Herman Bell made the plea in San Francisco Superior Court, just a week before the start of a preliminary hearing for him and six co-defendants in the death of Sgt. John Young, who was killed during an attack on the San Francisco Police Department's Ingleside Station on Aug. 29, 1971.
Bell said very little during Monday's hearing, other than to answer "yes" to questions posed to him by Judge Philip Moscone concerning whether he was aware of the rights he was waiving. Then Bell said simply, "I plead guilty."
Under terms of the plea deal, Bell will not testify against any of the other defendants in the case, and his guilty plea may not be used as evidence against anyone else.
Bell's attorney, Stuart Hanlon, said the plea agreement was a victory for Bell (ya think?).
"Mr. Bell was facing life without possibility of parole in a maximum security prison in California if convicted," he said in a press release he distributed after the hearing adjourned. In a previous interview with The Chronicle, Hanlon had said the trial in San Francisco presented a major hardship for his client (oh boo hoo). Bell has a life in the New York prison system, Hanlon said in a previous interview, and living in the San Francisco County Jail was much worse for him.
"His fight for freedom is in New York, where he will continue to fight for parole," Hanlon said Monday. "He has been a model prisoner while in New York, where he has gained several graduate degrees and started programs to help other inmates and the communities from which they come."
(Yup... you heard right... a man who killed two cops and is gunning for parole. So he admits to killing a third, and essentially he gets nothing... the fucking twat is still going to get parole. I would call this a great victory for racist killers everywhere.)
David Druliner, the lead state prosecutor in the case, cited unspecified legal issues and the passage of time in settling the Bell case, saying the plea includes an admission of guilt.
"It's the appropriate plea, under all the circumstances," he said. The manslaughter outcome, he said, includes a statement of acknowledged facts about the events surrounding the death of the police sergeant.
Druliner said the plea is the "first clear statement of guilt" from any of the defendants, who had previously denied guilt and who had alleged that they had been framed.
Hanlon had a different take on the plea.
"If they really believed Herman Bell is the executor of a (San Francisco) cop, how can they give him probation?"
I'll admit Druliner has a point... it might be worth it to finally get an admission of guilt from these racist trash - who, for over 30 years, have been lying and claiming they were "framed" by "the man" - but who were in fact murderers, rapists, and terrorists. And it might be worth it to finally shut up their apologists, who have been spouting the same tired bullshit.
I mean... I understand why a racist cop-killer acts the way he does (he's got nothing to lose, especially in this case)... and I'm beginning to understand how liberals apologize for them. Behind every apologist for a killer - and most death penalty opponents - is a deeply anti-social person whose beliefs are not so much dictated by any real caring for minorities or any real desire for justice - but are in fact motivated by a deep hatred of society and a desire to see innocent people hurt.
Dear Liberal,
It’s time we talk. The debate over gun control is not about guns, it’s about culture, and here is how it works: You point to school shootings and other violence and say that it’s my fault because I support the right to keep and bear arms. I point to violent video games and sociopathic teenagers, and I say the problem is your fault, thanks to inadequately internalized values and morals.
But here’s the thing: Between guns and culture, only one thing has changed. Weapons have been in the hands of man since time immemorial. There is nothing special about semi-automatic “assault weapons.” In fact, until 1934 people could go out and buy fully automatic Thompson submachine guns, hand grenades or just about any other implement of destruction they could afford.
Admittedly, there were a limited number of mafia “hits” in which those weapons were used by unsavory characters to snuff out other unsavory characters. But I defy you to find a single instance in which a child of the 1930s took Daddy’s “Tommy Gun” to school and shot up his classroom.
We can debate merits of the 1960s another time (with pleasure), but I think we can both agree that, as a cultural standard, the innocence of “Leave It to Beaver” pretty much went the way of the dinosaur by the time of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Now that the flower children are all grown up (sort of) and produced self-esteem-dependent, atheistic children of their own, we are shocked to discover them to be inadequately socialized. Then, inevitably, they encounter a setback. It could be a romance gone wrong, perhaps rejection by an attractive social group. Whatever the catalyst, equipped with “my” weapons and “your” values, they cut loose on some campus somewhere.
