Supervisors support police dummy
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1992
Oct. 20: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously yesterday in favor of keeping a police officer’s ventriloquist dummy on the beat. Officer Bob Geary was recently restricted from carrying his puppet — Officer Brendan O’Smarty — on patrol in North Beach. The dummy has served as a public relations gimmick for tourists and children. Geary was told that he could continue carrying O’Smarty with him only if he clears each use in advance. Supervisors sided with Geary, voting to urge the Police Commission to urge Acting Chief Tom Murphy to allow O’Smarty to work the beat whenever Geary wants. — Elaine Herscher
1967
Oct. 18: Police — swinging clubs like scythes — cut a bloody path through 2500 anti-war demonstrators who had closed down the Oakland Armed Forces Examining Station yesterday. At least 20 persons were treated at Highland Hospital. The crowd had come to prevent draftees from entering and had expected at worst to be hauled away in paddy wagons. What actually happened was a lot rougher. At 6:50 a.m. a reedy, mechanical voice ordered the crowd to disperse and a few minutes later officers began to pour out of a garage across the street. Police — ten lines deep — attacked, beating through the thin line of frightened demonstrators. Charging down Clay Street, officers squirted liquid mace and rattled clubs against anyone who didn’t move fast enough. Newsmen were clubbed and kicked — whether or not they wore press badges.
Half way down the block an additional 100 demonstrators were sitting at the station’s side entrance. After facing each other for a few minutes, officers suddenly surged down the street, their clubs mechanically flailing up and down, like peasants mowing wheat. Bodies began to pile up around the entrance and the cries of women could be heard as clubs thudded into them. The beatings, which lasted 20 minutes, sickened a dentist who is a former paratrooper, a veteran of World War II and Korea. “The cops came at a little girl who was scared to death,” said Donald L. Gerber of Chico. “My God these were Americans they beat up today ... I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” — Charles Howe
1942
Oct. 18: More bad news for the Axis powers; William Saroyan, the daring young man of the theater, and Beniamino Bufano, the scrappy sculptor, are in the Army! After winding up his sculpting, Bufano entrained to camp to prepare to carve up three guys called Adolf, Benito and Hirohito. Saroyan also was fitted out for a uniform yesterday. The writer-dramatist was inducted into Uncle Sam’s armed forces, then grabbed a gun and went duck hunting. “He wanted to see how it feels to shoot things,” his family said. Saroyan gets two weeks to wind up the duck hunting and his other affairs. Bufano, who became an American citizen in 1938, when he forswore allegiance to King Emmanuel of Italy, is an old hand at scraps and squabbles. But heretofore his sights have been trained on art critics, art professors, improvement clubs and the Board of Supervisors. There was the big battle over the stainless steel statue of St. Francis destined for Twin Peaks which some said resembled an action pose of a Billy the Kid victim. Then there was that Golden Bear he did for the University of California, which certain critics hinted, had more the look of a weird dream in German field boots than a bear. Then there was that … but whatever the artistic ruckus, Bufano has not lost a battle yet. And he said before entraining yesterday, he’s not going to start losing any now.
1917
Oct. 16: A delegation of women from the Labor Council presented a petition to the Board of Supervisors requesting the enforcement of the State housing law at the United Railroads car barns, the disarming of the imported carmen, and police measures to prevent inexperienced motormen from operating street cars in the city. Supervisor Gallagher presented the petition and the privilege of the floor was given to Mrs. M.J. McGuire and Mrs. M.J. Crowe. Secretary of the Labor Council, John A. O’Connell, also spoke and criticized Police Judge Fitzpatrick, who, he said, had sent a boy to jail for six months for throwing rocks at a United Railroads car, while he had fined imported platform men $20 for shooting on the streets. “I will go to the limit to see that the laws are carried out,” declared Mayor Rolph. “I think it is fierce that in this twentieth century a lot of thugs and desperadoes, who sell their very all, can come here from other cities to take the bread out of the mouths of these women. We stand for the eight-hour day. The world is at war — our Nation is at war — struggling for the rights of humanity, and the city of San Francisco believes that one of those rights is the right of the workingman to the eight-hour day, and eight hours to sleep and eight hours to be with his wife and little ones.”