ed Lee — the man who tried to remove him from office.
The mayor has effectively pruned that branch.
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Following a nine-month ordeal, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was returned to his post Tuesday night when the Board of Supervisors declined to uphold the rarely used official misconduct charges filed in March by Mayor Ed Lee.
A majority of supervisors supported Lee’s push to remove the sheriff over his misdemeanor false imprisonment conviction stemming from a Dec. 31 physical altercation with his wife at the couple’s home. But four supervisors said Mirkarimi’s behavior was not official misconduct under the City Charter and that his removal could make it too easy to oust elected officials in the future.
See how the Board of Supervisors voted on whether or not to retain Ross Mirkarimi at the end of the article.
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When Allie Ferrey was bullied about her appearance as a 13-year-old, she made it her mission to never let herself be picked on again. Since then, Ferrey, now a senior at San Francisco’s Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School, has stepped up to let her peers know it’s OK to be who they are. It starts with talking to and supporting students who have been bullied.
“It’s happened to all of us,” Ferrey said, “and it needs to end.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that life sentences for criminals who commit their crimes when they are younger than 18 years old is cruel and unusual punishment. But at the time of that ruling, a legal loophole allowed the California sentencing guidelines to stand and some juveniles were locked behind bars — sentenced to live their lives there without any chance of rehabilitation.
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San Francisco officials claim The City has become a beacon of hope for reducing prison and jail populations without endangering communities.
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Gay-rights activist Larry Brinkin was formally charged Wednesday with six felony counts related to the possession and distribution of child pornography.
The 22-year veteran of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, who retired with honor in 2010, was first arrested June 22, but the District Attorney’s Office requested time to further investigate before charging Brinkin.
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A phony voting booth that was set up last October in Chinatown to help elderly voters cast their mail-in ballots won’t spur any criminal charges, the District Attorney’s Office announced on Thursday.
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