I drove past the camp just the other day with my son while en route home from his sax lesson on International Boulevard. The camp was dense. Very dense. The chaos that ensued at 4am must have been horrific. That said, Quan is now fumbling quite a bit in her handling of the situation. Does this surprise me? No, not really.
Back when Quan was doing small, private parties to garner support from and take the pulse of perspective voters, I attended one at the invitation of someone who had a private connection to Quan. It was more or less a SWOT analysis for the candidate and I was fairly sure she could not wage a strong enough campaign against power house and uber politician, Don Perata, whom I interviewed many times back when I was a street reporter.
But what remember most about that evening was how evasive Quan was in her handling of questions. This was a room with no more than 10 people in it. I pressed her pretty hard on a financial matter. But with a strand of hair hanging straight in her eye, Quan kept batting away my question. Forget the hair, she didn't want to answer me. So, I didn't vote for her.
It will be interesting to see how the spin machine plays for the next few days if not weeks.
I have enormous respect for what our police do. And I also know that children were in that camp. Quan must have known that too.
P.S. Two of the kids on the sofa in this video went to my son's school. And recently did a presentation there about their YouTube work. We also spent time talking with Hammer at a party recently. And I sat next to Willie Brown on a flight across country not that long ago. What can I say? I am six degrees of separation from this video.