Now, we could go the way of the Brits who, after the Dunblane massacre, banned everything in sight. Unfortunately, in this most perfect of gun control laboratories – an island nation with strict laws and tight borders – the result has been an explosion in crime…and yes, that especially includes gun crime.
It has also led their inadequately socialized post-60s kiddies to stab each other with such alarming regularity that the British have now begun to ban knives, leading us to the sad but inescapable conclusion that Brits can no longer be trusted with sharp objects.
On their present path, the nation of Winston Churchill and the “stiff upper lip” will soon ban running with scissors (if they are allowed scissors at all), and kitchen matches will be the stuff of museums, quite probably under surveillance cameras and armed guard.
Unfortunately, because you are liberal, and because liberalism seems to manifest itself as a pathological obsession to run my life, I can’t reason with you. Therefore, my only choice is to beat you. (Stop cowering: I mean metaphorically, not literally.)
My sole recourse is to marginalize you and reclaim my culture, and that is what I have set about doing. If not me, then my children. If not them, their children. We will make the Thirty Years’ War look like a trifle.
There. We’ve cleared the air. Don’t we all feel just a little better?
Sincerely,
A Conservative
Ramos' attorney, Marla Zamora, expressed disappointment Monday, saying that her client drove the car carrying the gunman but did not pull the trigger (oh... well then he's a mother-fucking saint!). She said Ramos was not a gang member and had identified the killer, a man whom authorities have been unable to locate.
Ramos showed little reaction as Jackson read off the charges, only whispering to his lawyer.
The murder counts include special circumstances - for multiple killing and for an alleged gang motive - that make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted. District Attorney Kamala Harris says she opposes capital punishment (and pretty much any other kind of punishment) and has never sought the death penalty since taking office in 2004.
Tony Bologna's widow sobbed in the front row of the courtroom gallery as the judge announced her decision. Wearing sunglasses and dabbing at her face with tissues, Danielle Bologna reached back and clutched the hand of another family member. After the hearing concluded, she hugged relatives and cried out, over and over, "Thank you, God."
Outside court, prosecutor Harry Dorfman called the killings "a terrible crime. And now we need to go on to the next phase."
Asked about the defense's (bullshit) contention that another man shot the Bolognas, Dorfman said, "I agree with very little of what the defense argued today."
Zamora had strong words for police investigators and prosecutors in her closing remarks, saying, "Either they didn't want to get the real shooter or they felt a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush (maybe they should get O.J on it!)."
Ramos, who remains jailed without bail, was ordered to return to court for arraignment July 13.
A spokeswoman for Harris, Erica Derryck, said after the hearing that the case will be formally reviewed by a team of attorneys in the district attorney's office. They will "consider factors in mitigation and aggravation and make a recommendation to the district attorney" about what sentence to pursue should Ramos be convicted, Derryck said (like it's gonna matter... criminal loving bitch will probably not even push for LWOP).
Ramos had a record as a juvenile before the Bologna killings - a gang-related attack on a Muni passenger and an attempted assault on a pregnant woman, both of which he committed when he was 17.
Over the past two decades, the city moved from offering sanctuary for political refugees fleeing wars or repressive governments in Central America to a wider acceptance of all illegal immigrants, whose lives and families would be disrupted if forced to leave.
But two recent scandals have spotlighted excesses that badly needed correcting. It remains to be seen whether city leaders will follow through.
In the first case, Mayor Gavin Newsom was forced to cancel a quiet policy of escorting juvenile lawbreakers out of the country. In some cases, the youths re-entered the country illegally and were arrested again. The program operated at odds with the conventional - and commonsense - practice of referring young drug dealers who are here illegally to federal immigration officials for deportation.
Then, this past week, a praiseworthy job-training program run by District Attorney Kamala Harris was found to contain a serious flaw. At least a half dozen offenders were being schooled for jobs even though none were here legally - and thus were ineligible for the jobs for which they were being trained. Harris has reworked the Back on Track program to bar undocumented immigrants.
Plainly these two city leaders recognize that a ever-widening accommodation of undocumented immigrants has gone too far, though neither took action until negative publicity forced them to make their moves.
The sanctuary policy is not just a matter of humanity - there is a practical crime-solving value for local law enforcement to hold the trust of immigrant communities.
