Mom found murder: 14-year-old girl and19-year-old lover arrested

By Amy Kniss

Tylar Witt, 14, and her boyfriend Steven Boston Colver, 19, were arrested in San Bruno, Wednesday morning. Police suspect the pair had been on the run since Friday, June 12, after stabbing Witt’s mother 47-year-old Joanne Witt to death in the El Dorado Hills home mother and daughter shared.

Authorities discovered Joanne Witt’s body Monday morning. Coworkers at the county's Department of Transportation reported her missing after she failed to show up for work; police found Joanne Witt stabbed to death when they went to check on her wellbeing, after receiving the missing person report. Coworkers told police, and attendance records at the department confirm, that Joanne Witt had not been to work since June 10.

Of the weapon used in the murder, El Dorado Hills Sheriff’s Captain Craig Therkildsen reported: "It was some kind of stabbing instrument, but we don't know what it was." Police have not yet recovered the weapon.

Investigators suspect that Joanne Witt’s murder occurred because she wanted to prevent Tylar, Joanne’s 14-year-old daughter, from continuing to date 19-year-old Colver. Sergeant Jim Byers, spokesman for the El Dorado Hills Sheriff’s Department, told reporters: "We do believe that the relationship between the daughter and the boyfriend may have led to this murder.”

San Bruno Police are not releasing details regarding the specifics of the pair’s arrest. Yet, mall employee, Jeysol Urbina, who said she witnessed the arrests, told ABC7 News, that police blocked off the parking lot between an AT&T store and a Red Lobster restaurant in the strip mall. She also said she saw a black jeep surrounded by police cars.

"There was a guy and a girl dressed in black like gothic,” she said. Urbina also told ABC7 News, that the pair got pulled out and searched, but admitted she had not witnessed this part of the incident herself.

On Friday night, the night police believe Joanne Witt was murdered, Tylar Witt and her boyfriend Steven Colver rented a room at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness and California, in San Francisco. Monday morning, the day Joanne Witt was found murdered, the San Francisco Department of Transportation impounded Clover’s car, from the 500 block of O’Farrell Street.

Exactly how or when the teens made their way from San Francisco to San Bruno, where they were arrested for Joanne Witt’s murder, remains unclear. Police officials from El Dorado Hills plan on picking up Tylar Witt and Steven Colver in the next few days. Until then both are being held in San Mateo County.

Ex-Supervisor Ed Jew receives additional year of state-sponsored vacation

Ed Jew is headed to jail. Again.

Actually, Jew, the former San Francisco Supervisor, won’t start serving his sentence until July 1, when he is scheduled to surrender to police. The one-year jail sentence Jew received Wednesday, for lying about living in San Francisco when he ran for Supervisor in 2006, adds an additional year to the five-years-four-months he is sentenced to spend in federal prison for extortion.

Jew’s extortion conviction stemmed from an FBI sting in 2007. FBI surveillance video captured footage of Jew accepting $40,000 from the owner of a fast food restaurant in Jew’s district. The money was half of an $80,000 bribe Jew admitted to demanding from the District 4 business owner. In exchange for the cash, Jew promised his help in smoothing out the restaurant’s permitting issues.

With two convictions for what amounts to unethical behavior, Jew’s reputation as an upstanding citizen or honorable civic leader is shot. He deserves to be punished for abusing the power of his position and assaulting the public’s trust. But, logically, sending Jew to jail for up-to six years (though he’ll likely only serve four, at most) makes little fiscal sense.

Traditionally, in the U.S., removing individuals from society—the adult version of a “time-out”—is how we punish those who violate societal rules. Yet, this time-out technique is costly and teaches little to improve the character or societal contributions of the incarcerated. Those locked-up by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, in the U.S., cost taxpayers, in 2001 [the last date for which data was available], $22,632 per inmate, per day. If Jew served even six years of his initial sentence, his incarnation would cost taxpayers well over $100,000—twenty thousand more than the $80,000 the FBI caught Jew exhorting from the restaurant owner.

Jew’s lawyer complained about the harsh nature of the charges: "Between the federal and state systems, this punishment is serious. Most politicians don't receive sentences like this." He’s right; usually politicians get off with a slap on the wrist. And in that light this is a serious sentence, but mail fraud, bribery and extortion are serious crimes. Still, Jew will spend most of his time in the sort of facility where Martha Stewart spent a few months, on a so-called federally sponsored vacation – and possibly another eight months in country jail.

