1… For those that haven’t been following. SCA-5 has been withdrawn…..Surprise surprise. Not enough interest to push it through after the huge backlash.
California state Sen. Leland Yee arrested in corruption case
State Sen. Leland Yee was arrested on public corruption charges Wednesday morning in a federal investigation that also targeted Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a notorious former San Francisco gangster, officials said.
The arrest of Yee, who represents San Francisco and a part of San Mateo County and is a candidate for California Secretary of State, came amid searches of his office in Sacramento and his home on 24th Avenue in San Francisco’s Sunset District.
Sources told The Chronicle that the predawn raids, carried out by hundreds of agents from the FBI and the IRS as well as local police officers, stemmed from a fatal shooting about five years ago.
FBI spokesman Peter Lee in San Francisco confirmed that Yee and Chow had been arrested. Both are to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon. Details of the case weren’t immediately released, and federal complaints in the matter were sealed.
Chow was once sentenced to 25 years in prison on gun charges but has insisted in recent years that he had gone straight.
Yee’s chief of staff was not immediately available for comment.
Local television cameras showed Yee being led away in handcuffs from his home and being placed in a waiting car that later pulled into an underground entrance of the federal building in San Francisco, which houses the FBI and district courtrooms.
Among the locations being searched was Bay Steel Inc. on Davidson Avenue in the Bayview neighborhood; a building on the 1700 block of Hyde Street; a home on the 600 block of 42nd Avenue in San Mateo; and Yee’s office in Sacramento, where California Highway Patrol officers were posted outside the door.
“All I know is at about 6 a.m. or so, these loud noises woke me up – I thought it was thunder,” said Ellen Smith, who lives on Hyde Street.
She said the unit being raided had been in a family for at least a generation and that the man who lives there now had inherited it from his parents when they died.
San Francisco police and the FBI were also searching the Ghee Kung Tong Supreme Lodge belonging to the Chinese Freemasons on Spofford Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chow has served as head of the group.
Firefighters, armed with axes and a circular saw, were called to the scene mid-morning to help open a safe. The sound of sawing could be heard emerging from inside the building.
In 1992, the Hong Kong-born Chow was indicted with two dozen others on racketeering charges for their alleged involvement in everything from underage prostitution to the international heroin trade.
Chow was subsequently convicted of gun charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2003, however, he was released after he cut a deal with the government to testify against a high-ranking associate.
Democratic officials expressed shock at the development. California Democratic Party chair John Burton said he was completely unaware of the law enforcement move, and knew nothing about it.
Yee, a former San Francisco school board member and supervisor and member of the state Assembly, is a candidate for California Secretary of State, one of the state’s seven highest offices.
As a candidate, he has promised to “increase government transparency, support small businesses, reform campaign financing and protect the most vulnerable.”
He has portrayed himself as a vanguard on issues of political reform, and last year pushed legislation that launched California online voter registration.
Yee has drawn both praise and controversy for his efforts to tighten restrictions on semiautomatic rifles. In October, engineer Everett Basham pleaded guilty to sending an e-mail to Yee, threatening to use his purported sniper training to kill the senator.
This isn’t Yee’s first brush with the law. In 2000, Yee was arrested in Hawaii on suspicion of boosting an $8.09 bottle of suntan oil by putting it in the front of his shorts.
A year earlier, Yee was pulled over twice by San Francisco police officers who suspected him of cruising the Mission District in search of prostitutes. In both cases, police questioned Yee at the scene of the stops on South Van Ness Avenue and let him go on his way.
Yee, who championed putting a lid on massage parlors around the city, confirmed the stops, but said that in both cases he was the victim of mistaken identity.
