Fajitagate

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Fajitagate was a series of legal and political incidents in San Francisco which began with a street fight on November 20, 2002. The fight involved three off-duty San Francisco Police officers, Alex Fagan Jr., David Lee, and Matt Tonsing, and two San Francisco residents, Adam Snyder and Jade Santoro.

1 Incident
2 Scandal
3 Trials
4 Civil trial
5 References

[edit] Incident

As reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle,^[1] Snyder and Santoro reported that they were walking to Snyder's SUV when they were approached by three men who demanded the bag of food (the eponymous fajitas) which Santoro was taking home. Snyder and Santoro refused, words were exchanged, a fight broke out, a beer bottle was thrown, and minor injuries were suffered by Snyder and Santoro. They called 911 on Snyder's cellphone and reported the incident to responding officers, and then identified three men in a white pickup truck that drove past the scene as the attackers. The pickup was stopped, and the three off-duty officers identified and questioned. No arrests were made that night.

[edit] Scandal

The scandal subsequently expanded and would take until 2005 to reach a final criminal resolution. Accused police officer Alex Fagan, Jr. was the son of then San Francisco Police Department assistant Chief (later Chief) Alex Fagan. It was subsequently alleged by San Francisco District Attorney Terrence Hallinan that the elder Fagan, then-SFPD Chief Earl Sanders, and nine other officers were involved in a coverup of the initial November 20, 2002 criminal acts of the three off-duty officers. Sanders and nine other senior officers were indicted by Hallinan and arrested on February 28, 2003, for the crime of Obstruction of Justice. Sanders took a leave of absence due to the charges, and Alex Fagan, Sr., the next most senior officer automatically became the acting chief.

[edit] Trials

The court cases against senior police staff continued through 2003. DA Hallinan dropped charges against Chief Sanders on March 11, unable to prove a conspiracy had existed. Charges were dropped against almost all the other defendants on April 4, 2003. A key ruling in the case at the time was a legal technicality - that under California law, Obstruction of Justice required that there be an active conspiracy of persons who agreed to subvert justice, and not an individual or set of individuals acting on their own. Hallinan originally claimed such a conspiracy, but phone and office logs established that there could not have been any significant collusion. Hallinan publicly called for the law to be amended to allow individuals to be charged for independent actions.

Later in 2003 and through 2004, most of the senior officers including then ex-Chief Sanders pursued legal appeals to clear their name of the underlying factual claims regarding the obstruction. Sanders and several others were eventually cleared by courts. Sanders took early retirement due to stress from the investigation.

Acting Chief Alex Fagan Sr. resigned in early 2004, and was replaced by Heather Fong on Jan 22, 2004.

Criminal court cases in the original beating against Officers Fagan and Lee were resolved in 2004-5. Officer Lee was found not guilty on November 21, 2004, and Fagan was found not guilty on March 28, 2005.

A federal court dismissed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of San Francisco.

[edit] Civil trial

On June 12, 2006, a civil jury found former officers Fagan and Tonsing liable for damages suffered in the beating, awarding plaintiffs Snyder and Santoro $41,000 in direct compensation. Determination of possible punitive damages is still pending. ^[2]