Bravo for San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and his staff for dropping charges against 42 year old Sergio Lugo. Per the Bay Area Reporter, the San Francisco Police Department’s plainclothes police officers decided to pick out Sergio Lugo for a near-death beating. The B.A.R. reports:
On February 17, 2021, plainclothes officers observed Lugo walking around the Castro district in the early morning hours, the public defender’s office’s release states. “Although he had committed no crime, two officers detained and questioned him. When they told Mr. Lugo that they intended to search him, Mr. Lugo asserted his right not to be searched and told them that he intended to walk away. Without any verbal warning, the two officers grabbed his arm, kicked his legs out from under him, and pinned him on the ground,” the release states. Newly-released photos by the public defender’s office show Lugo with severe facial injuries following the altercation with San Francisco police officers.
https://www.ebar.com/news/crime//312184
SF Police Punched Sergio Lugo, A Gay San Francisco Man, 15 to 20 times For No Good Reason
Per the San Francisco Standard and San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Alexandra Pray, the plainclothed SF cops punched Sergio Lugo “15 to 20 times”. Note that Lugo had no reason to believe the two men approaching him were actually San Francisco Police Department representatives, and given their reported behavior toward him, had every reason to defend himself. It was a case of sloppy police work done in such a way that one has cause to wonder if the San Francisco Police beating was really a hate-crime against Lugo because he was gay? This is what the San Francisco Standard wrote:
But new photos and an internal police report from the case obtained by The Standard show that the encounter left the officer with minor cuts to his pinky finger and knee, while the suspect suffered a fractured left cheek bone and cuts and bruises to his head after being punched “15 to 20 times.” Alexandra Pray, a deputy public defender representing the suspect, 42-year-old Sergio Lugo, said that a comparison of photos of her client’s injuries and the officer’s injuries show that Lugo was the actual victim. “If we were to look at those photos and not know the role of each of the portrayed people in them, I think anyone would look at them and assume that Mr. Lugo was the victim of a horrific assault,” Pray said. The case gained national attention this week when Police Chief Bill Scott publicly criticized Boudin for dropping the charges, just two days after Police Officers Association President Tony Montoya sent a note to the rank-and-file encouraging them to publicly rally against Boudin’s decision.
SF Police Chief Bill Scott Picked The Wrong Case To Use Against Chesa Boudin, And It Raises Questions
In his response to District Attorney Boudin’s decision to drop the charges against Mr. Lugo, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said “the case “sends a dangerous message that emboldens criminals.” How wrong. If anything, the decision sends the message that San Francisco Police can’t use Pandemic-level crime rates as a reason to do bad police work. The question raised here at Oakland News Now is just how many San Francisco Police cases are really due to over-zealous police work?
One of the men in the focus, San Francisco police Sgt. Alexander N. Lentz (the others are Officer Griffin Glennon and undercover cop Kevin Healy or Lt. Kevin Healy AKA Kevin “Scrappy” Healy), was hailed for responding to a call and saved a cat who was thrown over an overpass into the San Francisco Bay in 2018, when he was Field Training Officer.
Sgt Lentz, who pulled down $129,681.14 in 2019, according to public records, is also one of a group of white San Francisco Police Officers who sued the same SF Police Chief Scott (who is African American) for “racial discrimination against them for being white police officers” in June of 2019, according to The Epoch Times. In all, the 13 white police officers who filed suit were Frederick (Ric) Schiff, Glenn Brakel, Alice Dicroce, Brian Greer, Clayton Harmston, Steven Haskell, Micah Hope, Daniel Kelly, Alexander Lentz, Brandon McKelley, Gerald Newbeck, David O’Keeffe, and Thomas Walsh.
The matter of the lawsuit is countered by the same officers complaints about the drive toward diversity in the rank and file of SFPD and the 2015 claim that San Francisco Police Officers maintained a culture that produced anti-gay text messages. On May 15, 2015, NBC Bay Area reported:
Three retired judges will review around 3,000 arrests connected to 14 San Francisco Police Department officers who are under investigation for allegedly sending racist and anti-gay text messages, the city’s top prosecutor announced Thursday. The judges, who are not being paid, will also try to determine if there is a “deeper culture of bias at the SFPD, and what the impact of such bias may be on prosecutions made by the District Attorney’s Office,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said.
