Skirting the issue

Better late than never? Is Bites the only one who thinks it’s odd that the scathing report from the Sacramento County district attorney about the use of “flash-bang” grenades against inmates at the main jail came out two days after the sheriff’s election.

Bites put the question to Bret Daniels, who put together a last-minute, shoestring campaign against Undersheriff, now Oversheriff, John McGinness. Daniels replied, in so many words, “Well, duh!”

“Let’s see … a DA’s report that states, ‘This case raises significant questions regarding jail operations and the treatment of inmates’ takes almost 200 days to come out after the incident in a paltry 26-page report two days after the election,” Daniels noted wryly. “Hmm. … I would say yes. It’s obvious DA Jan Scully deliberately delayed this report.”

Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Albert Locher said politics never entered into the timing of the report, that the district attorney’s office was still gathering and reviewing hundreds of documents in late April. “It gets done when it gets done,” Locher said.

Daniels figures it’s also no coincidence that the full audit of the sheriff’s department is due out any day now. Check out the district attorney’s report for yourself at www.da.saccounty.net/pr/index.htm.

On the spot: Sacramento vice-mayor Rob Fong was none too happy with Bites last week. Fong took offense with the item about the Area Congregations Together (ACT) meeting on youth violence and the spontaneous back-and-forth between the congregants and the vice mayor about a new Kings arena—and what might be in it for at-risk youth. (See “It’s all wrong Rob Fong,” SN&R Bites, June 8.)

“I was asked the question, and I answered it,” Fong said.

Bites feels like the column made it pretty clear that the meeting was about stopping youth violence, while also pointing out that the arena question has a funny way of popping up in unexpected places. Likewise, readers got an accurate description of who did the cornering and who got cornered (that would be ACT and Fong, respectively). But, for the record, Fong did not bring up the arena first. In fact, he said he felt a little blindsided by the question. Once asked, he just did what any vice mayor would do. He rolled with it.

The children’s crusade: What is it with the Slavic church groups around here using their kids to do their gay bashing? Twice in the past week, such groups trundled out their kids to harass gays and lesbians: once on Saturday at the Sacramento Pride celebration at Southside Park and then again at the state Capitol on Monday to protest legislation that would establish anti-harassment policies in public schools.

This is the same crew that bum-rushed the Sacramento City Unified School District Board members when they passed a “Day of Silence” resolution to combat discrimination against gay students (see “Tools of the man,” SN&R Bites, April 27).

“They had such little kids, with such big signs,” lamented Tina Reynolds, who found herself alone in a sea of haters at the Capitol on Monday. Signs like “Homosexuals, burn in hell,” which Reynolds said she saw in the hands of a girl about 4 years old.

Reynolds said she tried to engage a few of the Christians, asking, “Why are you teaching your children to hate the community?” Rather than dialogue, she said, she got responses like that of a young man who screamed, “You are teaching my sons to wear skirts!”

Ridiculous, explained Reynolds, whose taste in clothes runs a bit more butch. “If you saw me, you would know right away that I do not own a skirt.”