But that potential law-enforcement benefit is lost when a sanctuary city becomes a refuge for criminals. San Francisco's welcome mat must be withdrawn for undocumented immigrants who commit felonies.
The Chronicle's article about San Francisco's Back on Track initiative painted a distorted picture of this nationally recognized program that has reduced crime and saves money.
Back on Track is an innovative initiative that has achieved remarkable results. It has dramatically reduced recidivism - the re-offense rate - among its targeted population (nonviolent, first-time, low-level drug offenders). In California, more than half (54 percent) of drug offenders commit additional crimes. However, fewer than 10 percent of Back on Track graduates in San Francisco re-offend (of the only 53% who actually graduate). That's why Back on Track was adopted as a national model by the National District Attorneys Association.
In addition to cutting crime, Back on Track is saving taxpayers money. Back on Track costs $5,000 per participant, while taxpayers pay 10 times as much - about $50,000 - to house each inmate in county jail or the state prison. On top of that, taxpayers save even more money because the initiative reduces recidivism - keeping just 25 people from returning to jail for one year saves taxpayers $1.25 million. In a time of catastrophic budget shortages, we desperately need initiatives like this that improve public safety while saving money.
Only nonviolent offenders are eligible for Back on Track. As a veteran prosecutor, I do not hesitate to put people who commit serious and violent offenses behind bars (if only for a few hours).
Eligibility for Back on Track is restricted to individuals who are first-time, nonviolent, low-level offenders with no gang affiliations, no prior convictions and no "ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) holds" that suggest possible immigration issues. No one with an ICE hold has ever been allowed to enter the Back on Track program. Additionally, every participant must prove they are legally eligible to work before they are admitted to the program.
In the program, participants are under close court supervision while undergoing a mandatory, intensive personal responsibility program. They must go back to school, get a job, get current with child support and attend parenting classes. Back on Track combines close supervision and strict accountability - and has proved to save money and reduce crime. Everyday people who are fed up with the petty drug dealers repeatedly coming back to their neighborhoods need solutions that work.
The flaw in the initiative that The Chronicle pointed out was fixed when it came to my attention. No innovative initiative will ever be created without some unanticipated flaws to be fixed along the way, but this must not stop us from tackling tough problems with smart solutions.
KAMALA D. HARRIS
District Attorney
San Francisco
But Harris' aides said they have since made changes in the program that would prevent a recurrence of instances in which illegal immigrants got their criminal records cleared by going through the Back on Track jobs program, which trains offenders for jobs that undocumented immigrants legally would be prevented from holding (Yeah... right. Sure they have. I'll believe that when an independent non-San Francisco government entity verifies that).
The Los Angeles Times first reported (ouch!) Monday that illegal immigrants had been enrolled in the program and that Harris' office had let several graduate and go free even after learning of their status.
The fallout Monday highlighted the pitfalls that could lie ahead for San Francisco politicians seeking higher office from a statewide electorate more conservative than the city's.
Last year, Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is now a candidate for governor, ordered juvenile justice officials to stop shielding illegal immigrant youths who commit crimes from possible deportation. On Monday, it was Harris, a candidate for attorney general, who came under scrutiny on the illegal immigration issue.
Harris was quoted in the Times as saying that enforcing federal immigration law was not the job of local authorities (though apparently breaking federal immigration law is). The district attorney was explaining how her office handled the case of Alexander Izaguirre, an illegal immigrant from Honduras who had been enrolled in the Back on Track program in July when he allegedly robbed a woman of her purse in Pacific Heights, then got into an SUV that drove into the victim (nearly killing her).
The woman, Amanda Kiefer, 30, suffered a fractured skull. She said in an interview Monday that she had gotten a good look at Izaguirre and the SUV driver.
"They were both laughing," Kiefer said.
Izaguirre, then 20, was one of at least seven undocumented immigrants (ILLEGAL ALIENS DAMMIT!) who participated the Back on Track program, which Harris created in 2005 as a way of reducing the number of drug offenders sent to overcrowded county jails and state prisons. In all, 113 people have successfully completed the program, with 99 failures, according to prosecutors' statistics.
