An Appearance of Impropriety: How Boudin Bribed a DA Inspector to Arrest an SFPD Officer

Is The San Francisco Standard’s omission of material facts enabling public corruption

On March 9, 2023, Jonah Owen Lamb published an article criticizing District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ handling of an SFPD officer-involved-shooting.  Lamb’s article was based on two sources who were both former employees with the DA’s office.  The implication was that these employees represented an overall dissatisfaction with Jenkins’ management of the office.

Lamb neglected to mention that his two sources were career employees with the SF Public Defender’s Office, and that they had only briefly worked in the DA’s office with their former coworker, Chesa Boudin.  Lamb’s misdirect is tantamount to referring to Joe Montana as the Kansas City Chiefs’ Hall of Fame quarterback.    

Lamb also failed to disclose how each of his sources intimately changed the direction of existing investigations as an accommodation to Boudin.  The purpose of this article is not to rehash issues with SFPD’s use of force, but rather to describe the unethical violations, acts of corruption, and the appearance of improprieties in Boudin’s office by multiple members of the State Bar of California.

Officer Chris Samayoa’s Shooting

On December 1, 2017, Keita O’Neil, with accomplices, carjacked a lottery delivery van.  The van then led SFPD in a high speed pursuit.[1]  O’Neil became cornered on a dead-end street, bailed from the van, and ran towards the SFPD marked vehicle with its red lights flashing.  From the passenger seat, SFPD Officer Chris Samayoa, on only his fourth day on the job, shot and killed O’Neil.  Samayoa is no longer employed by SFPD.  Two factions are claiming different interpretations of the same video of Samayoa’s shooting.

Despite the fact that O’Neil would have been alive today had he not involved himself in the carjacking, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors raced to award his family $2.5 million.[2]  That is consistent with the supervisors awarding a $700,000 settlement to Dacari Spiers, and $3.25 million to Sean Moore’s family (story below) before Boudin’s criminal cases imploded.

DA Boudin’s influence on the Samayoa investigation

In December 2017, George Gascon was San Francisco’s District Attorney.  Don Lundberg became the lead investigator on the Samayoa shooting.  He worked under the managing ADA on the case, Ajean Cha.  She was a former federal attorney where she prosecuted law enforcement officers for violating citizens’ civil rights.  Both Cha and Lundberg reached the same conclusion that the case against Samayoa was not ‘fileable.”  It was just too difficult to substitute one’s Monday morning analysis for the fear that Samayoa experienced in the milliseconds of his encounter with a violent person. 

Lundberg and Cha also saw a problem in that Samayoa had just recently participated in a video simulation test at the SFPD Academy that was “eerily similar’ to what happened in the O’Neil carjacking case.  The video simulation ended violently for the officer, which indicates the freshness of that memory might have influenced Samayoa’s actions.[3]  Along with the inability to see O’Neil’s hands and waistband, where guns are usually stashed, the simulation would be exculpatory for Samayoa’s defense. 

Based on Lundberg and Cha’s investigation, Samayoa’s case sat dormant in Gascon’s office.  Cha eventually returned to the federal government. 

In January 2020, Boudin was sworn in as San Francisco’s district attorney.  Boudin brought along James Conger, a former public defender.  Conger is married to Anne Irwin, another former public defender, who with her father founded, Smart Justice California, which advocates for criminal justice reform. Irwin donated $21,000 to the anti-Boudin recall. However, Lamb’s article only refers to Conger as a DA “IIB[4] lawyer,” omitting Conger’s and his wife’s strong allegiance to Boudin.

Lundberg voiced his concerns to Conger that Samayoa’s shooting was not a prosecutable case. Conger responded, “Well I have been asked to find a path.”  Presumably Boudin’s message.

On February 8, 2023, new San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins prepared a letter to Attorney General Ron Bonta voicing her concerns about how Boudin and Conger handled the Samayoa investigation.  My article here is based on a timeline of Boudin’s prosecution of Samayoa as presented in Jenkins’ letter to Bonta.  Per Lamb’s article, he is in possession of the more-detailed actual transcripts, yet he failed to connect any of the following dots.  

