Cops & Courts

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is dealing, today, with news that six employees misappropriated $15 million of public funds. A three-year investigation by law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office resulted in charges including grand theft, embezzlement, forgery, and perjury. Jill Tucker has been covering the case for the San Francisco Chronicle. In her cover story this morning, she details how the money was spread between school services, outside non-profits, internal computer systems, salaries, and benefits. I reached Tucker by phone and asked her how $6.7 million were allegedly used on student programs that were not designated by grant funding.

Many three-strikes prisoners are getting a second chance in California since the passage of Prop 36. Back in November, 69 percent of Californians voted yes on the proposition to change the Three Strikes Law, which was enacted in 1994. It sentenced offenders with three or more felony convictions to 25 years to life in prison -- and comparatively minor crimes could qualify as the third strike. 

Nearly 500 inmates serving life sentences have been freed from California prisons since voters passed Proposition 36 last November. The law authorized Superior Court judges throughout the state to free prisoners who had been sentenced to 25 years to life under the state’s original three-strikes law if their third crime, or “strike,” wasn’t serious or violent, and thus, not a third strike.