Fajitagate II: Is SFPD Chief Scott Covering Up a Police Commissioner’s Crimes?

Chief has a history of aligning with anti-law enforcement factions

Fajitagate I

On November 20, 2002, several SFPD officers were involved in an off-duty dispute with a civilian^[1] over a bag of fajitas—thus, the title of Fajitagate.  Sadly, as long the potential merger of alcohol, testosterone, and Union Streets exists, these things still will have a way of presenting themselves again.

But the issue with Fajitagate wasn’t the disagreement over food, it was the alleged coverup by SFPD’s administration protecting their own.  Heads rolled all the way to Chief Prentice Sanders.  Unfortunately, it seems Chief Will Scott is covering up another crime caused by one of “his own.”

Fajitagate II

In my previous article, I described a March 13, 2024 incident, whereby Tristan Farnon burned a woman’s face in retaliation for her sitting in a parked car blocking his driveway.   Farnon fled into the multiunit Capp Street building he resides in before SFPD arrived.  When officers attempted to enter the building, San Francisco public defender Ilona Solomon Yanez and her husband, Police Commissioner Jesus Yanez, obstructed and lied to SFPD officers as they criminally harbored the violent Farnon. 

In preparation for this article, I interviewed people who live on the same block as Farnon, and it was relayed to me that he has been seen:

·      Shooting paintballs at homeless persons,

·      Stealing homeless persons’ personal possessions, such as suitcases, and moving those pilfered items into the same garage he shares with the public defender and the police commissioner,

·      He gets his kicks by frequently opening his garage door to startle homeless persons if they lean against it, and

·      On May 23, 2023, a homeless woman’ skull was injured, and she had to be taken away by ambulance. The neighborhood believe Farnon was the attacker.

The burning of a woman’s face is consistent with Farnon’s apparent pattern of acute vigilantism.  Farnon is also the person that public defender Yanez elected to defend and harbor from SFPD, before she knew any of the facts about the victim’s burnt face.

Public defender Yanez has a reputation for inundating complaints filed with the California Bar against SF assistant district attorneys.  Similarly, she files complaints to the Department of Police Accountability against SFPD officers on behalf of her defendants.  Those complaints against SFPD officers are then decided by the Police Commission where her husband sits as one of seven commissioners.    

After harboring him for several hours on the night of his attack, public defender Yanez delivered the surrendering Farnon to SFPD.  But his weapon had disappeared.

The SFPD Coverup

SFPD denied public records request for bodycam footage

Numerous sources within SFPD have corroborated that Mission Station officers’ bodycam footage of public defender Yanez’s tirades against SFPD are priceless and document her criminal actions.   The footage also confirms Commissioner Yanez acted as a conspirator and supported his wife’s criminal acts.

On March 27, 2024, I made a public records request to SFPD to obtain the officers’ bodycam footage for the Yanezes’ involvement.  My request was denied on April 10, 2024.

There are two problems with SFPD’s withholding of this public information because there is an “open investigation.”

1)        The attacker, Tristan Farnon, was arrested, but none of his crimes were captured on SFPD’s bodycams.  He just appeared when public defender Yanez escorted him to self-surrender.  The only crime that would appear on officers’ bodycam footage would be the Yanezes’ criminal obstruction and harboring of Farnon.  However, SFPD has not arrested the Yanezes.  So, Chief Scott, over the past month, what crime is still being investigated, or are you just protecting the Yanezes because of the commissioner’s privileged status?

2)        If an SFPD officer is involved in a shooting, Chief Scott will immediately release bodycam footage despite the concurrent existence of an “ongoing investigation.”   So Chief Scott, how is this investigation different from an officer-involved-shooting investigation other than Commissioner Yanez being a public figure?

Commissioner Yanez’s name did not appear in the incident report, so how did Chief Scott know he was involved?  Backchannels?