In Jenkins’ letter to Bonta, both Lundberg and IIB Lieutenant Jeff Pailet were interviewed separately.  Both investigators confirmed that when Pailet asked what time (in jail) Conger was looking to put on Samayoa, he said he was looking “to change the way SFPD does things on policy or procedures.”  In other words, Conger viewed Samayoa as a sacrificial lamb to change SFPD’s policies.  Pailet responded, “That’s not our role here.  Our role is to create a case for prosecution and see it through, not change policy.” 

Lundberg specifically told Conger he would not write a warrant on Samayoa, even if it cost him his job.

Timeline on Boudin’s quid pro quo to incentivize a DA inspector to write an arrest warrant on Samayoa

·      November 6, 2020, Pailet was fired for not following Boudin’ commands.  He has filed a civil suit versus Boudin for wrongful termination.[5]  Pailet’s exit created a lieutenant’s positioning opening in IIB.

·      November 11, 2020, Lundberg went on a prescheduled vacation.  The issue here is whether Boudin monitored all his employees’ vacation time, or did Conger tip him off to Lundberg’s scheduled absence?

·      November 13, 2020, with the three-year statute of limitations expiring December 1^st on the Samayoa shooting, DA Boudin personally called IIB Inspector Jack Friedman.  A DA calling to influence an investigator on an officer-involved-shooting is unheard of and extremely prejudicial.  Law enforcement status is required to prepare an arrest warrant.  Thus, Conger, as just an attorney, could not write an arrest warrant on Samayoa despite his loyalty to Boudin.  Enter DA investigator Friedman, who is both an attorney and a former Berkeley police officer, and therefore was qualified to write the arrest warrant on Samayoa. 

·      November 20, 2020, just five business days after Boudin assigned the arrest warrant to him, Freidman had raced to complete his investigation and his arrest warrant on Samayoa.  One would have expected Friedman to have piggybacked off Lundberg’s three-year investigation into Samayoa’s shooting, instead of starting a completely new investigation.  However, Friedman claims he never checked in with Lundberg.

Per Friedman, Conger authored “major portions of the arrest warrant including selecting the still frames from Samayoa’s body worn camera and providing the legal analysis.” It would have been Conger that added the additional charge that Samayoa’s use of a firearm was a “personal use.” (California Penal Code section 12022.5a) That is despite the fact Samayoa used an SFPD-issued firearm while in his role as an SFPD officer who was dispatched by SFPD to a violent carjacking. Conger was obviously “piling on” charges against Samayoa to teach SFPD a lesson.

Only after the warrant was signed, did Friedman give the vacationing Lundberg a courtesy call to let him know that Boudin, Conger, and he had gone behind his back.  Obviously, to prevent Lundberg from weighing in against Boudin’s clandestine operation before it was completed.

·      December 12, 2020, only 3 weeks after he wrote the arrest warrant at Boudin’s behest, Friedman was promoted, skipping over the rank of senior investigator, to lieutenant, securing Pailet’s old position. 

·      December 1, 2022, Friedman emailed DA Jenkins and asked to speak to her.  He cried when he confessed to Jenkins about his role in the Samayoa arrest warrant.

Thus, Pailet fought for investigative objectivity, and it cost him his job, which transferred to Freidman because he was willing to compromise his principles at a price. By appeasing Boudin and feeding Samayoa to the progressive wolves, Friedman reaped a $22,274—17%— pay raise, going from $132,473 in 2020 to $154,747 in 2021.

Where I come from, this is called “quid pro quo.”  Boudin used city funds (embezzlement) and spiked Friedman’s pension to motivate Friedman to script the arrest warrant on Samayoa.  Besides evidence of corruption on Boudin’s part, I am pretty sure Friedman has a “Brady issue.”  He has written his last arrest warrant and won’t be allowed to testify in court again because of the perception his integrity can be purchased. 

