San Francisco has more than 1,000 unsolved murders and more than 900 unsolved rapes. That’s what DA candidate Sharmin Bock, an Alameda County deputy prosecutor, has been saying. And district attorney and ex-police chief George Gascon shrugged it off, even suggesting that she must be going back nearly a century. Nope. Turns out Bock is right, as the Chronicle’s Heather Knight reports:
The numbers were gleaned from a grant application last year from the Police Department to the U.S. Department of Justice seeking funding for the DNA division of its troubled crime lab - and signed off on by then-Police Chief Gascón.
Gascón said he simply forgot about the grant application and that clearing violent crimes is of utmost importance. But his challengers say it's one more example of a district attorney who keeps hidden politically sensitive information at the public's expense.
