Three Bat Thursday: East Bay political scheming not new to Bontas
Plus: Webster Safeway crime ridden for decades; Mayor Lurie’s fentanyl emergency word salad
I received a letter from East Bay attorney Jason Bezis regarding my July 4, 2024, exposé on Attorney General Rob Bonta and his wife, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, and their troubling ties to the Oakland FBI scandal. “The Bontas led an effort to appoint David Brown, a Contra Costa County domiciliary, to a vacant Alameda County supervisor’s seat in November 2021,” the letter read. “Attorney General Bonta had to recuse [himself] from handling my clients’ quo warranto application to remove Mr. Brown from public office. His chief deputy Venus Johnson handled the matter and Attorney General Bonta’s recusal, but she delayed taking action until the East Bay Times called out her delay in June 2022. Now Venus Johnson is applying to fill the vacancy in the office of Alameda County District Attorney.” In conclusion, Bezis said, “The Bontas have as much respect the rule of law as Donald Trump and his team do. They shamelessly warp legal standards and political norms in order to boost and protect their friends and allies and to shield them from accountability.” As you may recall, not only are the Bontas associated with the Duong family and Mario Juarez, but also with a failed fuel company run by Juarez and a karaoke bar that was busted for human trafficking and narcotics sales where Duong allegedly laundered campaign funds. The average contribution the Duong family and their companies made to curry political favor with politicians was just over $5,000, but the Bontas received more than 30 times that amount for a grand total of $172,316.45. …
Last month, Rev. Amos C. Brown, pastor of Third Baptist Church in the Fillmore District and president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, penned a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle opining that the Safeway on Webster Street, which plans to close after decades in the Western Addition neighborhood, is abandoning the Black community. “Safeway has steadfastly refused to work with the local community to address the issues it claims are ‘forcing’ it to close the store. It is the height of corporate greed and arrogance to make such a life-changing decision for an entire community yet never work with it on any solutions,” Brown wrote.
While his angry words sound righteous, they’re also untrue. One of my closest friends, Bill Knudson, managed that store for over a decade in the nineties and early 2000s. In those days, Bill told me, employees were experiencing the frightening trend of late-night “swarming,” where a large group of teens would rush into the store, shoving employees and customers to the floor to cause chaos as their cohorts grabbed as many bottles of beer as they could before leaving the store in disarray.
Bill and his crew would try to anticipate the attacks, running to the doors to lock them while calling the police. One time, he caught one of the thieves and they fell to the ground in a tussle. As a bottle of vodka spun from the teen’s coat, so did a gun. “We did a bunch of stupid stuff I wouldn’t do now,” Bill said.
Did they reach out to the community and its leaders? All the time, including the guardians of the young shoplifters, many of whom were regular customers. “If we caught a kid stealing, we locked them in the room and called their moms or their grandmas. They were way more scared of that than calling the cops.” It wasn’t uncommon, Bill told me, for him and his workers to drive over to the projects and wait for kids that escaped with stolen items. “When the kids got home, we’d get out of the car and say, ‘Let’s talk to your grandma,’ and we’d knock on the door.” …
Since his swearing in a week ago, Mayor Daniel Lurie has spent a lot of time appointing underlings and little time discussing plans for cleaning up San Francisco. On Jan. 14, Lurie took to X for one of his signature spiels (word salad, short on details). “Today we introduced a Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance to the Board of Supervisors to address the crisis on our streets,” he said as video of him talking to firefighters rolled. “Inaction is no longer an option, and bureaucracy can no longer be the excuse. This ordinance will allow us to surge resources, overcome bureaucratic obstacles, and save lives. I want to thank the supervisors who have co-sponsored the legislation, and I look forward to working with all of the supervisors for their quick approval.”
Lurie, like most officials, wants to equate homelessness with a lack of housing, but as I’ve been reporting for many years, homelessness is a result of permissive drug policies, from allowing public use to a revolving door for dealers at the Hall of Justice. Who sends them out those doors? Lenient judges. Most run unopposed every election, so they feel an almost godlike power as they allow dealers to go from the courtroom to the corner sometimes in a matter of hours.
Why don’t other cities in the Bay Area have hundreds of addicts swaying back and forth in the “fentanyl fold” like broken branches? Because police in those cities arrest users as well as dealers. Until San Francisco does the same, don’t expect to see change anytime soon. Meanwhile, the meter is running on his campaign promise to put 1,500 shelter beds all over the city, in every district, in his first six months in office. The deadline to complete that task is June 9, 2025. Tick tock, Mayor Lurie. …
Our #XoftheWeek comes from San Francisco Homeless Oversight Commissioner Sharky Laguna: “I spent 8 months working on a project to develop a better high-level understanding of homelessness in San Francisco,” Laguna posted about a report he wrote and the accompanying video and app he created. You can find the report here. The tool is interactive, so after watching the video you can play with the model, which simulates the impact of changing permanent supportive housing inventory supply, the number of people flowing into housing, and the average length of stay for people in that housing. …
We had a wonderful Safeway on Bayshore Boulevard in San Francisco in the 70s. It also closed for the same reasons -- flagrant theft that occurred before everyone's eyes. Not just alcohol and not just teenagers. There's a Grocery Outlet there now and the security is no nonsense. I haven't heard of any complaints or repercussions, although theft still occurs. Safeway puts up with so much it's a miracle they continue to serve San Francisco. The thefts are not a matter of need but are an example of one of the few talents coming out of the hood. I blame the elite, "educated," progressive white folks who live in places like Noe Valley who pretend to have a solution to racism. They know nothing about the Black community but always pander to them. Theft has to be prosecuted and people need to serve time for their offences. Otherwise, the behavior will continue forever.