Eminentoes: The San Francisco Creep

...and like Mr...

...In July, Hallinan had four more prosecutors dumped while he vacationed in Hawaii...

...In that case, the San Francisco Examiner reported, two female city workers and a male aide testified that Hallinan "engaged in explicit sexual talk and behavior in his offices...

...Hallinan appealed the state bar's rejection to the California Supreme Court and won...

...Finally, as if to prove his genius for public relations and administration wasn't reserved simply for firings, in August it was learned that his office hired three former cops with checkered records: one who had been bounced from her job last year for using amphetamines on duty...

...Hallinan's dazzling explanation for "jamming him," as he put it: "...a guy calls you the Fword at a distance six inches from your face a hundred times...

...GEORGE NEUMAYR is a reporter for The American Spectator...

...In fact, in the mid-196o's, the California State Bar rejected his license application on the grounds that he lacked "good moral character...

...As for his illegitimate son Somes, he said, "I love the little guy...

...While Hallinan's professional life has been distinguished only by a slightly sordid veneer, his personal life has perhaps been even more embarrassing...

...and passed a "transgender" city ordinance barring discrimination against transvestites, transsexuals...

...and cross-dressers...

...Hallinan contested the woman's suit, but she prevailed, too, receiving a $40,000 out-ofcourt settlement and a new job in San Francisco's Public Health Department...

...But it is as district attorney that Hallinan appears finally to have reached the pinnacle of preposterousness...

...It didn't help that in the early sixties he was arrested six times as a political protester...

...He later apologized, calling the mailing "an unintentional mistake...

...the nation's wackiest big city district attorney...

...The brouhaha was just another episode in the colorful, over-the-top career of Terence Hallinan, an unreconstructed 196o's radical who, according to Janis Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, almost died of a heroin overdose injected by the singer (a story Hallinan has denied...

...It wasn't an entirely surprising ruling: The son of a lifelong socialist and 1952 Progressive Party presidential candidate, Hallinan had a wild 70 November 1996 • The American Spectator adolescence that frequently put him on the other side of the law and earned him the pugilistic nickname "Kayo...

...Moans a former San Francisco narcotics prosecutor: "Anywhere else he would have been laughed out of the election...

...Asked to explain the suit during the DA's race, Hallinan said lamely, "It was a woman I had done a civil case for one time, and I should have known...

...San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan had punched a local real-estate developer at a steaks'n'chops restaurant in the Marina district...

...At 22, he resurfaced in a felony assault case that concluded in a hung trial favoring acquittal, but sparked the sensational newspaper headline: "DA Says Convict Kayo or License Teen Terror...

...Current San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, among others, testified on Hallinan's behalf at a bar hearing...

...In 1985, a West Germanborn airline stewardess hit him with a paternity suit, which he litigated for two years, but lost after court-mandated blood tests confirmed the woman's claim...

...SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 71 The American Spectator • November 19 9 6...

...But nothing was more revealing of his Mickey Mouse view of a district attorney's duties than the criticism he leveled against his opponent in last year's DA race, longtime homicide prosecutor Bill Fazio: "His approach to the criminal justice system is trying them, convicting them, and sending them to prison...

...Once unleashed, he became a prominent criminal attorney who represented hordes of Haight-Ashbury drug defendants, Patty Hearst (briefly), the farm laborer (and massmurderer) Juan Corona, and the "Presidio 27," a group of army men charged with mutiny...

...I ff DA Hallinan seems particularly amateurish, it may be because, prior to his election, he had never prosecuted a case in his life...

...In this city, he won...

...Several of those fired had donated to or supported Hallinan's opponent in the DA's race...

...Before he'd even been installed in office, in fact, Hallinan sent letters to several DA office staffers, asking them to pony up funds for the retirement of his campaign debt...

...In April, a municipal judge threw him out of court...

...For a district attorney, this train of baggage is head-spinning...

...another who had received a go-day suspension for his role in the desertion of a handcuffed inebriate with an artificial leg at Pier 33...

...E M I N E N T O E S by George Neumayr The San Francisco Creep Terence Hallinan has gone from two-bit punk to...

...Trendy causes are a different matter...

...Not exactly fruitful training for a district attorney...

...The following year he slugged a Sierra ski-lodge owner (he pleaded guilty to assault and battery and disturbing the peace...

...Dodo, I do it...

...On policy matters, Hallinan has also behaved cluelessly, refusing in most cases to apply California's successful threestrikes law, helping to dismantle Matrix (a program that cracked down on panhandlers and vagrants), and publicly announcing his office's lack of interest in "victimless crimes...

...As a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he recommended that Fidel Castro be extended a speaking invitation, proposed sister city status for a Nicaraguan town led by a Sandinista mayor, favored the creation of city-run brothels ("Amsterdam has a red light district, and I've heard good things about their system...

...This is a proud day to be a San Franciscan," he gushed when it passed...

...He ran in the city of the Barbary Coast...

...How, then, did Hallinan get elected...

...He's on my family health plan...

...The very next month his top aide resigned, upset with the mishandling of a sex scandal that erupted at the Hall of justice: two prosecutors were reportedly discovered entangled atop a desk...

...I n early May, an arresting headline appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Blow-by-Blow Description of DA's Tussle...

...The ultra-liberal element from where the DA comes constantly rationalizes criminal behavior rather than holding the criminal element accountable for their conduct...

...Later, still fearful of a mutiny, Hallinan posted an armed guard outside his office...

...No, the story wasn't about a hard-fought court battle...

...Since his election in December 1995, he has treat ed San Francisco to a parade of screw-ups and blunders, along the way undermining the credibility of the city's top law enforcement position...

...As former San Francisco Chief of Police Tony Ribera notes, "He has been a long-time adversary of prosecutors...

...Then, in late January, he carpetbombed a number of his staff, having pink slips reportedly deposited on the desks of fourteen prosecutors in their absence, and shortly thereafter fled the building in fear of retaliation...

...She phones me up out of the blue and we go out to dinner and she winds up staying at my house...

...and a third who had quit the police force in the wake of an investigation into his involvement in a beating in Golden Gate Park...

...His eccentric behavior and far-out initiatives have repeatedly amazed San Franciscans over the years...

...it was about a real donnybrook...

...According to California Lawyer, he spent this year's Disability Awareness Day pretending to be an amputee...

...In 1992, Hallinan ran afoul of another woman, a former legislative assistant who accused him, among other things, of trying to paw her during an electionobserving junket to Nicaragua...

...It was a mistake...

...At 17, he participated in the beating of three Coast Guardsmen, which resulted in a guilty plea to battery and petty theft...