Boudin’s dodged questions on his unethical actions in Samayoa case

When Boudin was questioned about his shenanigans by the Mission Local,  Eleni Balakrishnan wrote that Boudin “did not directly deny the allegations.”  When she asked whether he assigned a different investigator while the main investigator (Lundberg) was on vacation, “Boudin replied, ‘If I recall correctly the inspector (Friedman) who wrote the arrest warrant had worked in the office long before me.”’ Evasive, and misleading because Friedman had not worked on the Samayoa case.   Asked a third time as to whether Boudin took advantage of the lead investigator being on vacation, Boudin replied, “No idea who the original inspector was or what their opinion was.”  It is obvious Boudin was playing dumb.  

Andrew Koltuniak, Boudin’s definitely willy-nilly investigator was Lamb’s second source

Besides Conger, Lamb’s article also relies heavily on Andrew Koltuniak’s opinion:

“Koltuniak—the final investigator to handle the Samayoa case under Boudin who also worked for months under Jenkins—'said it’s a cheap shot to question the integrity of the unit in charge of questioning police.  To say it’s politically charged is really insulting because of the detail we looked at with these cases.  It wasn’t willy-nilly.  We always expected accusations of politics.’”

Cheap shot?  Really? Boudin’s quid pro quo promotion of Freidman to lieutenant was corrupt and definitely political.    

Lamb completely omitted how Boudin hired Koltuniak as a confederate puppet from the SF Public Defender’s Office where he had spent the past 16 years.  Kultuniak only spent a couple months working for DA Jenkins after the Boudin recall.

Just a few weeks ago, DA Jenkins requested Sean Moore’s 2020 death records because of her concerns that Koltuniak’s had cherrypicked the cause of Moore’s death to write an arrest warrant on SFPD Officer Kenneth Cha.  Rebecca Young[6], a public defender turned Boudin prosecutor turned public defender again, appeared on behalf of Moore’s family.

Some material facts on Koltuniak’s background omitted from Lamb’s article:

·      When Boudin brought Koltuniak over from the Public Defender’s Office, he had no police experience and was not eligible to write arrest warrants on SFPD officers. 

·      Boudin raced Koltuniak through a police academy so that he would gain police status and so that he could act as Boudin’s dedicated arrest warrant writer against SFPD.

·      Despite DA investigators with officer-involved-shooting experience, Boudin assigned Koltuniak to investigate the complex SFPD Officer Kenneth Cha’s shooting of Sean Moore.  On November 2, 2021, Koltuniak wrote his first arrest warrant ever on Officer Cha, while he worked under an IIB supervisor, Lateef Gray.

·      Moore died over three years after he was shot by Officer Cha.  Per Penal Code section 194, if a person dies more than three years after an incident, the defendant has a rebuttable defense.  That exculpatory fact was missing from Koltuniak’s arrest warrant.

·      Koltuniak’s arrest warrant also did not include the exculpatory evidence that besides the 3+ year old wound, Moore death certificate states he died from “hypertensive cardiovascular disease; obesity; slight coronary atherosclerosis; diabetes mellitus; schizophrenia; and chronic substance abuse.”  

·      Moore punched Cha’s partner in the nose and broke it.  Moore kicked Cha.  Yet Koltuniak’s arrest warrant downplayed Moore’s violent contribution by vaguely describing Sean Moore as merely striking Cha.

Koltuniak/s arrest warrant claimed a single strike by Sean Moore caused all this.

Imbedded in Jenkins’ concerns about Koltuniak’s arrest warrant on Cha is the fact that Lateef Gray, as supervisor in the same IIB unit, had a gigantic financial stake and a conflict of interest in seeing the prosecution of Officer Cha.  Before working for Boudin, Gray worked in the John Burris law firm where he initiated a civil suit against SFPD for the shooting of Sean Moore.  Gray apparently still had an open financial interest in the Sean Moore lawsuit while he was supervising the same unit that Koltuniak worked in and from where he wrote his arrest warrant on Officer Cha.  Thus, Cha was a counterparty to Gray’s clients-Sean Moore’s family.  How can anyone not agree that Gray’s conflict creates an appearance of impropriety? 