What’s the point of jailing Jew? To teach Jew a lesson for a crime he won't likely have the opportunity to commit again, even after serving his sentence? Why spend the money incarcerating a non-violent offender?

Maybe he should experience what it’s like not to have recourse to hot water or consistent electricity and live surrounded by garbage. Who is he to judge? No water use, garbage activity or power showed up for the Sunset District house where Jew claimed he lived when her ran for Supervisor.

Let’s slap a tracking bracelet on the ousted-supervisor and relegate him to pay his debt to society by serving his time in a shelter or one of the city’s single-resident-occupancy hotels. Make him spend the next five years volunteering in the neighborhood he represented, but never lived. His lesson may be long, but it should not be unnecessarily costly.

Amy Kniss SF Law and Politics Examiner

ABC Power Trip: SF Clubs Face Financial Ruin

By Amy Kniss

California is a fairly lax state when it comes to regulating the sale of alcohol – we sell hard liquor in supermarkets, we sell it on Sundays, we sell it until 2:00 a.m. and in many places we begin selling it again at 6:00 a.m. Businesses make money when people drink. No big deal.

That laid-back attitude may be changing, in San Francisco of all places!

California’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) is taking a closer look at local music venues that host shows without age restrictions. Venues like Slim’s, Bottom of the Hill, the Great American Music Hall, Cafe du Nord and the Fillmore are all at risk, according to an article in today’s SF Gate: State goes after legendary all-ages music clubs.

At issue is a seemingly obscure enforcement power claimed by the ABC, which if you want to get technical isn’t actually a matter of “law.” Despite the absence of a statute requiring clubs that hold music events open to minors, the ABC is insisting that half of such establishments’ revenue come from food sales – rather than (disproportionate) alcohol sales.

Fans and promoters of the local music scene are understandably concerned that ABC’s new “rules” will negatively affect emerging talent and clubs’ ability to preserve their livelihoods by attracting large audiences.

"Without these businesses, there's no local music scene - it's that simple," said Jordan Kurland, co-owner of San Francisco's Noise Pop music festival in an interview with The Chronicle. "It's such a special experience when you are young to see a band you love in an intimate place ... where they are able to charge a more reasonable ticket price. These small-capacity venues are very generous about paying bands, and, like any club in the world, they predominantly make their money off the bar, not off ticket sales."

What the ABC isn’t acknowledging is that California law explicitly permits minors to enter establishments licensed to sell liquor, so long as the establishment has the capacity to serve meals (California Business & Professions Code §§ 23787, 25665). Such establishments may maintain bars on the premises and function more as nightclubs, particularly late at night. According to California Business & Professional Code (§§ 23787): “The operation of such premises is limited solely to the service of meals and beverages at prearranged events of a social or business nature and where admission is by ticket only.” Notice the code mentions no age restriction on ticket purchasers, nor does the code specify any ratio requirement for food-to-alcohol-sales for venues providing ticketed admission.

Serving food allows bay area and California clubs to host as all-age events. This continues to be the case. The San Francisco Entertainment Commission doesn’t take kindly to assaults on its businesses, especially when it comes in the form of enforcing non-legislated “rules” (requiring equal sales of alcohol and food at all-age events) targeting revenue and limiting the operating conditions.

Look for this fight to continue as a legal battle arises over the ABC’s authority to impose restrictions that are not a matter of law.

Porta-Potty Pyro

Few and far between are the homeless in my Russian Hill neighborhood. Our clean streets welcome the European tourists with their maps and their impeccable posture. The crime rate in this part of the city rarely draws attention. Until recently.

Over the last four months we've seen a spike in crime. Not violent or indiscriminate crime mind you, that would cause an uproar in a district of the city that feels entitled to the safety of its sidewalks and well-lit piece of mind. This recent outbreak is not of crime overall, but a particular and peculiar brand of arson: porta-potty pyrotechnics.

The outrageous antics and the lack of suspects even garnered the interest of the New York Times. No details are known about infamous arsonist(s); if it is, indeed, a lone lighter, no one can say for sure.

The relative calm of the neighborhood at night leaves few people on the streets to bear witness to such flamboyant acts. Leaving only the hardened puddle of melted porta-potty-blue and the residual oder of burnt feces and plastic to remind the tourists, exercise fiends and stroller-pushing nannies of the atrocities that occur on the streets after the affluent retire to bed.