– NBC Bay Area
Given his noted record, it can be said that Kevin “Scrappy” Healy is part of that culture. In 2011, the late San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi demanded that there be “a culture change in our city’s police department. That was after Mr. Adachi released a video showing San Francisco Police Department officers physically attacking an apparent bystander after illegally searching the room of a residential hotel resident on Dec. 30, 2010 (a news event I covered and is at Zennie62.com, and in this video, below.). San Francisco Police Officers involved in the Dec. 30 arrest were Ricardo Guerrero, Reynaldo Vargas, Jacob Fegan, Peter Richardson, Robert Sanchez and and the same Kevin Healy that’s involved in the Sergio Lugo Case.
San Francisco’s Police Department Has A Noted Culture That’s Anti-Gay And May Have Caused The Beating Of Sergio Lugo
There are many signs that point to the possibility that the San Francisco Police Department’s apprehension and beating of Sergio Lugo was really an anti-gay hate crime. But let the Twitter-based words of SF Public Defender Danielle Harris tell the whole story – this from her Twitter account @DaniMargoHarris
Sergio Lugo had been unhoused for some time last February. A slight, gay man, he slept by day and walked at night, for his safety, often in SF’s Castro. Though Sergio was minding his own that winter night, three undercover cops beat him until he was bloody, broken, and bruised.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, police then arrested Sergio, blaming him because they hurt themselves (mildly) through their own brutality. And based on the police report alone, which omitted observations from neighbors who watched the vicious beating, the DA charged the case.
Sergio then spent four months locked in a cold and miserable cage – 23 hours a day, every day – while his legal team tracked down witnesses. When shown the full picture, the DA did the only ethical thing – the only just thing – by dismissing the case.
Yet, the police chief criticized the outcome. Had he reviewed the interviews of the independent witnesses? Sent investigators to confirm their statements? Spoken to the prosecutor or Sergio’s lawyer? What concept of justice for all involves such one-sidedness?
Instead of any reasoned, fact-based analysis, the police chief seized the occasion to sow more division, brazenly claiming the dismissal of false charges against an innocent man would embolden dangerous criminals.
n fact, the only dangerous criminals in this story are the three cops who broke a man’s face because he dared to assert his legal rights. (Note: when police harass us without a valid reason, we have a constitutional right to walk away.)
If he cares about getting dangerous criminals off the streets, armed ones in particular, the chief should’ve immediately opened an investigation into the apparent brutality and put those cops on leave or desk duty.
And, instead of reporting on the case facts – what police claimed, what video showed, what neighbors saw – so readers could make up their own minds, the SF Chronicle framed the issue as a debate between the DA and the police.
The newspaper showed no concern about whether an innocent man had been beaten and framed by those who should’ve been protecting him. It played politics, fanning the flames around the upcoming election, true public safety and individual rights be damned.
Painfully, the 42-yr-old Bay native is hardly the first out gay man SFPD has harassed and beaten. In 2019, Chief Scott said, “We the members of the San Francisco Police Department are here to reflect and apologize for our past actions against the LGBTQ community.”
Speaking for a department the Examiner called “notorious for beating gay men, and sometimes women, who frequented gay bars in the Castro,” Scott continued, “We want to listen to you and want to truly hear you. We will atone for our past.”
Over 2 yrs later, police continue these sins and far from listening or hearing, they tow the thin blue line. SFPD can start atoning now by investigating what Sgt.Alexander Lentz, Lt.Kevin Healy, and Ofc.Glennon Griffin did to Sergio and getting them off our streets in the interim
Sergio is now safely housed for the first time in a long time. He is thankful to a city that provides top quality counsel to the poor and marginalized and to an independent prosecutor who makes decisions based on facts and justice, not thin blue lines or political winds.
We SF citizens will no doubt add compensation for Sergio’s pain and suffering to the millions we pay for police brutality each yr. Hold on to your purses, folks, and watch your backs – those criminals are still out there – armed, dangerous, & safely acting under color of law.
From @DaniMargoHarris
Is The Recall Of Chesa Boudin Really A Drive To Maintain An Anti-Gay San Francisco Police Force?
That’s the question related to the Case. Since some call for Chesa Boudin to be voted out of office, one must ask the question “What will be maintained if the recall managed to remove Boudin?” One answer does appear to be the maintenance of what many assert, and looks to be, an anti-gay culture within the San Francisco Police Department. If that’s not the case, SFPD has done little, if anything, to deny the claims.
Stay tuned.