The family and friends of Hugues de la Plaza, the 36-year-old French San Francisco resident whose homicide two years ago was wrongly deemed a suicide by SFPD -- until the French authorities came to town and showed them what's up, are continuing their fight to get SFPD to admit they're bumbling idiots.
SFPD did go so far as to acknowledge that suicide was the incorrect "hypothesis" this past February -- nearly two years after the fact, but as Hugues' father, François de la Plaza, aptly put it, it's appalling that "foreign police, media coverage, and the promise of money were necessary to spur action on the case." In February, de la Plaza's family officially announced that they're offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of de la Plaza's killer, which is being drawn from their son's life insurance policy.
Melissa Nix, a former girlfriend of de la Plaza, filed a complaint with the Office of Citizen Complaints in February of 2008, which was concluded in February of this year. The report is due to be released in a matter of days or weeks, and if the facts back up Nix's and others' claims of negligence, they will have cause for legal action. "Coughing up a settlement" seems to be the only way to provoke the city to admit this is a systemic problem, and Nix has gotten in touch with several families of other victims whose murders were never solved in an ongoing effort to get some public accountability out of District Attorney Kamala Harris and Police Chief Heather Fong.
[Via SF Weekly]