By Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
Nearly two years after a mugging and street fight involving three off-duty officers shook the San Francisco Police Department, prosecutors told a jury Monday that two of the men should be convicted of assault for allegedly beating two civilians on Union Street while the defense claimed the officers were simply defending themselves.
During a low-key opening statement of their case against Officer Matthew Tonsing and former Officer David Lee, prosecutors used slides to show jurors pictures of a bloody head wound and fractured nose that Jade Santoro suffered on Union Street early Nov. 20, 2002.
Assistant District Attorney David Merin also played portions of the 911 call from the other alleged victim, Adam Snyder, in which he breathlessly told the dispatcher, “They’re beating the hell out of my friend.”
Attorneys for the defense argued in their opening statements that Santoro, 27, and Snyder, 25, were lying about the circumstances of the altercation and inflating their accounts for financial and other gain.
Tonsing, 29, and Lee, 25, are charged with assault and battery; Lee is also charged with driving while impaired.
Conspicuously absent from the defense table in San Francisco Superior Court was former Officer Alex Fagan Jr., 25, the son of former Police Chief Alex Fagan Sr. Attorneys for the younger Fagan won a change-of-venue motion, arguing that the case and their client had become so notorious that there was no way for him to get an impartial jury in the city. Fagan is to stand trial later in Sacramento on assault and battery charges.
The elder Fagan was among seven department officials who were briefly indicted last year on charges of conspiring to block the investigation into the Union Street incident. The charges were promptly dropped, but the assault cases against the rank-and-file officers stood.
On Monday, Snyder testified that Santoro had just closed up the bar where he worked and the two had been walking to their cars near Laguna and Union streets when Tonsing demanded Santoro’s $6.50 take-home bag of steak fajitas. After an exchange, he said, Tonsing guzzled a beer and threw the bottle at Santoro’s chest.
During the ensuing fight, Snyder said, he fought with Fagan Jr., who punched him in the side of the face.
“I defended myself,” Snyder said. “I started punching him back.”
Lee drove up, grabbed him and dragged him down the street, and joined Fagan in beating him, Snyder said.
The three officers also pummeled Santoro as he lay in a fetal position, then threw him on the hood of a car, Snyder said.
Santoro, according to Merin, suffered a head gash, back injuries and a broken nose.
In her opening statement, Tonsing’s attorney, Freya Horne, said her client was the one who had been attacked.
“Mr. Santoro threw the first punch,” she said. “My client was acting in self-defense.”
She said the fight began after Santoro and Tonsing were “trash talking.”
“The prosecution would have you believe that Mr. Santoro and Mr. Snyder never did anything, that this was all for no reason,” Horne said.
She said the two men’s “real motivating forces” were the “millions of dollars” they could reap from lawsuits against the department.
Horne also suggested that Santoro had gotten a deal from prosecutors in a felony drug case in exchange for embellishing his story.
Lee’s attorney, Mark Nicco, also attacked Santoro, saying he had lied and given a false name to police that morning because of the pending felony drug case and because he had cocaine in his pants pocket.
He said Snyder had suffered nothing worse than a skinned knee and yet could reap a windfall from his pending federal civil rights lawsuit.
“He has a lot to gain from this case,” Nicco said. “A skinned knee, that’s the basis of a $2.5 million lawsuit -- that’s a pretty expensive skinned knee.”