Izaguirre was enrolled in the program after admitting to dealing drugs to an undercover officer in the Tenderloin in late 2007. He had two previous arrests, one for drugs and the other for purse snatching, records show. The charges were dropped.
The district attorney told the Times that she had not known Izaguirre was an illegal immigrant until after he was arrested for the alleged assault. Harris did not return repeated phone calls for comment Monday, and representatives of her office said she was not available.
Sheriff's deputies, who run the city's jails, screened Izaguirre after his drug arrest Dec. 7, 2007, and determined that he could fit the profile for reporting to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, sheriff's spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said.
But Hirst said there is no record of whether deputies had actually referred Izaguirre to immigration officials, who could then have asked the city to put a hold on his release. She added that the department did not keep records of referrals at the time, but now does. ("Blame the Sheriff" is a familiar refrain here. We hear it again and again. And again... I will believe the City when an independent auditor proves that the City is not shielding illegal alien criminals - they cannot be taken at their word. Either the Sheriff's department is really incompetent, or their in on the whole deal.)
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency placed a hold on Izaguirre in August, after he was arrested in the alleged robbery. He is still in custody awaiting trial on robbery and assault charges.
Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo, who oversees the Back on Track program, said Monday that prosecutors had assumed that offenders who sought to enroll were here legally because they had been screened by the Sheriff's Department.
After Izaguirre was arrested in the alleged assault, however, Harris' office checked and learned that six other offenders enrolled in Back on Track were not qualified to work in the United States, presumably because they were illegal immigrants.
Woo said all had been in the yearlong program for at least eight months and had been meeting all of the requirements, so Harris' office allowed them to finish the program early and have their criminal records expunged.
"Those individuals were in the program for a long period," Woo said. "When we realized there was a design flaw and they were without the ability to show they could work here legally," she said, her office "sat down and asked, 'What are we supposed to do here?'" (This alleged "design flaw" copout is bull... this agency, this government, is ALL ABOUT protecing and shielding illegal aliens. The only "flaw" was that it got exposed.)
Prosecutors concluded that they had struck what was in essence a contract with the offenders, who had fulfilled everything that was required of them.
Woo said that the "flaw" in the program had been fixed after Izaguirre's arrest and that the program now asks all those who apply whether they can legally work here ("Are you here illegaly? No? Then you're in!" What bullshit!).
Kiefer, reached in Michigan, where she moved after the attack, called the idea of clearing illegal immigrants' criminal records "crazy" (not to mention "fucked up, treasonous, insane...").
"We should be spending our tax dollars on our own citizens, not on people who are allowed to stay here after committing crimes," she said.
"I understand the whole sanctuary city thing - if people aren't causing any problems, why waste time and resources going after them?" Kiefer said. "But if they are committing crimes, they should not be here."
Here's a few choice comments from among the 993 (and counting) left by SFGate readers:
janicefreeman27: "Kamala Harris is the flaw in the design along with SF mayor Gavin Newsom. They have both greatly helped san francisco turn into a cesspool of what was once a great city." (Thumbs up: 1900, Thumbs down: 93)
nr5667: "She still planning on running for state AG? S.F must be an insular little republic if its politicians think they have a change outside the tip of the peninsula..."
nezumi: "I'm proud to state that I'm native San Franciscan whose family has been here since shortly after the Gold Rush and that there is not a life form at City Hall that I voted for. The Mayor and DA should be indicted on Federal Criminal Charges too numerous to expand on here; shall we start with aiding and abetting, harboring criminals, fraud, etc. No Sacramento for you KH, hope you are still on Willie's list or you will need Care Not Cash to remain in The City."
NOMAMA: "DEMAND AN FBI INVESTIGATION INTO HER, HER OFFICE & HER FINANCES."
chroncensored: "Wait till Edwin Ramos doesn't get charged with the Death Penalty. He will probably be charges with accidental firearms discharge and allowed to sue the Bolona's for unlawfully portraying gangsters. Then he'll sue and win 20 million dollars and start a scholarship under Kamala Walla Ding Dongs name. Something about "culturally affirming activities" Ar least GAVIN is breathing easier, his name ain't come up yet! Remember, the liberal stooges elected her TWICE, ONCE UNOPPOSED!"
etf: "How many times do these illegals have to do harm to citizens of this country before they are punished? How many more citizens have to be robbed or murdered? Elected officials like Harris have made the constitution of this country one big joke. It only protects illegals! What a sad state of affairs. Is there any wonder at all as to why this state is turning into a third world environment? Just look around. I've live in SF since 1973 and no longer recognize it. It's becoming more of a border town due to the so called progressive agendas. Newsom, Fong and Harris. What a huge void of leadership. SF is the Titanic and no one at city hall is going to take the helm and steer the ship away from the icebergs. SF leaders keep telling us that it's not an iceberg, but only ice cubes."