Central Market & the Blue Bottle Cafe -- San Francisco

San Francisco's Central Market neighborhood flies flags touting its existence and its status as a Community Benefit District. The flag flying effort began in July, in an effort for the Central Market Community Benefit District (CMCBD) to promote the district’s "diverse offerings while strengthening neighborhood identity." Classy.

Little more than a year after the district -- which runs from 5th St. to 9th St. along the south side of Market Street -- was born, it is still rife with street dwellers and the stench of urine. Ah, the inconveniences we endure in the trendy new district where boarded up buildings accentuate the urban chic of coffee houses and tucked away night spots.

Take the Blue Bottle Cafe, off Mission St., down Mint St. at the end of Jessie Alley, it is the epitome of self-important startup culture and the impromptu caffeinated chattiness on which they thrive.

Two walls lined with cheap gray cabinetry flow into pale, off-blue shelving. The shelves hosts an array of pricey coffee-inspired accouterments. A rounded black counter, topped with a high-end line espresso station faces the door.

The baristas wear black and look self-absorbed, inspired by their craft and their attentive, thirsty audience. They don't merely serve coffee here, they serve an experience. That may well describe most of the businesses within the CMCBD, but such an image may not survive an economy less impressed by the experience of service than the value of its price tag.

San Francisco Votes: Proposition H

San Francisco - Proposition H is complicated. Its headline in the voter guide demonstrates the complexity: "Setting Clean Energy Deadlines; Studying Options for Providing Energy; Changing Revenue Bond Authority to Pay for Public Utility Facilities."

Three actions hinge on this proposition, but the first two appear unnecessary. Don't we already have a law (or laws) that set clean energy deadlines? And isn't "Studying Options for Providing Energy," inherent to the role of the Public Utilities Commission?

Well Yes on H would "require the PUC to evaluate making the City the primary provider of electric power in San Francisco." Requiring an evaluation means wasting a lot of time and money into a review process that has no significant outcome. Clearly the City makes more money selling the excess power from its Hetch Hetchy facilities in Tuolumne County to customers other than residents of San Francisco. Were not the costs and benefits of making the City the primary provider of electricity weighed when the initial decision to sell the power else where was made? If not, how, and why, would citizens of San Francisco vote more authority to such an inept and self-serving body?

The primary catch to Proposition H is the power it allocates to the Board of Supervisors. A yes vote on H allows the Board to approve the issuance of revenue bonds to pay for any public utility facilities without voter approval. The rhetoric of a green future may feel enticing. It may be less enticing, however, if that promise of green energy requires voters sign a blank check to the Board of Supervisors. This will be the case if voters pass Prop. H.

Pardon My Spanglish

Last night I attended a reading by comedian Bill Santiago at Booksmith on Haight Street. His new book Pardon My Spanglish: One Man's Guide to Speaking the Habla (softcover, $14.95), is an irreverent take on a linguistic mashup.

Santiago's book chronicles his Spanglish obsession, from Spanglish on the phone to Spanglish online, he repeats recorded conversations from a variety of sources. He uses his family throughout the book to express the attachment of Spanish speakers to their mother language and how cross-cultural existence has given birth to a hybrid bi-lingual language. The stories are hilarious, but full enjoyment requires a decent understanding of Spanish, as several members of last night's audience can attest.

Santiago's delivery is spontaneous and his stream-of-consciousness, comedic commentary accompanies his literary selections. Listening to him read, feels sort of like Being John Malcovich: traveling into Santiago's mind as he researches and writes the book. Weird but entertaining and enlightening.

Bill Santiago is a nationally known comedian who has appeared on Conan O’Brien and Comedy Central. His latest show, The Funny of (Latin) Dance, will be premiering at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco on September 20th.

Assignment #1a: Not so much

I canceled on Mark. He brought up nudity and I'm not desperate enough for that. Plus he was vehemently against me brining a friend to ensure things didn't get sketchy. Total red flag, right? He said it was because he "has too much to lose" because he's rich and married and has kids. That may be true, but if it's nothing more than drawings, how is it a blackmail concern? I wish I could block his number. He texted several times since I said no, emailed and called. Gross. No thanks. I'll continue to apply for jobs that involve less exposure.