Ex-Black Panther leader has history of dustups
The knockdown of Elaine Brown by Oakland City Councilwoman Desley Brooks that resulted in a $3.77 million jury verdict against the city wasn’t the first time the former Black Panther leader charged she was the victim of an unprovoked assault.
Two years before the 2015 dustup with Brooks at a barbecue restaurant, Brown claimed she was knocked to the floor by a valet at the Waterfront Hotel in Jack London Square. Although Brown demanded a six-figure settlement from the hotel, the valet and a witness indicated that she was as much the aggressor as the victim — the valet said she called him a “little bitch,” and the witness said Brown called her a “white bitch.”
Brown also cut loose with a string of profanities at California Highway Patrol officers six months after the hotel incident, when they arrested her on suspicion of driving under the influence after she steered her car into the mudflats on the east side of the Bay Bridge, the CHP said.
Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker sought to use both incidents in defending the city against Brown’s suit over Brooks’ attack, which apparently was precipitated by a dispute over whether a Brown-linked nonprofit’s housing and commercial development should receive city funding.
But Judge Paul Herbert of Alameda County Superior Court said no to Parker’s bid, siding with Brown’s attorney that any mention of the incidents would be “unfair and highly prejudicial.” As a result, the jury that found in Brown’s favor in December never heard about them.
Brown, 74, did not return our calls seeking comment. However, in a sworn deposition during her lawsuit against Brooks and the city, Brown denied she had made any inflammatory remarks either at the hotel or to the CHP officers.
The Waterfront incident took place the night of Dec. 29, 2013, when Brown dropped off two people at the hotel.
According to Brown’s account in the police report, the hotel’s valet began taking photos of her car’s license plate. She asked him to stop, but he didn’t.
“He said something and pushed me on my right chest with both hands,” Brown told police. “I fell backward, hitting my tailbone and hit the back of my head on the ground.”
Brown declined medical attention but told police she wanted to press charges.
When the cops interviewed the valet, Steven Salob, and a bystander, a different version of events emerged.
According to Salob, Brown and her companions were standing outside the hotel, “being loud.” Because it was late at night, he said, he asked them “to keep their noise down because there (were) rooms right above them.”
“They became upset and started calling me a racist and ‘little white bitch,’ ” Salob told police.
Brown’s friends went off to their room — but Brown, who had returned to her car, continued to dress him down, Salob said. Her exact words, he said, were, “Come out here, you little bitch. I’m gonna beat your ass!”
When he snapped a picture of her license plate to have a record of the exchange, Salob said, “she got out of the driver’s seat and started charging toward me.”
Salob said he backed into the hotel lobby with his hands up, as Brown yelled that she was going to beat him “like a little bitch.” As she got closer, he pushed her away and she fell, Salob said.
Hotel surveillancecamera video shows Brown coming toward the valet as he walks backward into the lobby, before he shoves her with his right arm and she falls to the floor on her back. There is no sound on the footage.
Brown asked for a citizen’s arrest, and Salob was cited.
“I was only acting in self-defense,” he told police.
Janet Landis ,a61year-old hotel guest who witnessed the incident, told police that she suspected Brown was drunk based on her combative conduct. When Landis tried to defuse the situation, she said, Brown called her a “white bitch.”
According to a law enforcement source familiar with the case, Oakland police investigators later received a call from Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson — who was Brown’s boss at the time — inquiring about the probe. Carson did not return our call seeking comment.
Ultimately, county prosecutors decided not to file charges. Brown’s attorney demanded a $175,000 settlement from the Waterfront, warning hotel executives in a letter that the ex-Panther would find “significant political and public support in Oakland” if she took them to court.
The attorney, Pamela Price, blamed Salob at the time for an “unprovoked physical attack (on) an elderly and defenseless woman.” Price, who is now running for district attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
The two sides eventually settled for an undisclosed sum. As for Salob, he stands by his version of the story and said the hotel stood by him “100 percent.” He worked there for another three years, he said.
Six months after the Waterfront incident, on the night of June 12, 2014, Brown drove her car into shallow water at the end of Radio Road near the entrance of the Bay Bridge, according to the CHP.
“The driver was very confused, stuttered her words, and continued to cry,” one officer wrote in a report. “I noticed the odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from her breath ... and Brown’s speech was slow and slurred.”
Brown told the officers that she had drunk a glass of wine about an hour earlier, the CHP said. After administering a field sobriety test and running a license check, the officers arrested her on suspicion of driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license.
Department of Motor Vehicles records show the license had been suspended three years earlier after Brown failed to appear in court for an undisclosed traffic violation.
After being handcuffed and placed in the back of the squad car, Brown allegedly let loose on the CHP cops, describing “the arrest as if she was in Mississippi in 1952,” one officer wrote in his report. “She also stated we were a couple of f— white —hole cops only arresting her because she was an old black lady.”
Brown’s blood alcohol level was later measured at 0.13 percent, over the 0.08 percent legal limit for driving.
Brown eventually pleaded guilty to an alcohol-related reckless driving charge and was ordered to attend DUI driving school, said Kevin Dunleavy, chief assistant district attorney.
City Attorney Parker’s office, which is considering an appeal of the jury verdict in the BrooksBrown case, is staying mum about the earlier incidents.
“It’s an ongoing proceeding, so we can’t comment,” spokesman Alex Katz said. San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@ sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross