Fajitagate
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Fajitagate was a series of legal and political incidents in
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
that began with a street fight outside a neighborhood bar between three off-duty San Francisco Police officers and two other local residents over a bag of
fajita A fajita (; ), in Tex-Mex cuisine, is any stripped grilled meat with stripped peppers and onions usually served on a flour or corn tortilla. The term originally referred to skirt steak, the cut of beef first used in the dish. Popular alternative ...
s, leading to numerous civil and criminal complaints,
police misconduct Police misconduct refers to inappropriate conduct and illegal actions taken by police officers in connection with their official duties. Types of misconduct include among others: false confession, coerced false confession, intimidation, false arre ...
allegations and eventually, the resignation of the city's Chief of Police and Deputy Chief of Police.


Incident

On November 20, 2002, as reported the next day in the ''
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'', San Francisco residents Adam Snyder and Jade Santoro were approached as they were leaving the Blue Light bar by three men - later identified as Officer Alex Fagan Jr. (the son of Assistant Chief Alex Fagan), Officer David Lee and Officer Matt Tonsing - who demanded Snyder and Santoro give them their box of takeout food. When they refused, the off-duty police officers physically attacked them. Santoro was seriously injured, suffering a broken nose and a concussion. Snyder called
9-1-1 , usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...
on his cellphone and reported that Santoro was being beaten. He identified the attackers to the responding officers as three men who drove past the scene in a white pickup truck. The pickup was stopped and the three off-duty officers were identified, questioned and released. No arrests were made that night.


Scandal

The scandal subsequently expanded and would take until 2005 to reach a resolution. Accused police officer Alex Fagan, Jr. was the son of San Francisco Police Department Assistant Chief (later Chief)
Alex Fagan Alex Emanuel Fagan (2 November 1950 – 8 November 2010) was the Chief of the San Francisco Police Department from March 2003 until January 2004. Biography Fagan was born in Sherman, Texas and raised in the tiny (1950 population 1,147) East Bay c ...
. It was subsequently alleged by then San Francisco District Attorney
Terence Hallinan Terence Hallinan (December 4, 1936 – January 17, 2020) was an American attorney and politician from San Francisco, California. He was the second of six sons born to Progressive Party presidential candidate Vincent Hallinan and his wife, Vivian ...
that the elder Fagan, Chief Prentice E. Sanders, and nine other officers were involved in a coverup of the initial criminal acts of the three off-duty officers. Sanders and nine other senior officers were indicted by Hallinan and arrested on February 28, 2003, for the crime of
obstruction of justice Obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, is an act that involves unduly influencing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with the justice system, especially the legal and procedural tasks of prosecutors, investigators, or other gov ...
. Sanders took a leave of absence due to the charges and Alex Fagan, Sr., the next most senior officer, automatically became the acting chief. Acting Chief Alex Fagan Sr., in turn, resigned in early 2004 and was replaced by
Heather Fong Heather Jeanne Fong (, born 1956) is the former chief of police for San Francisco, California, United States. She is the first woman to lead the San Francisco Police Department, and the first Asian American woman to head a major metropolitan cit ...
, on Jan 22, 2004.


Trials


Criminal

The court cases against senior police staff continued through 2003. Hallinan dropped charges against Chief Sanders on March 11, as he was unable to prove a conspiracy had existed. Charges were dropped against almost all the other defendants on April 4, 2003. A key ruling in the case was that under California law, obstruction of justice required that there be an active conspiracy of persons who agreed to subvert justice, not merely an individual or set of individuals acting on their own. Hallinan originally claimed such a conspiracy but phone and office logs established that there could not have been any significant collusion. Hallinan publicly called for the law to be amended to allow individuals to be charged for independent actions. Later in 2003 and throughout 2004, most of the senior officers, including Sanders, pursued legal appeals to clear their names of the underlying factual claims regarding the obstruction. Sanders and several others were eventually cleared by courts. Sanders took early retirement, which he claimed was from the stress from the investigation. Criminal court cases in the original beating against Fagan and Lee were resolved in 2004 and 2005. Lee was found not guilty on November 21, 2004 and Fagan was found not guilty on March 28, 2005. Many officers were charged by the Office of Citizen Complaints for misconduct in the incident. In March 2007, Inspector Paul Falconer and Lieutenant Henry Para successfully challenged their misconduct charges in a closed hearing of the Police Commission. They were exonerated of all the charges brought against them. In March 2007, many of the officers charged by the Office of Citizen Complaints made deals, with the San Francisco Police Commission, for time off. At the end of the hearing, one police commissioner stated that it appeared that none of the officers charged had done anything wrong.


Civil

On June 12, 2006, a civil jury found Fagan and police officer Matt Tonsing liable for damages suffered in the beating and awarded plaintiff Jade Santoro $36,500 in damages. The jury found for Tonsing but against Fagan and awarded Snyder $9,500. The jury completely exonerated Lee, and Snyder was ordered to pay both Lee's and Tonsing's defense costs. A federal court dismissed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of San Francisco in 2006, a decision upheld on appeal in July 2008, on the basis that the plaintiffs had not shown at trial that any police policy or practice was to blame for the officers' conduct.


References


Further reading

* * (Transcript from broadcast)


External links


Fajitagate Timeline
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Mapreport.com
{{San Francisco Police Department, state=autocollapse 2000s in San Francisco Politics of San Francisco San Francisco Police Department Scandals in California