SF District Attorney Fights Jail Construction Plan, Racist Texts Between Santa Clara Jail Guards, and Helping CA’s Exploited Kids

WITH HELP FROM A STUDY, SF DISTRICT ATTORNEY GEORGE GASCON URGES MORE REHABILITATION SERVICES, RATHER THAN A NEW JAIL

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón spoke out against a $240 million plan to build a new jail, arguing that the city should instead use the money to renovate existing jails and boost diversion and re-entry programs. Gascón said that if the city increased its use of pretrial release and mental heath programs, the jail population could be reduced from 1,300—which is just 50% of capacity—to around 900.

“Take a look at virtually any street corner in downtown San Francisco, we have a mental health treatment problem, not a jail capacity problem,” said District Attorney George Gascón. “I’m very concerned as I believe San Francisco is on the cusp of making a terrible mistake that we will look back on as wasteful and out of touch for years to come.”

Gascón was joined by James Austin of the JFA Institute with a report detailing how San Francisco has effectively ended mass incarceration and become a model worthy of replication elsewhere in California and across the nation.

The report found that since 2009, California has lowered the number of people in jail, prison and on probation or parole by nearly 150,000. And if the rest of the US cut inmate populations at the same rate as San Francisco, the US would lower community supervision numbers from 7 million to 2 million. The nation’s 2.3 million prison and jail populations would decline to below 700,000. By taking advantage of Realignment and Prop. 47 resources, San Francisco has launched a new reentry council, a risk assessment project, the Community Corrections Partnership, the San Francisco Sentencing Commission, the Justice Re-investment Initiative, the Jail Re-entry Pod, and more.

Despite opposition from Gascón and community advocacy groups, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee unanimously voted Wednesday to put the jail plan to the full board for a vote. The vote is scheduled for December 18 to allow time for the newly-elected Supervisor Aaron Peskin to be sworn in on December 8. Peskin, a progressive, has the potential to sink the jail plan, depending on how he votes later this month.

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AT LEAST 12 SANTA CLARA COUNTY OFFICERS UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR RACIST TEXT MESSAGE SCANDAL

At least 12 Santa Clara County jail guards allegedly sent each other racist text messages over the course of a year.

“We could hang a n—-r in Haiti for about 75 bucks tops,” one text reportedly reads.

One guard sent a group text that said, “Cops have already killed 550 people in 2015.” Another guard replied, “If they’re black, it doesn’t count.”

Some of the other text messages reportedly indicate that the guards coerced or coaxed inmates to perform sexual favors for them.

Santa Clara’s recently elected Sheriff Laurie Smith called the text messages “repugnant and vile” and “absolutely shameful.”

“If the ongoing independent investigation surrounding these disgusting text messages are found to be attributed to any member of the Sheriff’s Office, I will move to fire those individuals because they have no business in law enforcement, let alone civilized society.”

Note: this is a different racist text message scandal than the one in San Francisco involving 14 police officers that led to an investigation by the SF District Attorney’s Office into the 3,000 arrests made by the officers involved (1,600 of those arrests resulted in convictions).

San Jose Mercury News’ Tracey Kaplan and Robert Salonga have the story. Here’s a clip:

LaDoris Cordell, an African-American former judge and independent police auditor for San Jose who chairs the county’s jails improvement commission, called the texts “absolutely shocking.”

“To think that the county and taxpayers have entrusted these people to protect other human beings who are black, Latino, Asian and Jewish is frightening,” Cordell said. “These people need to be fired and anyone who defends this, or is in a leadership position but who never did anything about it, needs to go.”

While the offensive texts generally appear to be grounds for discipline but not prosecution, authorities are concerned that the jail guards’ attitudes may have translated into criminal behavior on the job, although the three guards implicated in the death of mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree are not among those who exchanged the messages.

Some texts suggest that certain guards may have either coaxed or coerced inmates into giving them sexual favors, multiple sources familiar with the investigations said. Other texts indicate that some guards may have urged a probation officer they knew to come down hard on inmates who were perceived as difficult to handle when they were in jail, the sources said. Those texts are not among those reviewed by this newspaper.

Authorities are still combing through thousands of messages collected during the investigations, the sources said. In interviews with six sources close to the investigation, this newspaper has reviewed several dozen of the texts deemed objectionable. It wasn’t clear from the review how many such texts have surfaced or how frequently they were sent. Not all of the texts that were reviewed included the names of the senders and recipients.

Two sources familiar with the investigations told this newspaper about the texted images, including the pictures of a lynching and a swastika, but did not say who sent or received them.

Even if authorities cannot link the texts to any crimes, the county may be able to take disciplinary action for conduct unbecoming an officer, a catchall policy for behavior likely to diminish the public’s trust.

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OP-ED: CA AND COUNTIES SHOULD WRAP UP THE PLANNING AND DEBATING, AND TAKE SWIFT ACTION TO DECRIMINALIZE SEX-TRAFFICKED CHILDREN

Last year, CA Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 855, a bill that defined sex-trafficked children as victims and in need of assistance from the child welfare system when their parents or guardians are unable to protect them. The bill also allocated $5 million for the 2014-2015 year followed by $14 million annually for specialized training for social workers and caregivers to identify and prevent the commercial sexual exploitation of kids.

California’s Department of Social Services and the Child Welfare Council’s task force have made progress toward the bill’s goals, and California counties (Los Angeles included) are working to decriminalize exploited kids. But the bill is now more than a year old and children are still being arrested and locked up for “prostitution.”

In an op-ed for the Chronicle of Social Change, Leslie Starr Heimov, executive director of Children’s Law Center of California, and Kate Walker Brown, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, say it’s time for the state and counties must move past planning and discussion and take action to protect, rather than criminalize, trafficked children. Here’s a clip:

The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has taken the necessary first steps by hiring program staff, issuing guidance and allocating funds. The Child Welfare Council’s CSEC Action Team has created a framework of guiding principles and other resources for counties to implement new policies to help this vulnerable population. And counties have spent months planning, discussing, and debating.

Despite these efforts, SB 855 is well over a year old, and trafficked, exploited children are still being charged with prostitution and sent to jail. Now is the time to act; gatekeepers at every decision-making point must ensure that these children are protected and supported by the child welfare system and the community. The courts, law enforcement, public agencies, private entities, survivor advocates, policymakers, and community organizations must join hands to protect and heal our children.

Today, the CSEC Action Team, in partnership with the Judicial Council of California and CDSS, is convening twenty-one counties’ CSEC multidisciplinary teams, bringing together nearly 250 individuals—judges, lawyers, law enforcement, social workers, probation officers, health and mental health professionals, policymakers, advocates and, survivors. Individually and collectively they have the ability to make the necessary practice changes these young victims so deserve. We must take this opportunity to move beyond talk to action.