Police chief fixes backlog in rape tests

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr looked like a happy guy when we ran into him at City Hall the other day. The chief has dealt with one scandal after another at the department over the past several months, but he finally had some good news to share.

Remember the dustup in June between Suhr and District Attorney George Gascón over the police crime lab’s backlog of untested rape kits? The D.A. wanted the police to team up on applying for a $2 million federal grant to finally get the old kits tested, but Suhr said his beleaguered crime lab was too “maxed out” and declined to seek the money.

Suhr later said he had explained the matter

badly and actually would get the old kits tested with the department’s own cash. Now, Suhr reports, it’s a done deal. All 437 old kits have been sent for testing which means the Police Department considers the matter closed.

“Once it’s assigned, it’s done,” Suhr said. “We don’t have the backlog anymore.”

The actual results probably won’t come back to the Police Department until December. None of the kits can lead to prosecution because they date to 2003 or earlier, and the statute of limitations for rape in California is 10 years.

But advocates have pushed for testing to give victims peace of mind, to ensure that as many DNA profiles are added to the national database as possible in case they match the profiles of perpetrators of crimes committed elsewhere, and because the results can be used in court if the same rapist acts again to establish a pattern of behavior.

Capt. Michael Connolly, who oversees the crime lab, said the names of the perpetrators in all 437 outstanding cases are already known to the department. They were the spouses, boyfriends or acquaintances of women who were raped. The tests in cases in which a stranger attacked a woman were already tested because they were deemed more crucial.

(That’s something Suhr might also have wanted to explain better — or, really, at all — back in June.)

Connolly said all rape kits gathered at San Francisco hospitals after assaults now are tested within 10 days — some even sooner.

By the way, forensic scientists at the lab had a special visitor last week: Itiel Dror, a cognitive neuroscience researcher from University College London. Dror was there to train the scientists in how to examine DNA evidence in a way he described as “as least biased as possible.”

He said it’s common practice at police departments around the world for forensic scientists to know a lot about a case before examining the evidence. They may know who the detective thinks is the perpetrator, what witnesses said or whether somebody confessed. Dror says they shouldn’t know any of that before examining evidence and that they should work in isolation.

“Why does a fingerprint examiner care what a detective thinks?” he said. “They’re there to look at the fingerprint.”

Dror will be making policy recommendations for the crime lab, and Suhr said he’ll adopt any that are practical.

Faded flower stand: We told you recently about Erica Sandberg ,a Nob Hill writer and mom who’s determined to help the city deal with the seemingly unsolvable problem of homelessness.

She wants people to call the appropriate city official whenever they spot a homeless person passed out, behaving in a scary or erratic way, exposing themselves or harassing people for money — for the sake of the homeless people, residents and the city itself.

Sandberg was flooded with response after the column — 90 percent of it “ultrapositive,” she said, which for this very opinionated, argumentative city seems right up there in Madison Bumgarner territory.

Now she wants to make it easier for people to report what they see on the city’s sometimes-frightening streets. She’s created a Facebook page called Citizens for San Francisco and wants people to post photos of problems and tag the city

official responsible for solving it.

“Powers that be, make it happen!” she said. “This is what you’re paid for.”

One of her first posts is a photograph of a blighted, abandoned flower stand on Market Street outside the Westfield San Francisco Centre. It’s dotted with graffiti and is often used as a lean-to for drug users.

You could say the flowerless flower stand has become a huge thorn in Sandberg’s side. She forwarded an enormous chain of e-mails to supervisors, supervisors’ aides and Public Works dating back more than a year — yet the flower stand remains.

Rachel Gordon, spokeswoman for Public Works, pointed to Article 5 in the public works code, which is all about, you guessed it, flower stands. Approved by the Board of Supervisors back in 1976, it spells out in incredible detail the rules about flower stands. Corsages? Yes. Potted plants? Absolutely not!

Gordon said that any changes to the ordinance, including removing a stand, would need to come through new legislation passed by the board or a vote of the people, which Gordon told Sandberg last year.

“She just doesn’t like the answer,” Gordon said.

In a city where removing an empty wooden stand with graffiti on it takes that much effort,

no wonder City Hall can’t figure out homelessness.

1-2-3 against Lee: We told you last week about Stuart Schuffman, a.k.a. Broke-Ass Stuart, and his unlikely campaign to beat Mayor Ed Lee in the November election. Now he’s teamed up with two other underdogs to attempt to use the city’s controversial rankedchoice voting system to their advantage.

Schuffman, Amy Weiss and Francisco Herrera are banding together to encourage voters to list them as their top three choices in any order. And the memorable slogan? “Vote 1-2-3 to Replace Ed Lee.”

Under the rankedchoice system, voters rank three candidates in their order of preference. If nobody wins outright, the least popular candidate is eliminated and each vote for that person is shifted to their voters’ second choices. The process continues until one candidate has a majority.

Weiss is a 38-year-old who works as a consultant giving presentations on medical cannabis and vaping and lives in a co-op North of the Panhandle. She makes $15,000 a year, which makes Schuffman look not-so-Broke-Ass after all.

“I choose to struggle in order to live in San Francisco and live my values,” she said.

Herrera is a 53-yearold labor organizer, teacher and musician who lives in the Excelsior. He said he, Weiss and Schuffman care deeply about San Francisco and ensuring it doesn’t lose its progressive soul.

“What we have in common is a real love for the city,” he said.

He’ll be at City Hall at noon Wednesday to announce an October rally against Donald Trump, who Herrera said has “made it open season on Mexicans.” He’ll be calling on community leaders and regular folks to join the rally to “denounce the hate language” of Trump.

The mayor’s race may divide San Francisco, but here’s betting many of its residents can get behind that.