For a couple of years now, I’ve been hanging around “The Wall” — a local EZ Board message board dedicated to San Francisco Politics which is run by a gent who goes by the handle Able Dart. I’ve gotten grist for more than one Golden Gate item from hanging around that place, I’ll tell you.

Well, look out, because now The Wall has entered the blogosphere. I’d encourage anybody with even a passing interest in San Francisco politics and/or culture to go give it a look right now.

Able Dart’s most recent post on the new Wall blog concerns the puerile San Francisco Police Video Scandal that’s the obsession of the moment for our local media outlets. Local pols, journalists and “activists” are foaming at the mouth and spinning around in frantic little circles, while prognosticators are taking odds on which heads will roll and when. Here’s the lead from The Wall:

It seems that this city has to have a police scandal of some kind every few years, which is then used to try and pry some changes inside a hidebound department, but usually only ends up with the replacement of a politically hapless police chief.

The newest scandal, of course, is about a series of blue humor videos produced for a Christmas party at Bayview station. The videos feature a number of sociocultural stereotypes reinforced by the basic nature of police work. The police officer/videographer made the mistake of putting some of the more humorous clips on a website, and then the leaks to the press and Mayor’s Office came-a-flowing.

There is nothing new about this phenomenon, nor about political bluenoses making a scandal out of it. What is truly unfortunate about this particular case is the timing, which seems rather deliberate.

Many people who are not police officers will find some of the imagery in these videos offensive. The question comes however, whether it should even be judged by standards outside the environment of what police work has become…

So check out The Wall and read the rest of this excellent piece, which has a lot to say about “Community Policing” and what gets noticed by the media. You’ll probably want to make The Wall a regular stop. I can see myself linking to them on a fairly regular basis — if their first few days of operation are any indication, The Wall will soon be essential reading for any SF observer.

Plus, you gotta love a guy who uses the term “hidebound” in the very first sentence one of his inaugural posts.

December 9th, 2005 | Moonbattery, SF Politics & Culture, Technology

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