By Doug Porter

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith’s office has, once again, taken actions guaranteed to make San Diego a national embarrassment.  A sexual assault victim suing the city because her assailant was a police officer is now being portrayed in court documents as having committed a criminal act.

According to an article in today’s UT-San Diego, our city’s chief legal advocate has chosen to adopt a strategy of blaming the victim as a defense in a civil suit filed in the wake of the 2011 conviction of former SDPD officer Anthony Arevalos on charges of sexual battery, bribery and related charges.

Our tax dollars paid for a legal document filed by Goldsmith’s office alleging that “Jane Doe” offered her underwear as a bribe to escape arrest on a drunk-driving charge on March 8, 2011.

UPDATE, 5PM WEDS: The City Attorney’s office has now decided this accusation wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

Jane Doe is the last of a dozen women who filed lawsuits or claims against the city alleging they were victims of sexual assault or harassment. Other claims have been settled, to the tune of more than $2.3 million.

A NBC7News timeline, including allegations by nine women against Arevalos wherein he asks for sexual favors in return for not being arrested, describes the Jane Doe incident:

• March 8, 2011: Arevalos is accused of taking a 32-year-old woman, known in court documents as “Jane Doe” into the bathroom of the 7/11 on J Street in March, where she took off her panties and was sexually assaulted. Felony charges stemming from this incident include sexual battery by restraint, asked for a bribe, assault and battery by an officer, false imprisonment by violence, menace, fraud or deceit.
• March 9, 2011: “Jane Doe” filed a report of the incident with the San Diego police department that led to Arevalos being charged with multiple counts of sexual assault under the color of authority. With a San Diego police detective, the alleged victim made two pretext phone calls in which Arevalos made several incriminating statements according to court documents.

Here are the details published in today’s UT article:

 The woman, identified only as “Jane Doe” in her civil-rights lawsuit against the city, was stopped by Arevalos in the Gaslamp for drunken driving. She testified at his trial that he asked her what she would be willing to do to make the DUI arrest go away, and he suggested she give him her panties.

 The two went to a bathroom inside a nearby 7-Eleven where she removed her underwear, she testified, and Arevalos touched her before allowing her to dress.

 Somehow this sequence of events, confirmed by the recorded phone calls, a security camera video and felony convictions has now morphed into:

“Plaintiff bribed Officer Arevalos with her panties to get out of the DUI. Both plaintiff and Arevalos agreed to consummate the bribe in a nearby 7-Eleven in the Gaslamp.”

 Here’s the statement from Goldsmith’s office defending their actions:

“Unlike the other cases, this one remaining case has evidence that the plaintiff actually negotiated over avoiding a DUI,” the statement said. “Regardless of outrage from plaintiff’s lawyer seeking a payday, if we have to try a case our trial lawyers present the jury with the truth.”

I make no excuses from the outrage that should be obvious in my commentary on this event. This is the kind of legal behavior that gives rise to the saying that sharks won’t bite lawyers of out professional courtesy. This is the reason why getting rid of Jan Goldsmith- the man who brought our city ridicule via the ‘chalkgate’ prosecution- in the next election should be everybody’s business. This is the kind of blindness to sexual assaults that has no place in this world.

Court Documents Reveal Relationship Between DEA and Sinaloa Cartel

Investigative reporting by Mexico’s El Universal newspaper is reverberating around the media world today, with stories appearing in Forbes, Vice, andBusiness Insider concerning allegations and court documents about a cooperative arrangement between the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Sinola drug cartel for over a dozen years, starting in 2000.

Here’s a 2012 New York Times description of the Sinaloa gang, which largely controlled drug trafficking in the San Diego border region,

 In the sober reckoning of the RAND Corporation, for instance, the gross revenue that all Mexican cartels derive from exporting drugs to theUnited States amounts to only $6.6 billion. By most estimates, though, Sinaloa has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook…

 …A close study of the Sinaloa cartel, based on thousands of pages of trial records and dozens of interviews with convicted drug traffickers and current and former officials in Mexico and the United States, reveals an operation that is global (it is active in more than a dozen countries) yet also very nimble and, above all, staggeringly complex. Sinaloa didn’t merely survive the recession — it has thrived in recent years. And after prevailing in some recent mass-casualty clashes, it now controls more territory along the border than ever.

Here’s the money quote from Business Insider:

“The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.,” reports El Universal, which also interviewed more than one hundred active and retired police officers as well as prisoners and experts.

 Zambada-Niebla’s lawyer claimed to the court that in the late 1990s, [Sinaloa lawyer Loya] Castro struck a deal with U.S. agents in which Sinaloa would provide information about rival drug trafficking organizations while the U.S. would dismiss its case against the Sinaloa lawyer and refrain from interfering with Sinaloa drug trafficking activities or actively prosecuting Sinaloa leadership.

