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SFERS Retirement Board Election: The Wolves vs The Watchdog-Election Is About Hedge Funds

by repost
The San Francisco Police Officer Association SFPOA is trying to pack the San Francisco Employee Retirement System and push the fund into hedge funds. The have launched a slander campaign against Herb Meiberger who is the only really qualified candidate to run for the office. The SFPOA candidates and board members are shills for the hedge fund millionaires and billionaires.
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SFERS Retirement Board Election: The Wolves vs The Watchdog-Election Is About Hedge Funds
The San Francisco Police Officers Association SFPOA is trying to pack the SFERS pension board with more cops to push hedge funds and eliminate representatives of the majority of workers.
The SFPOA, IFPTE Local 21 Executive Director Bob Muscat and the Management Employees Association MEA are trying to orchestrate a take over of the pension fund to push it into a massive investment of secret hedge fund deals.
They have attacked SFERS CFA Herb Meiberger for "obstructionism" because he wanted to investigate who the hedge funds would be run by and for pushing for more transparency. They want to turn the San Francisco City Workers Pension fund into operation run by the SF Police Department which is really run by the SFPOA and spends millions of city dollars covering up corruption and racist practices.
§SFPOA SFERS Board Candidate Al Casciato
by repost
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Al Casciato, the retired San Francisco police captain now wants to be on the San Francisco retirement board to push more money into highly speculative hedge funds threatening the security of the city workers pension funds.
Casicato knows how to play the city pension benefits for his own benefit. His last year with the city he made $118,000 base pay but was paid $203,000 in other pay and in the last four year and half year he has been paid $1.3 million from the pension fund. He now receives $208,937 a year from his city pension almost double what he made as full time employee. He and the SFPOA have also pushed eliminating the COLA for city employee pensions and the SFPOA president Martin Halloran argued that city workers had to give back pension and healthcare benefits or there would be social service cuts. They do not represent the vast majority of city workers who do not make the big bucks like the police department. He and the SFPOA are opposed to taxing the 30 billionaires who really own and run San Francisco but want to attack low paid city workers to make more givebacks and concessions which they pushed in Proposition C. This brought pay cuts to low paid city workers and some even lost their homes.
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The POA president made statement blaming city workers for taking benefits from social services because of their pension and healthcare benefits. This while he and his cohorts in the leadership of the SFPOA have milked the SFERS pension fund for pensions that are double their salaries. The leadership of the SFPOA has a record of covering up racist incidents including by their SFPERS board member Brian Stansbury and the Vice President of the SFPOA Tony Montoya attacked and beat a youth without cause and he is now being sued by the ACLU. This outfit which has a notorious record of systemic cover-up of racist incidents and bullying and terrorizing the Black and Latino community now wants to take over the City Workers Pension Fund SFERS.
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The POA has also tried to bully the San Francisco Labor Council threatening not only the council but individual members for passing a resolution calling for investigation and prosecution of police for racist murders. This effort of bullying continued with the effort to bully SFERS board member Herb Meiberger not to run for the position against SFPOA member Al Casciato. This bullying and intimidation campaign of the SFPOA has been supported by IFPTE Local 21 Executive Director Bob Muscat and the Management Employees Association which represents city bosses.
Black SFPD leader resigns from union, says leadership is reactionary
Sgt. Yulanda Williams. (Mike Koozmin/2015 S.F. Examiner)
By Jonah Owen Lamb on November 18, 2016 1:24 pm

The leader of San Francisco’s black officers organization resigned from the powerful Police Officers Association on Friday, accusing the the union of failing to address minority issues and promoting recalcitrant and backward approaches to police reform and minority concerns in and outside of the Police Department.

The resignation and condemnation of the union’s leadership, including President Martin Halloran, came from Officers For Justice President Sgt. Yulanda Williams, who noted that the union’s purported lack of sensitivity in recent years is compounded in the fact that no women or people of color are on the union’s executive board.

“Your organization does not demonstrate sensitivity or a willingness to adjust its value based upon the needs of other ethnicities within this department,” wrote Williams. “As an organizational union leader this is unacceptable conduct and leads to confusion and dysfunction.”

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She continued, “As a dues paying member of 27 years, and a woman of color, I can no longer endure the SFPOA’s exhibitions of insensitivity, narrow-mindedness and refusal to respect other philosophical viewpoints.”

Williams and the POA have been at odds for some time — she was one of a handful of officers who spoke publicly at the District Attorney’s Blue Ribbon Panel about what she said was a backward culture — but the last straw came after Halloran said to Williams in June that if she doesn’t like how the union is run she is free to leave in November, one of the two times of year one can renew their membership.


Now she has done just that.

While she did not mention it in her letter, Williams told the San Francisco Examiner that the union’s donation to the Republican Party — and by extension to Donald Trump’s election as the head of that party — is one more reason for her to separate herself from the union until new leadership takes the helm.

The POA, which previously criticized Williams for speaking before the panel, said in a statement the organization is committed to promoting diversity.


Members of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, including president Martin Halloran, fourth from right, at a Jan. 20 Police Commission meeting in solidarity with officers who shot and killed Mario Woods. (Ekevara Kitpowsong/Special to S.F. Examiner)

“We do not agree with many of the statements made by Yulanda Williams in her resignation letter,” wrote Halloran in a statement. “We are certain that the vast majority of our members, including officers of color, do not agree with her either.”

The statement continues, “We are committed to diversity in our ranks. Just yesterday I received a call from Rev. Amos Brown, thanking us for our support of Chief Toney Chaplin and for our support of the NAACP — so we are confused by her claims.”

For much of the past two years the union has been at odds with some of the efforts to reform the Police Department and even bullied several supervisors for their possible support of a resolution comparing San Francisco to Ferguson, MO.

In mid July, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Law Enforcement said the POA essentially runs the department through a culture of “us against them” by attacking any opponents.

“The findings from this report show that the San Francisco Police Department, for all practical purposes, is really run by the POA,” said Judge LaDoris Cordell at the time.

View William’s resignation letter here: yulanda-resignation
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