BerkeleyBW: "Public safety is obviously the last thing on the minds of people in the DA's office. It never occurs to them that their stupid policy decisions make the city more dangerous. As Adam Smith observed, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
tax_revolt: "edlim said Ah hahaha California is doomed to become a 3rd World State of Mexico.
????????????
.
What are you talking about? Compared to Mexico we've already dropped to fourth world status, no respectable third world nation would pay as much as California for the pleasure of being invaded and rearranged, since that makes them smarter the only place left is fourth.
idiotnoir: "what a country! not only do we let illegal aliens into our country to steal jobs from americans and drive down wages, we will train them so they can steal even better jobs from americans!"
end_timer2: "This goes far beyond simply voting her out of office. This idiot woman DA is responsible for countless deaths that are the direct result of her NOT DOING HER JOB!! Refusing to prosecute violent gang criminals, enabling illegal immigrants to avoid arrest and deportation and coming up with insane arguments for why her office cannot and will not prosecute criminal defendants. There needs to be an investigation by the Feds and the FBI of Harris and the DA's office, as I suspect corruption on her part, probably involving large sums of money in offshore bank accounts, coming from drug gangs in return for her making sure there are no prosecutions of certain gang members/illegal immigrant gang members. There can be no other reason for her actions, except total incompetence on her part. And if that is the case, then she needs to be removed as DA, and replaced with someone who knows how to prosecute criminals so they get put away for their crimes."
And so on and so on and so on.
But... you should know that not everyone is miffed at Harris and her sorry D.A.'s office (just 99% of them)...
In fact, there are some who are actually standing up and backing the D.A. with Don Quixote-like zeal...
BeyondChron - an ultra-left website run by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and funded from the taxpayer trough - ran a piece called "Chronicles Unfair Hit On Kamala" that mostly bitched about the link that ran with the piece to her opponents' press release calling for Harris to release recidivism statistics for her "success stories" (the link has since been removed from SFGate, but can be seen here).
You see... Harman is a (gasp) "right-winger!"
Calling someone a "right-winger" in San Fran is like calling someone a "child molester" anywhere else (child molesters are held in much higher regard in S.F. than right-wingers).
Beyond Chron implies that the "attack" may have been due to sour grapes over being scooped by the LA Times, and nowhere does BC take the story on its merits - in short, it was a very fair "hit" on a crooked politician.
Last week's shooting at the Holocaust Museum has made “hate crimes” a front page issue once again. It may give the stalled federal hate crimes bill the added boost it needs to become law. In James von Brunn, the media seems to have discovered its carefully created stereotype of a hate criminal: an old, bitter white man with a history of violence, who denies the Holocaust, despises non-whites and holds bizarre conspiracy theories.
The usual suspects have hustled to take advantage of their good fortune. Brian Levin (email him), a Cal State San Bernardino criminal justice professor and a "civil-rights attorney" who used to work with the Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC), declared in a CNN.com article, Hate groups threatened by diversity:
"Yesterday, less than a mile from the White House, an old bigoted white man was suspected of firing back his response at the place where America tries to draw lessons from ... hatred. Yesterday's shooting is the latest in a series of murderous attacks by erratic far-right-wing extremist ‘lone wolves’ over the past three months. When shocking violence like this arises, commentators point to various factors including mental illness, political debates and the availability of guns.
“We, however, must first acknowledge the hand of a small but expanding hate movement as a potent, yet invisible, accomplice that incites and inspires society's disaffected to serve as its most violent warriors."
Levin mentions the pending hate crimes bill as "good news" near the end of his column.