“The agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors,” Zambada-Niebla lawyer wrote.

Over at Forbes, columnist Rick Ungar says there’s evidence these clandestine agreements overlapped with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau’s botched “Fast and Furious” operation, based on a court document central to the El Universal investigation and statements made by former cartel members.

FBI ‘Recruited’ Gays for SDSU’s Young Socialist Alliance

The release of a book about the clandestine group that broke in to FBI offices in Media Pennsylvania back in 1971 and subsequently released a cache of documents documenting the feds’ domestic intelligence operations has spurred new interest in the COINTELPRO program.

Over a the libertarian Reason’s Hit and Run blog, Jesse Walker, author of The United States of Paranoia, was prompted to recall “schemes that are alternately frightening, stupid, and simply bizarre” he discovered while perusing those documents, which are now available online.

Here’s a relatively mild example. In 1971, when the Young Socialist Alliance ended a policy barring gays from the group, the FBI’s San Diego office responded by creating these fliers:

A second flier, featuring female names, announced that the organization was “now accepting ‘les’ membership.”

Headquarters approved: “Bureau feels preparation of leaflets as requested in relet has merit, and you are authorized to duplicate sufficient copies on commercially obtained paper to have posted on various bulletin boards where they might be seen by majority of students at San Diego State College. It is hopeful this action will have desired effect of dissuading would-be new recruits from membership in YSA.” Because that, apparently, was the FBI’s mission: to play on people’s bigotries to dissuade them from joining a political organization.

Playing the Filner Card

Somebody hacked the Twitter account used by the Filner mayoral campaign back in 2012 yesterday. The account has been inactive since early December 2012 and was curated by campaign staff, since Filner (according to very reliable reports) wouldn’t know a Tweet from a hole in the ground. Here’s the Tweet, supposedly shilling for an upcoming David Alvarez fundraiser: 

http://t.co/qj418eOuBU http://t.co/hRbMRb7cPw

— Bob Filner (@BobFilnerMayor) January 14, 2014

Was this some hacker having fun?  Who knows? But it is interesting in light of a statement published in yesterday’s print edition of UT-San Diego:

Faulconer campaign manager Stephen Puetz was equally coy about future advertising content but hinted that linking Alvarez in some way to Filner and the stands he took is a possibility.

And it’s not like the local GOP has avoided dirty tricks in the past… Just sayin…

Wikileaks Releases Trade Summit’s ‘Environmental’ Paper

 This morning the Wikileaks group released a secret draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Environment Chapter along with a corresponding Chairs’ Report from last year’s summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. The proposed TPP transnational agreement would initially include a dozen countries, encompassing 40%of global GDP and 33% of world trade. The document, dated November 19-24, 2013 has been sought by journalists and environmental groups concerned about the secretive nature of the negotiations taking place.

From a Wikileaks analysis:

 The Environment Chapter addresses matters of conservation, environment, biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and resources, over-fishing and illegal logging, and climate change, among others. It might be expected to provide balance to the commercial interests being advanced in the other chapters, and genuine protections that are consistent with international environmental law.

 Instead of a 21st century standard of protection, the leaked text shows that the obligations are weak and compliance with them is unenforceable. Contrast that to other chapters that subordinate the environment, natural resources and indigenous rights to commercial objectives and business interests. The corporate agenda wins both ways.

 Bruce Springsteen & Jimmy Fallon’s Take on Gov. Chrisie’s Traffic Jam

 On This Day: 1624 – Many riots occurred in Mexico when it was announced that all churches were to be closed.  1870 – A cartoon by Thomas Nast titled “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion” appeared in “Harper’s Weekly.” The cartoon used the donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party for the first time.  1967 – The Rolling Stones performed on TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show” and were forced to change their lyrics of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to “The Starting Line” and get an email every time a new article in this series is posted!

 I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to… Catch “the Starting Line” Monday thru Friday right here at San Diego Free Press (dot) org. Send your hate mail and ideas to DougPorter@SanDiegoFreePress.Org      Check us out on Facebook and Twitter.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Doug Porter

Doug Porter was active in the early days of the alternative press in San Diego, contributing to the OB Liberator, the print version of the OB Rag, the San Diego Door, and the San Diego Street Journal. He went on to have a 35-year career in the Hospitality business and decided to go back into raising hell when he retired. He won numerous awards for his columns from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Doug is a cancer survivor (sans vocal chords) and lives in North Park.

Latest posts by Doug Porter (see all)

• Last Call. Last Column. - December 14, 2018
• Which Presidential Candidate Will You Support in 2020? - December 13, 2018
• Mounting the Assault on Big Gay and Other Drivel From SDSU’s Minimum Wage Scrooge - December 12, 2018