The district attorney's office rarely prosecutes officers for crimes relating to excessive force. Nor does the district attorney's office acknowledge compiling information that would allow its staff to identify and monitor prosecutions of police officers. In September 1996, Officer Francis Hogue was convicted and sentenced to six years in state prison for kidnaping a woman and forcing her to perform sexual acts in his squad car.54 But according to the December 1996 San Francisco Examiner series, no officer had been prosecuted for an on-duty shooting for twenty years. As to federal action, no one we interviewed from the OCC or City Attorney's office, and no local police abuse experts, knew of any federal criminal civil rights investigation in San Francisco in recent years.

In 1996, of the sixty-four cases decided by federal prosecutors for the federal district containing San Francisco (Northern District of California), none was prosecuted (presented to a grand jury to seek an indictment). Between 1992 and 1995, 342 cases were considered, of which two were prosecuted.55

54 Dennis J. Opatrny, "SF hookers accuse vice officer of forcing them into fellatio," San Francisco Examiner, April 10, 1997.

55 According to data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, Justice Department. Cases prosecuted or declined represent only a portion of the total number of complaints alleging federal criminal civil rights violations because several steps prior to this decision narrow down the number of complaints actually received to those considered worthy of consideration.