The Sacrifice of Police Officers
Commentary by Steve Yuhas
July 20, 2004

Few people outside of San Francisco have ever heard of Isaac Espinoza.  The 29-year-old police officer and husband of Renata and father to Isabella joined Americaπs most liberal cityπs police force in 1996.  Decorated for valor for his actions in a shoot out that occurred in October 2000 the young hero was gunned down and murdered by 21-year-old David Hill.

Enter Kamala Harris, the newly elected district attorney for San Francisco, who decided that the perpetrator of a cold blooded murder of a man who risked his life to protect the people of San Francisco did not deserve to be even considered for the death penalty.  Officer Espinoza was murdered and the chief law enforcement officer in the city simply ignored the pleas of his family and his fellow officers to allow a jury to determine whether or not Hill should be put to death for his crime.

Needless to say, relations between the police department and the district attorneyπs office have been strained since the obscene decision not to seek the ultimate penalty for a cop killer.

The memory of a decorated police officer, loving husband and father and protector of the public will not soon fade, but it is quickly becoming obvious that San Francisco is becoming a lawless refuge for depravity.

Most recently Harris raised the ire of the police department as she refused to prosecute prostitutes charged for soliciting sex in clubs across the city.  Police officers, responding to public complaints, set up sting operations in a number of sex clubs in the city and within minutes of posing as customers many of them were solicited for sex. 

Nine women and the male manager of the New Century Theater were arrested ≠ the cases were considered slam-dunks by police, but when the cases came to the attention of the woman sworn to enforce the laws and to prosecute criminal activity in San Francisco she simply tossed them all out.

Harrisπ office issued a statement indicating that the police were overreacting to the prostitution complaints and that their job was to be on the streets catching ≥real criminals.≤  Perhaps Harris should issue a modified collection of statutes that the San Francisco police should focus on so as not to bother her with criminal activity that is actually prohibited by law.

San Francisco is a city out of control.  First the city elects a mayor who ignores California law and the will of the people and issues thousands of bogus marriage licenses to gay folks seeking legal recognition of their union.  Then the people choose a district attorney who cares more about protecting prostitutes and cop killers than the lives of the men and women sworn to protect the citizens of the liberal utopia.

To be a police officer in San Francisco has to be a challenging and confusing career.  On the one hand the people of San Francisco take the police to task at any instance of what anyone would consider unseemly behavior or police misconduct.  On the other hand city officials who demand perfection from the men and women in uniform seemingly ignore the sacrifice they make by ignoring their killers and disregarding their arrests.  They just canπt win.

This column has tried to point out the folly of the politics of law enforcement from the berating of the Border Patrol agents who enforce immigration law to police officers who mourn the loss of one of their own and get smacked by the district attorney who refuses to even allow a jury to consider to sentence the killer to death.  Wearing a badge of any type in this nation is a dangerous and heroic endeavor and it is shameful that so many people simply ignore their sacrifice only to turn on them when they are gunned down.

The American people owe a great deal of gratitude and debt to those who wake up and kiss their families good-bye for what might be the last time in their lives each and every day, but district attorneys and politicians have got to get out of the way and let them do their jobs and when we lose one of these brave people to gunfire or misfortune we should not simply write off the loss as if a copy machine went down at city hall.

You may not have heard of Officer Espinoza before, but one name you should definitely remember is Kamala Harris and hope and pray that her first term as district attorney is her last and that San Francisco cops never respond to a burglar alarm at her home or a 9-1-1 call from her public funded cell phone.

Let her fend for herself since enforcing the law just doesnπt matter.