Leftist blogs such as TPMCafe are exploiting the incident to push for censorship and/or punishment of views they don't like:
"Hate speech and hate crimes are sociological, not just psychological. It's ridiculous to look at one of these crimes from the shortened perspective of the point of the gun to the victim. It's much bigger than that. That's why I think it's a misconception to conclude any racist who takes someone's life 'acted alone' or is 'a lone wolf'
“Instigation is critical here. We need to make a serious assessment of those who disguise their hate speech as free speech." [When it comes to hate crimes, there's no such thing as "acting alone". June 10, 2009, 8:47PM]
But two weeks before the von Brunn shootings, The San Jose Mercury News ran a short article about a similar crime that was just as deadly as the Holocaust Museum incident.
The killers were motivated by the same type of hatred and extremism.
Yet, for some strange reason, the murder has attracted almost no attention or outrage.
In July 2007, Michael Wills, a white man, was shot and killed by two members of Your Black Muslim Bakery. As the name suggests, the bakery was a racial-nationalist outfit with ties to the Nation of Islam (the store even displayed a prominent picture of NOI founder Elijah Muhammed). Yusuf Bey IV, the leader of the now-defunct bakery, and Antoine Mackey, one of Bey's followers, were charged with shooting Wills in the head with an assault rifle.
The Mercury News article leaves no doubt as to the racial motive of the murder:
"Devaughndre Broussard, another Bey IV follower who has admitted to killing journalist Chauncey Bailey, told a prosecutor in March that Bey IV and Mackey bragged they killed Wills because of his race. The two saw him walking in North Oakland as they were discussing a string of racially motivated murders in the 1970s known as the Zebra killings.
“'They was laughing about and joking about,' Broussard said of Bey IV and Mackey.
“Mackey 'said he seen the white dude walking down the path ... then he shot him,' Broussard added.
“Bey IV later said, ‘We got a devil. White people are devils,’ according to Broussard's statement.
“Then Broussard said Bey IV talked about ‘a devil mentality. A black man can be a devil if he's against his people.’ Bey IV and his late father, bakery founder Yusuf Bey, have often, while preaching, referred to white people as ‘devils.’ And in telephone calls recorded from the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin and obtained by the Chauncey Bailey Project, Bey IV often made similar statements, referring to ‘white and Jew devils’ and ‘media devils’ whom he claims are trying to destroy him."
[Former bakery leader accused of saying 'white people are devils' after 2007 killing, By Josh Richman and Thomas, May 26, 2009]
An open and shut case of a racially-motivated hate crime? Think again. Prosecutors are not seeking a hate crime charge against Bey IV and Mackey.
And that decision meets with the approval of those who direct race policy in America. The Mercury News article continues:
"Prosecutors tend to be very hesitant to charge hate crime cases "... because they're really, really hard to prove: You have to prove the offender's motive beyond a reasonable doubt," explained Associate Professor Phyllis Gerstenfeld, [Email her] a ‘hate-crime expert’ who chairs the criminal justice program at Cal State, Stanislaus. ‘Hate crimes are the only criminal acts that require you to prove motive beyond a reasonable doubt... and we can't read people's minds.’"
We can’t? Prosecutors had no problems reading the minds of the James Byrd and Matthew Shepherd killers. Nor are they likely to have much problem peering into von Brunn's thought process.
According to the Mercury News, a certain "civil rights attorney" agrees that hate crime charges do not make sense in this particular case.
He said:
"Why go through having to interject something that now has to be proven to a particular standard? It can be highly appropriate for (prosecutors) tactically to avoid overburdening the jury with additional items. Sometimes the cleanest, simplest case is the best."
The person making these remarks: none other than Cal State San Bernadino’s Brian Levin—who had no problem lecturing us about the threat posed by "an old bigoted white man" only weeks later.
Unlike "civil rights" attorneys, the distraught Wills family wants to pursue a hate crime charge. According to Patrick Wills, younger brother of the victim:
"Everybody knows the only reason (Michael Wills) was shot was because he was white. So I don't see any reason why that (hate crime enhancement) should not be part of the charges. For it to not to be there is horrible."
Horrible or not, the decision not to pursue hate crime charges against the killers of Wills is not surprising given the race of the victim and the shooters.