While working for Boudin, Gray not only had access to confidential SFPD files on the Sean Moore investigation, but he also had constructive access to SFPD files through his wife’s position as president of the SF Police Commission.  Both Gray and his wife are former SF public defenders. 

As stated above, in June of 2021, while Gray was employed in Boudin’s office the SF Board of Supervisors awarded the Moore family $3.25 million.  John Burris’ firm would have received a cut of that award.  We would have to suspend our disbelief to accept that Gray had no loyalty to his former law firm nor didn’t receive any compensation for all of the initial work he performed on the civil suit versus SFPD.  Could Gray’s payday be resting in an escrow account or a jointly formed LLC?  Oh yeah, quite easily. 

Public corruption enabled by agenda journalists

The progressives wonder why the case against Samayoa is unraveling.  Maybe it’s because Friedman’s name was not even worth a mention in Lamb’s two articles, the Chronicle’s articles, or the one-sided Chronicle editorials that preserve the public’s unawareness on the corruption of Boudin and his band of public defenders.  I mean, how did Lamb miss the pay-to-arrest scheme?  

Boudin bribing of a weak-minded investigator and his importing of a rouge puppet and accelerating him through a law enforcement academy just to arrest SFPD officers creates an appearance of impropriety.  Both outlier investigators ignored the consensus findings of career, professional investigators and assistant district attorneys.  And both investigators were Lamb’s sources to criticize DA Jenkins’ management of the DA’s office.

Consider:

·      If Boudin didn’t bribe Friedman by a wink, a promise or the, implication of a pay raise with public funds, would Samayoa have been arrested?

·      If Conger didn’t Cyrano de Bergerac the arrest warrant on Samayoa, did Friedman have the legal base of knowledge to complete the warrant?

·      If Boudin didn’t puppetize Koltuniak, would anyone else in Boudin’s office have written an arrest warrant on Officer Cha?

And Conger, the biased former public defender who fought to arrest Samayoa just to prove a point to SFPD, he is now working at the Department of Public Accountability (DPA) overseeing SFPD’s behaviors.  Pity SFPD officers that have this extremely prejudicial oversight investigator denting their careers as sacrificial lambs just so he can send a message to SFPD.  You would think Director Paul Henderson would oppose skewed advocates like Conger working for him at DPA.

Really, is it SFPD that needs oversight or is it Club Public Defender that has demonstrated corrupt and unethical behaviors that demands accountability and oversight?

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[1] In general, SFPD cannot pursue fleeing vehicles.  However, there is an exception if the driver, O’Neil, had caused violence and would probably do so it again if he were not apprehended. 

[2] Awarded on December 7, 2021

[3] In my first phase of FTO, my Field Training Officer scolded me for keeping our car at a distance from a suspect fleeing with a gun.  I told my FTO, that I had just recently completed an Academy scenario where the suspect turned and fired at me.  Without much street time, it is common for rookies to base decisions on the streets from recent Academy simulations or video simulations.  At the same time, the Academy must make scenario’s the worst-case situations so that recruits expand their minds to all of the possible outcomes an incident can move towards.

[4] IIB is the DA’s Independent Investigation Bureau

[5] Magen Hayashi worked in the DA’s office and has similarly filed a lawsuit against Chesa Boudin and others for pressuring her to skew the investigation against SFPD Officer Kenneth Cha.

[6] Rebecca Young was/is married to Bill Harris the Weather Underground terrorist.  Bill was previously married to fellow Weather Underground terrorist Emily Harris who helped kidnap Patty Hearst.  On April 21,1975, during a robbery of Crocker National Bank, per Hearst’s biography, Emily was the person that murdered Myrna Opshal, a mother of four, who was depositing church funds.  On page 305 of Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage, he stated the “Harrises (Bill and Emily) squabbled over money, over their plans, over sex; when Emily denied him, Harris (Bill) simply mounted Patty (Hearst); who felt powerless to object.”  That is the man Rebecca is/was attracted to.  A bunch of winners came with Boudin to the DA’s office.   I just had to show the types of apples Boudin hangs out with.