About the only thing it’s missing is a few key facts and a general reshaping of the original story line, which was spun so quickly and masterfully that it would have made the White House proud.
For it turns out this story isn’t about a bunch of singing saints from Yale University coming to San Francisco and getting pounded by a bunch of Catholic school thugs who were aided by a faulty police investigation. It’s a tale about how the truth can get chewed up by The City’s various political players and then spit out for mass consumption.
Despite reports that there was no alcohol served at the New Year’s Eve party at the home of Police Department veterans Leanna Dawydiak and Reno Rapagnani, sources close to the investigation say there was plenty of drinking, so much so that neighbors later said they were going to call the police because of all the vomiting and urinating in the street. Officers who arrived at the scene of the alleged assault said there was so much alcohol present it took them at least 10 minutes to pour it all out.
And intoxication is a key element here because the young man who got the worst of it, Sharyar Aziz Jr., who suffered a broken jaw, was the one who got into the initial confrontation at the house, in an apparent disagreement over the ownership of a beer. Aziz allegedly challenged one of the partygoers with a taunt about how the Yale group vastly outnumbered the other young men — which is how “reinforcements’’ were called and the real brawl began outside, reportedly involving graduates of St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart Cathedral high schools. (For the record, I am an SH alum and my son was in Dawydiak and Rapagnani’s daughter’s class at SI.)
By the time the fighting ended and police arrived, there were only a handful of people around, the injured Aziz and his friends having fled the scene. Curiously, despite the melee and resulting injuries, not a single Yale group member ever bothered to call 911 on their cell phones, perhaps mindful of the fact that they were not of drinking age. Aziz’s friends ultimately did call for an ambulance an hour or so later, and it was the paramedics who called police back in, when they began the key part of the investigation. Then things really got interesting.
The following night, Dawydiak — who became deeply embroiled in the Fajitagate case — called the Richmond Police Station and asked them to send some officers out. Sources told me that when they arrived she handed them an envelope containing the handwritten statements of the Yale students along with pictures she had taken — kind of like an officer investigating an event in which they have a conflict and possibly even potential civil liability.
“Highly unusual and against department procedure’’ is the way it was explained to me by a department source, especially when you consider that Dawydiak is on medical leave. And you think that a veteran officer who happens to be an attorney would know enough to call in outside investigators in a case that she is involved in.
Of course, by then there were enough attorneys with political aspirations involved to clog a courtroom, including alleged mayoral hopeful Matt Gonzalez and “Hollywood’’ Jim Hammer, reputed to be interested in a run against District Attorney Kamala Harris. By the time police investigators got to Los Angeles to finally interview the Yale group members (who put off talking to police until they arrived in L.A. for their next performance), they all had lawyers, some of whom were advising their clients to say little about their night of wild adventure.
So why all the silence? Well, Yale University has rules about officially recognized groups representing the university as well as regulations on drinking. Sources close to the investigation said several of the parents were very concerned about the possibility of their sons getting kicked out of the Baker’s Dozen because of the prestige and perks that come with it. Remember, this group once performed at the White House — talk about Yale connections.
This will help explain why the Baker’s Dozen story has been getting such play — it’s a perfect storm of events, players, politics and power colliding on the rocky streets of San Francisco.
But it’s not about angels with dirtied faces. Think of it more as protecting reputations and covering flanks, and the picture becomes so much clearer.
Ken Garcia’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends in The Examiner. E-mail him at kgarcia@examiner.com or call him at (415) 359-2663.



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