But Your Black Muslim Bakery has a long history of racial violence that leaves von Brunn in the shade. Though held up as a model of black self sufficiency, the bakery was linked to widespread physical and sexual abuse, intimidation, welfare fraud, and murder. Bey IV and Mackey also had good reason to joke about the Zebra Killings as some of the killers—all black Muslims—were connected to the bakery according to Clark Howard, author of Zebra
The Zebra Killings occurred in the San Francisco bay area between 1972 and 1974. Though seldom discussed, they are the worst case of racially-motivated serial murder in U.S. history. Carried out by black Muslims who went looking to kill "white devils", the attacks left up to 71 people dead and many injured.
Bey IV and Mackey were apparently looking to add to this legacy.
The late Sam Francis used to note that some hate crimes are more equal than others. The different reactions to the von Brunn and Your Black Muslim Bakery shootings prove that nothing has changed.
When the hate crimes bill is debated in the Senate you can be sure the names Matthew Shepard, James Byrd, James von Brunn and Stephen Johns, the black guard killed in the Holocaust Museum shooting, will be highlighted.
You can also be sure that the names Michael Wills, Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey will never be mentioned.
"I think he's got a chance for success, but it's a steep mountain," said Gary Delagnes, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, who hoped one of the department's own would get the job. "I think if anybody has a chance of success coming in from the outside, it's going to be him. But it's not going to be easy."
Delagnes summed up the main difficulty in one word: politics.
"It's like no other place in America," Delagnes said. "He's got to see where the knives are coming from, and the knives are coming from day one. They (have) already started ... The poor guy couldn't get through one press conference without being taken on about towed vehicles."
Clearly one of the early "knife-holders" will be newly elected Supe John Avalos - who has already proven to be a complete fuckhead - and has shown that he will be one serious pain in the ass to anyone who doesn't tow the PC, anti-cop, anti-white, pro-Communist line.
Supervisor David Campos, a former police commissioner who came to the United States illegally as a child, said he is drafting legislation aimed at reversing the mayor's year-old policy of handing over undocumented juvenile immigrants to federal authorities if arrested on suspicion of a felony.
Gascón said he backs a sanctuary city policy that allows undocumented immigrants to approach local authorities without fear of arrest if they've done nothing but cross the border illegally. But he made clear he agrees that it's appropriate to turn over immigrants arrested for other crimes, if the arrest was conducted properly, including finding there was probable cause a crime was committed.
Despite the lies spouted forth by the SF Chronicle's arsenal of pro-amnesty columnists, the support for Sanctuary City policy is waning, particularly after the Chron's own articles outing the city's kid gloves handling of illegal alien juvenile felons - and the outrage following the Bologna Family murders by an illegal alien MS-13 gangster. The Chron falls all over itself publicizing the very loud efforts of local racist reconquista groups, but would never have the balls to find out what San Franciscans really think about the policy and how it has been gamed and corrupted.
A more honest view of the hurdles Gascon faces is found in this op-ed by retired San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Kevin Mullen. He makes some very important and very obvious points which I will highlight thusly...
The goals Mayor Gavin Newsom has set for George Gascón, his new police chief, are to "Implement a computerized system for spotting crime trends, increase the crime clearance rate and improve the morale of rank-and-file officers." Those goals should be simple to meet because the mechanisms to achieve them have been around for a long time. All it will take is the political will.
As to morale, Gascón is coming to a police department crying for change - and a very different organization from that which Chief Charles Gain, the last chief named from outside the department, confronted in the 1970s. At that time, the police department and much of the citizenry presented a united front against the new chief. Today, the department and the city are composed of numerous identity groups, all vying for a piece of the pie.
There is one issue within the power of the chief to effect, however, upon which all but the most marginal participants can agree: Serious violent crime.
By taking a different posture from his predecessor, who has maintained a low profile in the city and the police department, Chief Gascón can step forward to mobilize the vast energies of officers who are looking to be led. To do this, he will have to avoid or neutralize the factional recriminations which accompany much of what passes for civic discourse in San Francisco these days.
A large part of what troubles police officers is the lenient treatment of many serious offenders by an overly tolerant district attorney and the courts.
AMEN BROTHER!
