Damage (33 page)

 

The tendency of the San Francisco Police Department to overreact, harass, and brutalize the citizens of our town has been well-documented over the years in this column. Mayor Leland Crawford’s appointment of Vi Lapeer, an African American woman, as chief of police raised hopes that these practices would not be tolerated any longer under his administration. These hopes were for the most part dashed over the past couple of weeks, most notably in the police treatment of Ro Curtlee, the son of this newspaper’s publishers.

As readers of this column already know, Mr. Curtlee was recently released from prison by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Then, here in the city, Judge Sam Baretto ordered Mr. Curtlee freed on bail while awaiting his retrial, a decision that did not sit well either with District Attorney Wes Farrell, or with the head of homicide, Lieutenant Abe Glitsky. Within days of Mr. Curtlee’s release, Glitsky presented a new set of spurious charges against him and, in a widely publicized incident, arrested him after first beating him seriously enough that he required hospitalization.

And again, a superior court judge—Erin Donahoe—ruled that Mr. Curtlee posed no danger to the community. She again released him on bail.

But in our town, it doesn’t seem as though the regular workings and procedures of the criminal justice system apply once prosecutors and police, even contrary to judges’ rulings, have preconceived notions about a person’s guilt. And this is why, yesterday morning, Mr. Curtlee again found himself facing yet another bit of gratuitous harassment from the police, an interrogation—fortunately this one did not turn violent—for the murder last Friday of a woman named Janice Durbin. This interrogation, in which Mr. Curtlee voluntarily and cooperatively participated, unearthed a solid alibi for Mr. Curtlee for the time of the murder. Beyond that, the inspector who conducted the interview, Darrel Bracco, told this reporter that there was
no evidence
implicating Mr. Curtlee in the crime. Hearing this, one might be tempted to ask, as this reporter was: “Well, then, if there is no evidence, upon what criteria did you decide to interrogate Mr. Curtlee? How could this be viewed as anything but harassment?”

In reply, Inspector Bracco had no comment.

However, police have determined that Mrs. Durbin was in fact a murder victim. Since someone did kill her, and Mr. Curtlee has demonstrated that it could not have been him, why are the police still fixated on his possible involvement? Might not the solution to this mystery, as it most always does, lie closer to home, among Mrs. Durbin’s intimates? A cursory investigation by this reporter has already determined that Mrs. Durbin’s husband, Michael Durbin, for example, cannot account for his whereabouts at the time of his wife’s death. Moreover, sources at his place of business told this reporter that Mr. Durbin may be romantically involved with another of his employees.

This is specifically not to accuse Mr. Durbin of any wrongdoing, but merely to indicate possibilities in the murder investigation that, to date, the police seem to be willfully ignoring as Glitsky and Farrell continue their personal and extralegal vendetta against Ro Curtlee.