FAJITA JUSTICE.(San Francisco Police Department scandal)

Jeffrey Toobin discusses police corruption

The Bus Stop Saloon, in San Francisco, has pool tables, a pair of video-golf machines, more than half a dozen televisions, and free popcorn. It also has a prime corner location on Union Street, where its awning boasts of a "place where friendships are formed to last a lifetime." The Bus Stop hardly has the look of a city landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge or the City Lights Bookstore. Yet, over the past several months, the cheerful bar has become just that. It has entered local lore as the focal point of a peculiar law-enforcement scandal, one that has, in varying degrees, engulfed the city's mayor, Willie Brown, its police chief, and its district attorney. Even by the baroque standards of San Francisco, the scandal has from the start laid oddity upon oddity.

On the night of November 19, 2002, about a hundred police officers gathered at the House of Prime Rib, on the fringes of downtown, to celebrate the promotion of Alex Fagan, Sr., to assistant chief of the department. After the dinner, which ended around midnight, several officers decided to continue the festivities at the Bus Stop, which is about ten blocks away. Some of the cops apparently made the short trip in drag-race-style competitions with one another. Three young officers--Matthew Tonsing, David Lee, and Alex Fagan, Jr., the son of the assistant chief--travelled to the Bus Stop together. The trio remained there until closing time, 2 a.m., and then they lingered on the sidewalk out front.

Meanwhile, about a hundred yards away on Union Street, the Blue Light, a smaller bar once owned by the singer Boz Scaggs, was closing, too. A twenty-five-year-old man named Jade Santoro, who had earlier been drinking at the Bus Stop, had then gone to the Blue Light, where his friend Adam Snyder was the bartender. Unlike the Bus Stop, the Blue Light serves food, and Snyder had just presided over Taco Tuesday. As Snyder later testified before a grand jury, he ordered steak fajitas. The kitchen closed before the bar, so, when Snyder finally got around to leaving, his food had been waiting for some time. "The fajitas were cold, I take it?" Snyder was asked by the prosecutor.

"At that point, yes."

"But they were going home with you?"

"The life of a bartender," Snyder replied.