Top Cop Beats Up Wife
Posted on August 17, 2012 Written By: iadminlaw
What does R & B artist Chris Brown have in common with the sheriff of San Francisco County? Apparently, they both like to beat up on women.
After 10 hours of emotional public testimony and difficult deliberation, the city Ethics Commission on Thursday found that Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi had engaged in official misconduct by inflicting “physical violence” on his wife during an argument and pleading guilty to falsely imprisoning her.
Dansk: Chris brown og mig (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But at the end of the day, his fate was no clearer.
The commission did not explicitly vote on whether Mirkarimi — who has been suspended by Mayor Ed Lee — should be permanently removed from his job. John St. Croix, executive director of the panel, said that action was unnecessary because the “City Charter says he’s automatically removed” if the charges against him are upheld.
The commission rejected many of the charges levied against the sheriff by Lee, including allegations that Mirkarimi had tried to keep witnesses from going to police and had threatened his wife — Venezuelan telenovela star Eliana Lopez — that he would use his “power” to gain custody of their 3-year-old son.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, weighing the commission’s findings, will have the final say on whether Mirkarimi should remain as sheriff. Nine of the 11 members must vote to remove Mirkarimi or he will stay in office. That decision probably will not be made until the middle of October.
The meeting began with attorneys on both sides addressing the panel and then fielding questions. It ended with more than two hours of public deliberation by the commissioners about what they should do.
In the middle was a three-hour stretch of passionate and, at some points, peculiar public comment that had no official role in the decision made by the commission, which was charged with considering facts and law.
This being San Francisco — an inclusive place with its own brand of democracy — everyone who wanted to be heard Thursday was. All 103 of them: Greens, Democrats, one Republican, youth group members, domestic violence advocates, Mirkarimi’s mother. Some of those who weighed in didn’t even live within the city’s borders.
Mirkarimi is more than a third of the way through 52 weeks of domestic violence training mandated by his plea agreement. The most persuasive evidence in the case, many commissioners said, was a video depicting a tearful Lopez displaying a bruise on her arm, the result of the New Year’s Eve argument with her husband.
Still, much of the commentary and questioning Thursday revolved around exactly what constitutes domestic violence.
Activists against domestic violence were outnumbered at the hearing, and many rued that the proceedings had minimized the issue. But they were clear about what Mirkarimi as sheriff would do to a city that has a long history of innovation in violence prevention — particularly in its jails.
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