Gascon Says He Will Seek The Death Penalty In Cases That 'Warrant' It

• And how's our broke-ass city gonna afford all the extra costs a death penalty case incurs?

• Most importantly, Have you seen the guy's wife? Christ, the level of eye candy at City Hall rocketed over the last few years. Gavin marries first a national newscaster drop-dead honey and then goes for another perky beauty starlet a few years later. Mirkarimi's partner is a major soap opera star from Venezuela. Chu and Cohen and Kim on the BOS? The cop who commented above is probably right (that's why he's a detective?) ... Gascon needed security for his pretty newscaster bride and top cops just don't have that. Recall that he was tied to a rail and awaiting the tar and feathers in Mesa cause he tangled with Sheriff Joe ("I hate immigrants!") Arpaio. Really, just ask him, George was going to be fired. In shouldn't have surprised Newsom that the guy took the job. He was standing on a banana peel with his present position. He's way too law abiding and open for the POA and any new Progressive mayor would probably want their own chief. It's a win-win. h.

• It's interesting how the presumption is made that because Gascon was the Chief of Police that rank and file cops will somehow have a better relationship with the DA's office because he's there now. The tension between the two Departments owes to things systemic and thus intractable, and personalities, and thus temporal. The systemic is this: cops arrest on probable cause, a relatively "low" threshold which is defined in law as "a fair probability" that a crime occurred. The DA must convict on a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" a much higher standard. In effect, the cops are playing checkers when the game is really chess. This tensions exists, and shows no sign of abating. The personality conflicts are generally at the higher levels of the organizations. Working cops and especially detectives (of which I am one) generally have a good working relationship with working prosecutors. Harris' opposition of the death penalty was especially wounding because of the death of Isaac Espinoza. Gascon's opening the possibility of a death penalty case is not going to carry the day with most thinking cops. First, it'll never happen, not in San Francisco. Even though Gascon's history is out-of-town he's shown himself to be a quick-study and deft tactician when it comes to local politics. He knows full well that you can't get a death penalty conviction in SF. The bottom line is that Gascon's effort to obtain job security and political opportunity by taking the DA's job is and will be seen by working cops as one man's effort to further and expand his personal future. I personally don't begrudge him that but, don't think for a moment that my relationship with the DA's office is better, or worse for that matter, because a "cop" is now the DA.

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