Richard Hongisto
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Richard D. Hongisto | |
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| Chief of the San Francisco Police Department | |
| In office April 1, 1992 – May 15, 1992 | |
| Mayor | Frank Jordan |
| Preceded by | William Casey |
| Succeeded by | Anthony Ribera |
| Assessor-Recorder of San Francisco | |
| In office January 8, 1991 – April 1, 1992 | |
| Preceded by | ??? |
| Succeeded by | Doris M. Ward |
| Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from the at-large district | |
| In office January 8, 1981 – January 8, 1991 | |
| Preceded by | District-based elections |
| Succeeded by | Kevin Shelley |
| Constituency | seat 2 |
| Acting Commissioner of the New York Department of Corrections | |
| In office 1978–1979 | |
| Governor | Hugh Carey |
| Preceded by | Benjamin Ward |
| Succeeded by | ??? |
| Chief of the Cleveland Division of Police | |
| In office December 14, 1977 – March 24, 1978 | |
| Mayor | Dennis Kucinich |
| Preceded by | Michael Aherns |
| Succeeded by | Jeffrey Fox |
| 31st Sheriff of San Francisco | |
| In office January 8, 1972 – December 11, 1977 | |
| Preceded by | Matthew C. Carberry |
| Succeeded by | Eugene A. Brown |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Richard Duane Hongisto December 16, 1936 Bovey, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | November 4, 2004 (aged 67) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Police career | |
| Department | |
| Service years |
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| Rank |
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Richard Duane Hongisto (December 16, 1936, Bovey, Minnesota – November 4, 2004, San Francisco, California)[1][2] was a businessman, politician, sheriff, and police chief of San Francisco, California, and Cleveland, Ohio.
Early life and education
[edit]Of Finnish descent,[1] Hongisto was the son of Gladys Longrie and Raymond Hongisto. In 1942, Dick moved to San Francisco with his parents and brother Don.[3]
"Hongisto grew up in the city's Richmond and Fillmore districts, and his parents ran a grocery store in the Sunnydale neighborhood."[4]
Dick graduated from George Washington High School. He later attended San Francisco City College. While completing a bachelor's degree at San Francisco State University, Hongisto became an officer of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).
Career
[edit]Early career
[edit]As a police officer, Hongisto earned a reputation for activism, fighting discrimination within the police force and against police brutality. He was a co-founder of Officers for Justice, an organization of officers who were primarily racial minorities or gay.
Hongisto's activism made him controversial among the ranks of the SFPD, but at the same time he was a popular public figure. He ran for sheriff in 1971, and was elected — an event that shocked the San Francisco political establishment. The incumbent, Matthew Carberry, had been a four-term sheriff, was well-connected politically, and had been considered a shoo-in for a return to the job.
Hongisto's election had been orchestrated methodically by computer analyst Les Morgan, using the then-new idea of precinct analysis of voting trends. Hongisto was considered the first candidate for public office in San Francisco to be elected largely by outsiders: gay, Latino, and other minority voters who had a strong voting presence, but who had been ignored by the political establishment.
He was the first sheriff to hire gay and lesbian deputies, and later became embroiled in controversy when he deliberately delayed the eviction of residents from the International Hotel, a residential hotel in Manilatown, San Francisco, next to Chinatown, San Francisco.[3]
After a long period where he refused to order the eviction, which included time spent in the San Mateo County jail on contempt of court charges, Hongisto eventually carried out the mass eviction, which earned him the enmity of some of the very people he tried to protect.[3]
Cleveland
[edit]After serving as the sheriff in San Francisco,[5] Hongisto briefly moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1977, where he served as police chief under Mayor Dennis Kucinich.[3][6] His penchant for controversy, and conflicts with Kucinich, eventually led to his being fired by the mayor on live local television.[7] In Cleveland his firing sparked a recall drive to remove Kucinich from office.
New York State
[edit]The Governor of the State of New York then invited Hongisto to manage that state's prison system.[8][9] Hongisto accepted the challenge of reforming a system that had been plagued by riots and unrest within several of its facilities. Permanent appointment to this position required confirmation by the state senate, which was not forthcoming. Hongisto therefore returned to San Francisco to run for supervisor in 1980.[3]
Return to San Francisco
[edit]Upon his return to San Francisco, Hongisto was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he helped to place Proposition M, a measure which would limit construction of high rise commercial buildings, on the public ballot. The measure passed overwhelmingly, and has to this day continued to impact the development of San Francisco's skyline.
With the endorsement of then-Mayor Art Agnos, Hongisto later ran for the office of Assessor.
