Sit-down meeting(s) requested!

Chief Gascon,

  I recently saw you quoted in the Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2010/04/19/MNL31D15OH.DTL) as saying that your department has been very transparent. I am trying to square that claim, and your claim noted below of having an "open door policy," with your failure to respond to me since I wrote you last September requesting a meeting between yourself and the sex work community.

  While my previous communications have presumably been languishing in your In Box, if not deleted from your computer, members of the Libertarian Party including myself have also been in communication with members of the San Francisco Patrol Special Police. All of us are concerned that elements of the SFPD are seeking to shut down the Patrol Specials because they do not want the competition, and that toward this end they are abusing their authority to certify Patrol Special applicants by delaying and turning down applications without due cause, as well as pressuring merchants not to deal with the Patrol Specials. So you also now have a number of people from the community who wish to meet with you about this matter.

  I sincerely hope that your stated commitments to transparency and openness are genuine, and that you will be in touch soon. Please write me back at your earliest convenience and let me know when you are willing to meet with us. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Love & Liberty,
        ((( starchild )))
Candidate for SF Board of Supervisors, District 8
Outreach Director, Libertarian Party of San Francisco

P.S. - Can you tell me how many arrests there have been for non-violent drug use, drug sales, drug manufacturing, prostitution, or for loitering or other minor offenses in connection with drugs or prostitution, since you became SF Police Chief, or how I can obtain this information? Likewise, what the budget is for the SFPD's vice squad, and how much do you estimate the SFPD spends each year on cases where there is no victim seeking to press charges?

This information should be of interest to yourself as well, in terms of identifying budgetary expenditures that could be reduced or eliminated to comply with Mayor Newsom's request for city departments to trim their budgets in order to close the current deficit, without jeopardizing public safety. Remember, huge numbers of San Franciscans do not think either prostitution or drug use should even be against the law in the first place, let alone that the police should be actively engaging in sting operations to arrest people on such charges! Are you willing to respect the diversity of opinion in the community by focusing police resources on areas of law enforcement behind which there is broad public consensus, or are you aiming to ride roughshod over the views and civil liberties of those who believe our standard should be "no victim, no crime"? Many of us would really like to know!