Ballpark duty puts major-league strain on SF police OT
Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Copyright 2006 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
All Rights Reserved
The San Francisco Police Department’s overtime crunch is fast becoming a hair-pulling exercise affecting everyone from the Giants to tourists to Bayview residents -- even heads of state.
The latest chess move starts with AT&T Park.
For years, the Giants and the city have had a handshake agreement on managing the crowds at the park: The city would pick up the tab for police when they were outside the gates -- before and after games. The Giants would pay the cop costs inside the park while the games were in progress.
To avoid disrupting regular patrols elsewhere in the city, the department has been deploying the extra cops to the Giants games on overtime. Last year, the overtime tab was about $250,000, according to police.
But now, with Police Chief Heather Fong having burned through about $15 million in overtime this year, she’s under pressure from the Board of Supervisors to tighten up the purse strings and has ordered her command staff to knock off the OT. The upshot: The department is pulling beat cops from around the city to cover security before and after Giants games at AT&T Park.
The ripple effect: At least 18 fewer cops patrolled the streets during game hours this past week - including six cops from the tourist-heavy Market Street. Even the extra crime-suppression patrols in the homicide-heavy neighborhoods like the Bayview have had to take a cut.
Come next month, when the dreaded L.A. Dodgers arrive, 24 cops will be drafted for ballpark duty.
Plus, with Barry Bonds fast closing in on Babe Ruth’s home-run record, the department will be adding even more cops around the park to make sure a riot doesn’t break out.
All of which means that the department’s already slowed response to burglaries and other routine police calls will be even slower.
The overtime tightening has gotten even heads of state into the mix.
In what would have been an unprecedented move to save money, we’re told the Police Department was planning to call off its traditional motorcycle escorts for visiting dignitaries -- with Croatian President Stjepan Mesic, in town this weekend, to feel the first of the cuts.
After a Secret Service call to City Hall, we’re told, more diplomatic minds prevailed. The order was rescinded, and Mesic’s motorcade was assigned the standard contingent of 25 motorcycle cops -- at up to $67 an hour per officer -- to accompany him until he departs Monday afternoon.
Odds Are: No sooner did the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in Washington pass a measure to curb off-reservation gambling than tribes started moving on a giant loophole in the bill.
The Senate bill, which was sponsored by Arizona Sen. John McCain and had strong support from California’s Dianne Feinstein, was intended to halt “instant reservation” Indian casinos -- like the one stopped midtrack in San Pablo -- from spreading.
The original draft of McCain’s legislation would have limited future off-reservation gambling to 13 tribes already in the pipeline.
By the time McCain’s bill was approved, however, the cutoff date for new tribes had quietly been pushed back several months -- keeping the gates open for dozens of tribes to still get in the door, including several who reportedly have their eye on California.
McCain was quoted widely in one Indian gambling trade publication as saying he’d push the date back to March 29 -- the date the Indian Affairs Committee approved his bill -- if there actually proved to be a flood of new applications.
As for Feinstein, her office told us she’s ready to go even further if necessary -- amending the bill to only allow the 13 tribes already in the pipeline.
“We think the bill overall is a big step forward,’' Feinstein’s chief of staff, Mark Kadesh, said. “But if people try to abuse the (cutoff) date of April 15, she is prepared to amend the bill on the floor.’'
By the way, Feinstein is still pressing ahead with a separate bill that would strip the Lytton Band of its San Pablo casino reservation -- requiring the tribe to resubmit its application for federal review.
Spring Recess: They talked and talked, but in the end, state legislators still weren’t able to pencil out the long-lingering, mega-bond deal before taking off for spring break.
The closest lawmakers got to a deal was to rough out an outline for a $30 billion combo “baby bond” to cover education, levee repair and transportation - much smaller than the $40 to $50 billion bond being talked up just a few week ago.
Not that there weren’t some interesting moments, such as last Monday when Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Speaker Fabian Núñez -- both of whom have been negotiating with the governor -- were scheduled to stand shoulder to shoulder with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides when he rolled out his own infrastructure plan.
But when the event came. neither Perata nor Núñez was to be found -- both the victims of sudden scheduling conflicts.
More parking horrors: We told you a couple weeks back about the woman in labor whose car was ticketed anyway for being parked in a street-cleaning zone. Well, in the “I can top that’’ nightmare category, Oakland businesswoman Crystal Abramson tells us she was parallel parking at a meter the other day on Mountain Boulevard in Oakland’s Montclair neighborhood when an impatient driver behind her accelerated and struck a 13-year-old girl who was running across the street.
“I jumped out of my car and ran to assist the injured girl and stayed with her until the ambulance and police officers arrived,’' Abramson said.
When Abramson returned to her car -- less than 20 feet away -- a parking control officer was issuing her a ticket for having failed to put money in the meter.
“Once the ticket is issued, I can’t take it back,’' the meter maid said.
“Thereby proving,’' Abramson said, “no good deed goes unpunished!’'
Or un-ticketed.