In 1991, he ran for mayor but did not make the run-off, coming in fourth. After declining to endorse Agnos for re-election as mayor, in a race won by police chief Frank Jordan, Hongisto was appointed in 1992 by Jordan to be San Francisco's police chief.[10]
Hongisto's tenure as police chief lasted only six weeks, and was punctuated by controversy over his handling of demonstrations and riots which occurred in the wake of the Rodney King police brutality trial in Los Angeles. Hongisto cordoned off an entire neighborhood in the Mission district on a Saturday afternoon, establishing a net that saw the arrests of all people on the street, demonstrators and ordinary citizens alike. Hongisto had rented city buses to transport the arrested citizens, and they were processed at a warehouse on San Francisco's wharfs. Instead of merely citing and releasing those arrested, Hongisto ordered that they be arrested and processed at the Santa Rita jail in Dublin (Alameda County), rather than in San Francisco County, thus ensuring that they would not be able to avail themselves of their civil rights and return to San Francisco. This enraged progressive activists and civil libertarians as well as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which ordered Hongisto to release the citizens he had arrested. On the following Saturday, Hongisto ordered police to disrupt another demonstration and arrested demonstrators with no order to disperse. Both incidences were later the targets of class action suits against the city of San Francisco, although the former, undertaken by the Lawyer's Guild, would not be resolved for nearly a decade.
Soon thereafter, a gay and lesbian community newspaper, the San Francisco Bay Times, published a cover graphic of Hongisto's head pasted on the body of a lesbian activist. The activist, dressed in a police uniform, held a giant baton with one end protruding from the groin area as if it were an erect penis. The headline screamed, "Dick's Cool New Tool: Martial Law", in reference to the police actions. What happened afterwards is subject to dispute. Hongisto claimed that he had asked members of the police union to gather copies of the paper to show members of the rank and file what he was enduring in the activist press, in reaction to their criticism of his supposedly failing to properly defend their conduct of the arrests during the King riots. Around 2,000 copies of the free papers were taken from news racks by three officers and later found stored at the Mission District police station. Hongisto was publicly accused of ordering the confiscation of the papers in attempt at censorship, a charge he continued to deny up to his death. After a hearing, the San Francisco Police Commission found him culpable, and Mayor Jordan dismissed him.[11] One of those three officers, Gary Delagnes, later became president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association.
Personal life
[edit]Hongisto married Susan Chavez, who died aged 34.[12]
Hongisto left public life to become a full-time businessman and real estate investor, apart from an unsuccessful run for County Supervisor in 2000.
Hongisto died of a heart attack on November 4, 2004, at the age of 67, leaving behind a son and daughter.[3] He married four times,[3] and was living with a 31-year-old girlfriend at the time of his death.[1]
Electoral history
[edit]Richard Hongisto electoral history
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References
[edit]- ^ a b c Romney, Lee (November 6, 2004). "Richard Hongisto, 67; Ex-Sheriff in San Francisco Had Turbulent Career". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 29, 2017.
- ^ Associated Press, The (November 6, 2004). "Richard Hongisto, Unorthodox Politician, Dies at 67". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 2, 2019. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g Hampton, Adriel; Soltau, Alison (November 5, 2004). "Hongisto Dies". The San Francisco Examiner. San Francisco, CA. p. 4. Retrieved October 19, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Sward, Susan (5 November 2004). "RICHARD HONGISTO / 1936-2004 / S.F. public servant led a tumultuous life / He was a cop, sheriff, supervisor, assessor, police chief". SFGATE. Retrieved 6 December 2024.
- ^ Gorney, Cynthia (December 15, 1977). "Hongisto quits as sheriff". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "Cleveland swears in police chief, a former San Francisco sheriff". The New York Times. December 14, 1977. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 17, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ Wagner, Joseph L. (November 4, 1978). "In Cleveland: a lot of tunnel, and precious little light". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ Dionne, Jr., E. J. (July 18, 1978). "Cleveland's dismissed police chief named corrections head by Carey". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 19, 2018. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ Lewis, Daniel; Ferrell, Tom (July 23, 1978). "Hello Hongisto, out of the frying pan and into Albany". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 17, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ Gross, Jane (April 18, 1992). "New mayor's 'shaky' start has San Francisco puzzled". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 21, 2018. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco police chief fired over removal of gay newspapers". The Washington Post. May 15, 1992. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "Wife of Former S.F. Police Chief Is Found Dead". Los Angeles Times. 25 September 1994. Retrieved 6 December 2024.
he wife of former San Francisco Police Chief Richard Hongisto was found dead Saturday after an argument in the couple's home, and Hongisto blamed her death on the recurrence of a drug habit. The body of Susan Chavez Hongisto, 34, was found in the garage at the home of a companion, who had called for an ambulance. The owner of the home, Martin Amador, told police that Susan Hongisto collapsed after smoking crack cocaine.
- ^ "Sheriff Richard Hongisto, the notable exception". SFSD History. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "Chronological list of SF sheriff elections and candidates (1850-2020)". SFSD History. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco Board of Supervisors election, 1982". Our Campaigns. November 2, 1982. Archived from the original on June 17, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco Board of Supervisors election, 1986". Our Campaigns. November 4, 1986. Archived from the original on June 3, 2009. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco mayoral election, 1991". Our Campaigns. November 5, 1991. Archived from the original on October 26, 2020. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco Board of Supervisors election, 1992". Our Campaigns. November 3, 1992. Archived from the original on June 3, 2009. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco Board of Supervisors election (district 5), 2000". Our Campaigns. November 7, 2000. Archived from the original on June 17, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
- ^ "San Francisco consolidated primary election results, 2002". SFgov.org. March 5, 2002. Archived from the original on January 27, 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
External links
[edit]- George Washington High School, San Francisco.