The 500th Jock Talk
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ARTS
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Gertrude & Alice forever
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Holiday Events
The
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 46 • No. 51 • December 22-28, 2016
Lee names LA cop as new SF police chief by Seth Hemmelgarn
Joseph leaves entertainment commission by Seth Hemmelgarn
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ongtime nightlife figure Audrey Joseph has stepped down from the San Francisco Entertainment Commission, the oversight body for the permitting of bars and nightclubs and other issues. “I’ve been on the entertainment commission since its inception in July 2003, and it’s just time to relinquish my seat to somebody else,” said Joseph, a lesbian who currently serves as the panel’s vice president. Her term was set to expire in July 2019. “Fresh blood is always good. It’s just time, and I want to spend most of my time concentrating on the venue that I am developing right now.” That current project is the drill court at the Armory, the historic, castle-like building at 1800 Mission Street that’s owned by the Kink.com porn company. Joseph, who works as the Armory’s events director, said she’s transforming the drill court into “what I hope will be the premiere entertainment venue in San Francisco.” Her last day on the commission was Tuesday, December 20. The panel marked the occasion with a holiday get-together that doubled as Joseph’s retirement party. Joseph said she was “grateful” to serve on the panel and to have had the support of Mayor Ed Lee, as well as former Mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom. “We did some amazing things,” she said of her work with fellow commissioners. “We passed legislation to help protect entertainment and create legitimate entertainment spaces, and we solidified regulations. Entertainment is markedly more safe and more fun these days than it was back when we started. We helped entertainment through the recession of 2008. I’m very proud of all the work I did, and extremely proud of Jocelyn Kane,” the commission’s executive director. In an email to the Bay Area Reporter, Kane said, “For the last 13 years as a member of the See page 15 >>
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Mayor Ed Lee enters a news conference Tuesday, December 20 to announce the appointment of William “Bill” Scott, right, as San Francisco’s new police chief.
Rick Gerharter
Rick Gerharter
Audrey Joseph, left, gets an embrace from Jocelyn Kane, executive director of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission, at a party celebrating Joseph’s long tenure and retirement as an entertainment commissioner.
ayor Ed Lee has appointed Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief William “Bill” Scott to take over the San Francisco Police Department as it struggles with issues involving racism, homophobia, use of force, and other problems. Scott, 52, who’s African-American, replaces Interim Chief Toney Chaplin, who took over the department in May after ex-Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned. Many had called for Lee to fire Suhr after several controversial incidents, including fatal police shootings of people of color and a scandal in which numerous officers were accused of exchanging racist and homophobic text messages. Recent reports by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services branch and the Blue Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability and Fairness in Law Enforcement, launched by District Attorney George Gascón, pointed to problems with the SFPD’s use of force policies, among other issues.
Ghost Ship attorneys deflect blame by Seth Hemmelgarn
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he attorneys for the master tenant of Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse are seeking to deflect blame for the fire there that killed 36 people by lashing out at local officials. In a statement released Monday, December 19, Jeffrey Krasnoff, Kyndra Miller, and Tony Serra said, “Our investigation shows that Derick Almena committed no conduct amounting to criminal negligence. He should not be made a scapegoat.” No charges have been filed related to the fire, which killed at least three transgender people. The attorneys stated that Alameda County law enforcement officials, including the district attorney’s office “have a conflict in interest” in investigating the fire. “Undoubtedly, there will be a civil case by decedents’ representatives who will sue for millions upon millions of dollars,” the legal trio said, and the sheriff ’s office, fire department, building inspectors, and others could potentially be defendants. “All of them have repeatedly visited the premises without doing anything. The local fire department has even had a musical event there themselves,” the statement says.“Civil lawyers look for ‘deep pocket’ defendants in such a case. Here, the only ‘deep pockets’ are those of Alameda County and the property owners.” Almena’s attorneys fear that the county could bring “improper charges” against him and others “in order to divert attention away from their own irresponsible agencies.”
Michael Nugent
Flowers and memorials sit outside the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, which was photographed two weeks after a fire killed 36 people.
They said that if they need to, they’ll defend Almena “vigorously by showing that the real culprits are the above agencies who didn’t do their jobs.” Officials didn’t seem worried by the attorneys’ statement about Almena, who said in a Facebook post just after the fire, “Everything I worked so hard for is gone,” without mentioning the lives lost. Sergeant J.D. Nelson, a sheriff’s department spokesman, said, “Other than recovering 36 bodies” from the warehouse at 1315 31st Avenue, the sole contact his agency had with the property “was the time we arrested Mr. Almena for being in a stolen trailer” at the front of the site. Nelson didn’t know when the arrest had been.
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In an email, DA’s spokeswoman Teresa Drenick said that her office “is in the midst of a thorough, professional, and careful investigation” related to the December 2 fire, “and it would not be proper for us to comment further at this point in time.” According to media reports, officials have determined arson wasn’t the cause of the threealarm fire and instead suspect that the blaze was the result of an overloaded electrical system. The Bay Area Reporter’s calls to the Oakland office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the Alameda County Fire Department weren’t returned Tuesday. Several people had been living in the Fruitvale district building, which wasn’t zoned for residential use, and an electronic music concert had just started there when the fire broke out. After the B.A.R. tried to contact interim Planning and Building Director Darin Ranelletti Tuesday, city spokeswoman Karen Boyd said in an email, “Investigations into the tragic fire on 31st Avenue are ongoing. It is premature to draw any conclusions about responsibility for this deadly tragedy until those investigations are completed.” Many have raised questions about the safety of the building, which was leased by Almena and reportedly was crammed with pianos, rugs, artwork, and other objects, and had no sprinklers, and limited exits. It doesn’t appear city agencies had done much to address the hazards. See page 15 >>