Bay Area Reporter Weblogs

By a 2-1 vote Thursday, November 5 the Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee selected former assistant district attorney James Hammer, an out gay man, for a vacancy on the city’s Police Commission. Hammer’s nomination for the post now goes before the full board for final approval.

The vote split the committee’s two progressive members who normally side with each other: Supervisor Chris Daly backed Hammer, whom he said would provide “gravitas” to the police oversight panel and would be a “game changer” from day one of his term, while openly gay Supervisor David Campos favored giving the seat to Robert Retana, an out gay Latino who works as an attorney for the state court system.

Campos stressed his vote was not meant as a knock against Hammer, rather he felt Retana’s connections to immigrant and LGBT communities were what was needed as the city has become embroiled over police policies relating to immigrant communities.

“I think this is the right choice for where we are right now with what San Francisco is dealing with,” said Campos, who illegally entered the country as a teenager. “I really believe he is the best choice.”

Providing Hammer with the deciding vote was moderate Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, who said she liked Hammer’s history of being “very vocal for women rights” and felt his background of having worked once as a police officer and later as an attorney would provide “unique perspective” on the Police Commission.

Speaking in support of his application were Steve Adams, president of the Castro merchants group, and one of the women who witnessed De Anza College baseball players rape a woman at an off campus party and denounced how law enforcement authorities handled the case.

He told the panel that should he be selected, “I can make a difference.”

Should Hammer be approved by the full board he would be the only openly LGBT person on the Police Commission. Campos resigned last December after winning his seat to the board, and this summer, the commission’s former transgender president, Theresa Sparks, stepped down to head the city’s Human Rights Commission.

Hammer would serve the remainder of Sparks’s term, which ends April 30, 2011. A likely candidate for district attorney, should that seat open up next year if Kamala Harris is elected as the state’s attorney general and resigns from the position, Hammer said should he enter the race and felt it conflicted with his role as a police commissioner he would resign from the panel.

He said he would have no qualms about standing up to the powerful Police Officer’s Association and does not support seeing the Police Commission’s oversight of officer complaints be watered down. He also pledged to oppose any move to have police officers act as immigration officials.

“If a whiff of it gets out there then witnesses would dry up and they would run away. Then we would all be unsafe,” said Hammer, a former Fox News cable channel legal analyst who has his own private practice in the city.