Another Ethically Challenged SF Public Defender
Public defender Hashemi censors surveillance video to disparage SFPD officer
On the afternoon of January 14, 2025, SFPD undercover Officer Declan Maher was in a concealed position, conducting a spotting operation (surveillance) of narcotics dealing. Korey Thomas, an Oakland resident, set up his business in the heart of the Tenderloin, O’Farrell and Hyde Streets.
In his March 17, 2025 court testimony (court #: 25 000979), Maher said he saw a woman in a wheelchair approach Thomas on January 14th. Maher said he saw the woman hand Thomas currency and Thomas handed her back a white substance from his plastic baggie. Thomas just has no respect for norms, rules, or laws.
Maher testified that he called in officers to arrest Thomas. Sergeant Montero placed Thomas under arrest. Thomas still had 10.9 grams of rocks of suspected rock cocaine in his hands, along with $334 in various denominations of currency, apparently his day’s profits.
The case was continued to the following day, March 18th, where Judge Josh Fredericks had to lecture Thomas for arriving 31 minutes late for his felony preliminary hearing. Thomas just has no respect for norms, rules, or laws.
After the Assistant DA Rickey Herrera finished presenting the probable cause against Thomas, SF public defender Sarah Hashemi cross examined Maher. Hashemi could be described as a believer, having worked as an Alameda public defender, San Francisco public defender, then Orange County as a public defender, and then back to San Francisco. Nothing like cementing one’s confirmation biases by not expanding one’s experiences.
Hashemi raised the issue that the Public Defender’s Office had obtained street surveillance video footage of “25 minutes of surveillance footage prior to the (Thomas’) arrest” and there was no interaction between Thomas and the woman in the wheelchair. A couple seconds later, Hashemi increased the length of her duplicated video to 30 minutes.
Not only was Hashemi presenting her client as innocent of any transaction, but by default, she was accusing Officer Maher of lying.
.SFPD officers quickly questioned why Hashemi specifically pinpointed an oddball start time of 12:58 pm—(23.5 minutes of footage)—from when she started duplicating the street video camera footage. Why 12:57pm? Why not 1:00pm, or 12:45pm, or even 12:30pm?
ADA Hererra sent a DA investigator to obtain surveillance video from a nearby hotel, which confirmed that at approximately 12:57pm, one minute before the Public Defender’s Office started duplicating their video evidence, Thomas had made the transaction with the woman in the wheelchair. What are the odds Hashemi rewound the surveillance video, and just happened to stop at 12:58pm?
Why would a public defender, like Sarah Hashemi, act with such a deficit in ethical values to keep a drug dealer on the streets and to slander an SFPD officer? It’s just sleazy! Is she that weak of an attorney?
In the preliminary hearing, Judge Fredericks determined that there was probable cause that Thomas was in possession of rock cocaine, of a quantity sufficient to be in the business. Fredericks also issued a 150-yard stay-away-order to Thomas from the area of the 700 block of where he was arrested.
The Public Defender’s Office is taking Thomas’ case to trial. This is the SF public defenders’ new M.O.—tie up the District Attorney’s Office with trials, knowing their case is weak, yet confident the judges won’t increase the arrestee’s sentence. Nothing to lose, just clog up the system.
I spoke to DA Herrera, but he did not want to comment on this case.
Epilogue: same old revolving door epilogue:
Three weeks after the hearing, Maher was driving at Larkin and O’Farrell where he saw Thomas posted-up for business, looking for clients. Maher arrested Thomas for violating the 150-yard stay away order. Thomas and Hashemi just have no respect for norms, rules or laws.
When you have a lawless nihilist for a governor and 40 yrs of DEI, CRT, ESG scams shoved down your throat….
Open borders, lawless one party state, homelessness to the moon, open drug use, anti-American Marxist billionaire pushing anarchy….this ain’t to bad.😕
A major problem with our nation is the judicial system. We have many educated anti-Americans who have law degrees and work within the judicial system, they are the ones who are setting criminals free, while they are persecuting white men, breaking up families with child protection services. I was framed in a case because of the way a DA framed the video footage to support her narrative, she happened to be of similar Ethnograph as Ms. Hashami, It is critical that we begin to look at both sides of the stories in the worlds we live in today, there is a war going on in America as covert terrorists have infected the operations of our government systems, yet these things can not be publicly expressed because it will cause mass hysteria, so it is important we look at cases objectively and see who has swore alligence to the flag of the United States, because I am sure if you look at the populations of who is being convicted and imprisoned the number of white men is going up, if you look realistically at the numbers of who is homeless in the streets of California the majority is white men, this is because people believe the white man is the problem based on the democrats of the south, yet people don’t realize there are the white men of the north who have been fighting to free and create equality amongst all men. We need to support American citizens from falling into the traps of mass incarceration as mass incarceration is just a new set of Jim Crow laws-