Two other significant facts create the appearance of a coverup by Chief Scott:

1)        The SFPD Report Writing Manual states that for all incident reports, officers must “identify all involved persons and describe their actions before and after the incident.”   The manual later reiterates “all the names shall be listed on the victim/witness page.”   In the March 13, 2024 incident report (#240.163.624), Commissioner Yanez’s name was not disclosed.  Chief, did officers violate the Report Writing Manual or were they instructed not to disclose Commissioner Yanez’s name?

2)        It may be unclear why officers withheld Commissioner Yanez’s name from the incident report, but it is even a greater mystery on how the command staff knew to include Commissioner Yanez’s name in the morning’s Command Staff Notification (below) if it wasn’t revealed in the incident report.  Chief Scott, the optics make it appear that information was flowing through backchannels to your command staff to hide the Yanezes’ criminal acts.

Unlike SFPD, the SF Police Commission provided Commissioner Yanez’s texts

The clandestine flow of Commissioner Yanez’s name to Chief Scott’s administration is further complicated by Yanez’s direct texts during the incident to the SF Police Commission requesting special privileges.  Commissioner Yanez’s texts were obtained via a public records request to the SF Police Commission, NOT SFPD.

9-1-1 was not good enough for the privileged Commissioner Yanez?

Then:

The above text makes it appear that Commissioner Yanez was communicating through channels to MP Station (Mission Station).  Yet somehow his name was withheld from the report?

SFPD denied public records request for text messages between Commissioner Yanez and Chief Scott

I issued still another public records request to SFPD for texts between Yanez, Chief Scott, and Mission Station Captain Thomas Harvey. 

SFPD responded (above) that there were no (unencrypted) texts made unless I can provide the department-issued and taxpayer-funded phone numbers for Chief Scott, Harvey, and Yanez.  

1)        SFPD’s response is tantamount to claiming, “Thanks for reporting that Officer Joe Smith shot a person at 11:14am on April 20, 2024 on the southwest corner of 16^th and Mission.  However, unless you provide us with Officer Smith’s star number, we don’t care.”  

2)        It appears SFPD created this new stonewalling policy to protect Yanez.  As you will see below, I was previously able to obtain Chief Scott’s texts to DA Chesa Boudin without providing the chief’s cell number.

What could be in those texts that Chief Scott needs to coverup?

Has Chief Scott been hiding his relationship with public defender all along?

In September 2023, an inherently reliable source claimed Chief Scott was meeting with public defender Yanez to discuss issues on SFPD’s policies.  This was peculiar for two reasons:

1)        Public defenders and police department have a naturally adversarial relationship.  Why would someone like public defender Yanez, who files third-party complaints against SFPD officers on behalf of her defendants, be allowed to weigh in on SFPD’s policies?

2)        One cannot just walk into the SFPD Public Safety Building and meet with the Chief because the building is extremely secured.  Thus, the meeting must have been orchestrated. 

To gain clarity on this, I issued a public records request to SFPD to confirm whether public defender Yanez was ever on the Chief’s calendar over the previous three months.  Despite the reliable source’s claim, SFPD responded that public defender Yanez did not meet with the Chief (below). 

However, viewing now how SFPD is being nontransparent on the Chief’s relationship with the public defender (ie., first provide us with the Chief’s phone number) perhaps my public records request was denied because I did not specify the exact square footage where the public defender and Chief met.

No SFPD investigation means Farnon skates

Realistically, Chief Scott is ensuring the Yanezes, as one “of his own,” are not going to be investigated or arrested, and by extension Farnon’s case was diluted.  Documented on SFPD officers’ bodycams would be witnesses’ statements describing Farnon’s history of vigilantism against the homeless population that should have been factored into the prosecution’s case.  Yet, I spoke to people that live on the same block of Capp Street that said SFPD inspectors did not contact all the witnesses.  The result was that Farnon’s sick hostilities towards the homeless population were not a background factor in his court case.

It is impossible to differentiate the allegations of the 2002 Fajitagate coverup and Chief Scott’s 2024 stonewalling and coverup on the evidence of the Yanezes’ crimes and Farnon’s resume documented on SFPD officers’ bodycam footage—a public document.  Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident of Chief Scott aligning himself with the defund-the-police faction—he has history.

