After the vote, Mirkarimi said, “It’s been a long and crazy road, not just for our family, but the family of San Francisco. Now is a process of mending fences.”
It required nine of the 11 supervisors to boot Mirkarimi out of office and many political observers expected all 11 supervisors to vote to can him.
But in a stunning upset, the board voted 7-4 to fire the sheriff—a majority, but not a big enough majority.
The supervisors’ chamber was packed with the public overflowing into the hallways. An immense number of citizens signed up to speak on the case, as is their right, in the “public comment period.” The board members had to sit through more than five hours of such testimony, most of it supporting Mirkarimi—and much of it repetitive.
Mirkarimi’s attorney, David Waggoner, said Mirkarimi “took responsibility for the terrible mistake he made.” But, Waggoner said, the punishment of firing “does not fit the crime.”
Another Mirkarimi attorney, Shepard Kopp, attacked the mayor for using an overly broad interpretation of “official misconduct” to suspend the sheriff and warned them that they could be the next target of the mayor’s wrath. “What if you declared bankruptcy? You made contracts with people and you haven’t paid the money you owe them? Under the mayor’s theory, that could be official misconduct—if you file your tax returns late, if you default on a loan.”
One citizen, Franzo King, gave a unique explanation for supporting Mirkarimi. “I love a sheriff who’s been to jail,” he said. Mirkarimi spent one night in his own jail after his arrest in January. “You might get your phone call. You might get bailed out on time. The food might be okay,” King said.
The four supervisors who supported Mirkarimi all denounced spousal abuse and criticized him for grabbing his wife’s arm hard enough to bruise her. But all said that action did not rise to the level of “official misconduct,” which is the standard in the City Charter for firing an elected official.
The four supervisors backing Mirkarimi all came from the “progressive” wing of San Francisco politics, like Mirkarimi. In the rest of the country, that would generally be labeled far left. Mirkarimi originally founded the Green Party in San Francisco, later moving into the city’s Democratic Party.
Mirkarimi’s woes may not be at an end.
For one thing, both Mayor Ed Lee and District Attorney George Gascon, the only other city officials elected citywide like the sheriff, have denounced Mirkarimi since the supervisors’ vote.
Another possible problem is a recall vote where the public would have the chance to expel Mirkarimi from office.
Mayor Lee and DA Gascon were both elected for the first time to their offices last November on the same ballot with Mirkarimi. Lee said, “The facts clearly demonstrate that Ross Mirkarimi’s actions and his domestic violence-related conviction falls below the ethical conduct we expect of our elected sheriff and constitutes official misconduct.”
Gascon said, “I have grave concerns about Ross Mirkarimi’s ability to manage the Sheriff’s Department. What I will not accept is any compromise of public safety as a result of his reinstatement.”
As for any recall vote, that would require opponents to gather about 48,000 signatures—10 percent of the registered voters in the city—within 160 days to put the recall on the ballot. And one of the supervisors who voted for Mirkarimi, Jane Kim, said she advocated recall. She said she voted for re-instatement based on the City Charter standard, but she felt Mirkarimi was “greatly diminished” by the incident. “The electorate has every right to recall the sheriff—an action which I would support.”
Mirkarimi was suspended by Mayor Lee earlier this year, without pay. But the city has now agreed to restore all his back pay. His salary is $199,000 a year. He still faces the burden of paying the lawyers who built his legal case.
The sheriff in San Francisco is not the city’s chief law enforcement official. The city has a regular police force. The sheriff’s main job is to run the city jail and provide security at courthouses. He has 800 deputies to carry out those functions.
One of the many other duties of the sheriff is to supervise domestic violence offenders, which puts him the potentially embarrassing situation of having custody over his own person as an offender.
The vote last Tuesday capped nine months of controversy since Mirkarimi was charged with wife beating—an accusation not supported by his wife. The dramatic case played out for months at City Hall.
In March, Mayor Lee suspended Mirkarimi without pay after the sheriff pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment related to a New Year’s Eve dispute with his wife, Venezuelan soap opera star Eliana Lopez, who suffered a bruised bicep. Mirkarimi was sentenced to three years of probation, fined $590 and ordered to undergo one year of counseling and parenting classes.
The mayor then took the unprecedented step of trying to permanently remove Mirkarimi from office. Lee testified before the city’s Ethics Commission in June that he would find it “extremely difficult” to work with Mirkarimi again, and said he thought Mirkarimi committed domestic violence.
In August, the commission voted 4-1 that Mirkarimi committed official misconduct and reported that finding to the Board of Supervisors. Mirkarimi served for seven years until January as one of the city’s supervisors. All the supervisors know him personally, though they aren’t all friends.
Mirkarimi’s woes began December 31 when the couple got into an argument over whether she could travel to her native Venezuela with their toddler son, Theo. Authorities say Mirkarimi bruised his wife’s arm during the argument with an overly firm grip.
The next day, Lopez turned to a neighbor, Ivory Madison, who later contacted police. Authorities eventually confiscated a video Madison had taken, along with text messages and emails between the two women. The video shows Lopez pointing to a bruise on her right bicep where she said Mirkarimi had grabbed her.
When Mirkarimi appeared at his swearing in with his wife and son on January 8, reporters asked him about the incident. He called it a “private matter, a family matter” — a comment that enraged anti-domestic-violence activists. They called for him to step down.
The couple has since reunited and Lopez has been vocally supportive of her husband’s reinstatement. She has said the attempts to remove Mirkarimi were political. Domestic violence activists have argued that abused women are often coerced into supporting their husbands. But others point out that Lopez went to Venezuela with their son after the incident to care for her ailing father and spent months there before returning voluntarily to defend her husband.
Mirkarimi’s father was an Iranian immigrant, his mother a Russian-American. The father left the family when Mirkarimi was an infant and had little to do with boy thereafter.