Cothran

But that's when things got really weird. I was told, this time by SFPD spokesperson Dewayne Tully, that he had talked to Lt. Joel Harms, the head of the general works division, the investigative unit to which the police report was sent. Tully said Harms said that the case had not been investigated in the two weeks since the report was filed because it was the responsibility of the victim and the eyewitnesses to come down to general works to spur the investigation forward, and they had not done that.

Lt. Harms told Tully, and Tully told me, that each witness and the victim were given forms telling them it was their responsibility to come down to the general works division; otherwise nothing would happen with their case. "They do this because they are just so busy," Tully told me.

Now, I have heard some pretty flagrant lies in my day. But this one takes the cake. No such form exists. No such police procedural rule exists. It defies reality and common sense in a comprehensive way. Victims are not required to spur investigations; victims are not required to do the job of the police.

But, as I've said repeatedly, these are not normal times in San Francisco.

These are Willie Brown times. And, apparently, that means that if you disagree with the mayor's policies you can have your ass kicked by his supporters in City Hall, under the dome, at the very seat of democracy here in San Francisco, and the law will not protect you. No one will protect you.

For as long as I've been around, Joe O'Donoghue has been a posturing bully. But since the election of Willie Brown, he and the RBA have increased the intensity of their tactics; now, some say, they have become outright thugs.

Calvin Welch tells a compelling story about a phone conversation a year or two ago with O'Donoghue to make this point. Welch wanted to sit down and talk to O'Donoghue about the negative side effects of the live-work boom. "And that request for a meeting unleashes this tirade," Welch said in an interview. "He said: 'Blood will flow in the streets. Buildings will burn. Don't think we don't know where Sue Hestor vacations in Europe. Don't think we don't know where all of you live.' I said, 'Is that a threat, Joe?' And he said 'Take it any way you like.'"

I tend to believe this point of view. I've personally been on the receiving end of threats of physical violence from O'Donoghue. I used to chalk them up as calculated rhetorical flourishes. But I don't know anymore.

Since the Aug. 9 attack on Ben Hanes, I have been concerned about where O'Donoghue is taking things. He and his supporters are getting scarier, and no one in power seems to want to address that sad situation.

The basic components of O'Donoghue's act are well known around City Hall, in the political world, and in general.

He packs a room full of beefy construction workers who shout and bully opponents. If he does this well enough, fewer who oppose him show up the next time. Lately, the RBA's tactics have exceeded the usual form of dog-and-pony activism we love so here in Left Coast city. They have become more threatening and intimidating.

On Aug. 9, Hestor says, "They were screaming for blood. It was a near riot. Mack Burton and Joe O'Donoghue were behaving like thugs. Some of my people were so scared ... a lot of women were there. Women and babies.

"This is what happens every fucking time now [when a government body holds a hearing concerning RBA interests]," she says.

If it's a public meeting and you get up to speak, you can be almost guaranteed of finding an RBA member in your seat when you get back, grinning menacingly at you, Hestor says. At a recent City Hall hearing, artist Debra Walker, one of the most outspoken critics of the live-work boom, says she found a homemade knife in her briefcase after she returned to her seat and found Joe O'Donoghue sitting there. O'Donoghue termed this allegation "total bullshit."

The RBA's act was just under the line of tolerable until Mayor Brown was elected; then it went into overdrive.

And Brown's appointees to the Planning Commission and the generally spineless supervisors -- most of them mayoral appointees too -- have done nothing to stop O'Donoghue. He and his followers have been allowed, by dint of the RBA connection to Willie Brown, to act like complete assholes at City Hall with impunity. And now, it appears, with legal immunity.

One example: At a June 22 meeting of the supervisors' Transportation and Land Use Committee, Mack Burton threatened Hestor during public testimony, promising to "show up at your door." The supes on the committee, Leslie Katz, Michael Yaki, and even Sue Bierman, didn't scold him, express dismay, or even make note of his comments, which were truly, frighteningly unhinged.

"What Joe's guys do, they come en masse, they harass you when you are sitting there," Hestor says. "They take your seats while you are talking. Joe has this one guy who gets in my face who says, 'Who is really paying you?' He has guys who say, 'Your building is going to be inspected.' They will swarm you."