A chronology of Chief Scott’s failure to support his own officers versus the defund-the-police crowd

March 31, 2020

On Twitter, Tenderloin officers published that DA Chesa Boudin had immediately released a dangerous shooter back into the public after he had just been arrested. Boudin’s texts (below) document he essentially ordered Chief Scott to censor his officers’ dissemination of facts in a public forum. Chief Scott, do you see how these texts made it appear to your officers that you were beholden to Boudin’s anti-law enforcement pedigree?

January 15, 2023

The Chronicle demonized SFPD regarding 17 cars that were broken into in a single neighborhood in a single night.  Two days later, Chief Scott attended a meeting hosted by Supervisor Catherine Stefani regarding the break-in spree.  That same morning, his officers were shot at trying to arrest a felon stealing catalytic converters off cars.  Yet Chief Scott, you never revealed to Stefani that your officers that same morning had risked their lives to address the problem she was so concerned about.  

June 6, 2023

Central Station Officer Chris Anderson, a young man with a family, did not wake up from his sleep.  Instead of acknowledging the sad loss of one of his members, on Twitter Chief Scott announced the addition of Evan Sernoffsky to SFPD’s media relations.  Chief Scott, thank you for reacting to my tweet pointing out your insensitivities, but this still raised the issue of your priorities and the apparent disconnect you have with the officers that serve under you.

September 2023

When an SFPD officer’s confidential disciplinary file was leaked—presumably by Police Commissioner Max Carter Oberstone—Chief Scott has never said a word about this criminal violation of the Brown Act.  Contrast that to February 2019, when information about Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s sudden death from “cocaine-and-alcohol induced heart failure” was leaked.  To investigate whether it was SFPD officers that had leaked the information, Chief Scott’s administration was willing to break California Laws by serving a search warrant on Bryan Carmody—a journalist.   Chief Scott, this inconsistent application of your principles on Commissioner Carter-Oberstone’s suspected leak versus the Adachi leak establishes your prioritization of the anti-law enforcement crowd over the officers that serve you.

January 2024

On January 16, 2024, Chief Scott conducted an interview with Michael Barba of the SF Standard on how difficult his departure would be on Mayor Breed.  Barba opined, it “would put Breed and her political adversaries on the Police Commission in the awkward position of having to work together to choose (Scott’s) successor at a time when the mayor has waged war against the oversight body.”   Chief Scott, were you worried about some pending negative news, and perhaps you wanted to let the mayor know how harmful your firing would be to her?

Amazingly, within just 48 hours Barba was able to compress another and intimate article detailing the complex and extensive fraud that occurred, under Chief Scott’s administration, at  SF SAFE, a nonprofit related to and funded by SFPD.

Chief Scott, this second article raises several issues about your relationship with Barba:^[2]

1)        Are we to believe Barba assembled all the financial complexities of the SF SAFE fraud in the tight 48-hour window after your interview, and you provided zero guidance or input? 

2)        Are we believe you and Barba never discussed SF SAFE?   Wasn’t the real purpose of your conversation with Barba to ingratiate yourself before the SF SAFE story broke so he wouldn’t blame you, his source, and would instead fault others in your department?

3)        Why were you interviewing with the writer that Commissioner Carter-Oberstone apparently criminally leaked the confidential investigation to on your officer?  The same writer who never explained how he obtained the confidential information.

Chief Scott, you’ve lost the Department

Chief Scott, this was painful to write.  However, you have lost your officers’ respect, causing morale to plummet and personnel to shrink.  It’s time to prove that at your core, you are still a cop and not a politician.  Stop protecting the Yanezes.  Be transparent and release the bodycam of the Yanezes so that the public can understand how unqualified the commissioner is to remain on the Police Commission.  Either that, or it’s time to stop renting in San Francisco, and time to rejoin your family at your Southern California home.

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^[1]  A medicinal farmer.

^[2] Barba is such a propagandist he should write for the Chronicle.  OMG, the Chronicle hired him.