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Richard D. Hongisto
Hongisto in 1983
Chief of theSan Francisco Police Department
In office April 1, 1992 – May 15, 1992
Mayor	Frank Jordan
Preceded by	William Casey
Succeeded by	Anthony Ribera
Assessor-Recorder ofSan Francisco
In office January 8, 1991 – April 1, 1992
Preceded by	Sam Duca[1]
Succeeded by	Doris M. Ward
Member of theSan Francisco Board of Supervisors for the at-large district
In office January 8, 1981 – January 8, 1991
Preceded by	District established
Succeeded by	Kevin Shelley
Acting Commissioner of theNew York Department of Corrections
In office 1978–1979
Governor	Hugh Carey
Preceded by	Benjamin Ward
Succeeded by	Thomas Coughlin III
Chief of theCleveland Division of Police
In office December 14, 1977 – March 24, 1978
Mayor	Dennis Kucinich
Preceded by	Michael Aherns
Succeeded by	Jeffrey Fox
31stSheriff of San Francisco
In office January 8, 1972 – December 11, 1977
Preceded by	Matthew C. Carberry
Succeeded by	Eugene A. Brown
Personal details
Born	Richard Duane Hongisto (1936-12-16)December 16, 1936 Bovey,Minnesota, U.S.
Died	November 4, 2004(2004-11-04) (aged 67) San Francisco,California, U.S.
Spouse	Susan Chavez ​ ​ (m. 1993; died 1994)​
Police career
Department	San Francisco Sheriff's Department Cleveland Division of Police San Francisco Police Department
Service years	San Francisco: 1958–1977 Cleveland: 1977–1978 San Francisco: 1992
Rank	Sheriff Chief

Richard Duane Hongisto (December 16, 1936 – November 4, 2004)^[2][3] was a businessman, politician,sheriff, andpolice chief ofSan Francisco,California, andCleveland,Ohio.

OfFinnish descent,^[2] Hongisto was the son of Gladys Longrie and Raymond Hongisto. In 1942, Dick moved to San Francisco with his parents and brother Don.^[4]

"Hongisto grew up in the city's Richmond and Fillmore districts, and his parents ran a grocery store in the Sunnydale neighborhood."^[5]

Dick graduated fromGeorge Washington High School. He later attendedSan Francisco City College. While completing a bachelor's degree atSan Francisco State University, Hongisto became an officer of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).

Hongisto was a co-founder of Officers for Justice, an organization of officers who were primarily racial minorities or gay.

Hongisto ran for sheriff in 1971, defeating the incumbent, Matthew Carberry, who had been a four-term sheriff.

He was the first sheriff to hire gay and lesbian deputies, and later became embroiled in controversy when he deliberately delayed the eviction of residents from theInternational Hotel, a residential hotel inManilatown, San Francisco, next toChinatown, San Francisco.^[4]

After a long period where he refused to order the eviction, which included time spent in theSan Mateo County jail oncontempt of court charges, Hongisto eventually carried out the mass eviction.^[4]

After serving as the sheriff in San Francisco,^[6] Hongisto briefly moved toCleveland, Ohio in 1977, where he served aspolice chief under MayorDennis Kucinich.^[4][7] His penchant for controversy, and conflicts with Kucinich, eventually led to his being fired by the mayor on live local television.^[8] In Cleveland his firing sparked arecall drive to remove Kucinich from office.

The Governor of the State of New York then invited Hongisto to manage that state's prison system.^[9][10] Permanent appointment to this position required confirmation by the state senate, which was not forthcoming. Hongisto therefore returned to San Francisco to run for supervisor in 1980.^[4]

Upon his return to San Francisco, Hongisto was elected to theSan Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he helped to place Proposition M, a measure which would limit construction of high rise commercial buildings, on the public ballot.

With the endorsement of then-MayorArt Agnos, Hongisto later ran for the office of Assessor.

In 1991, he ran for mayor but did not make the run-off, coming in fourth. After declining to endorse Agnos for re-election as mayor, in a race won by police chiefFrank Jordan, Hongisto was appointed in 1992 by Jordan to be San Francisco's police chief.^[11]

Hongisto's tenure as police chief lasted only six weeks, and was punctuated by controversy over his handling of demonstrations and riots which occurred in the wake of theRodney King police brutality trial inLos Angeles. Hongisto cordoned off an entire neighborhood in the Mission district on a Saturday afternoon, establishing a net that saw the arrests of all people on the street, demonstrators and ordinary citizens alike. Hongisto had rented city buses to transport the arrested citizens, and they were processed at a warehouse on San Francisco's wharfs. Instead of merely citing and releasing those arrested, Hongisto ordered that they be arrested and processed at the Santa Rita jail inDublin (Alameda County), rather than in San Francisco County. This enraged progressive activists and civil libertarians as well as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which ordered Hongisto to release the citizens he had arrested. On the following Saturday, Hongisto ordered police to disrupt another demonstration and arrested demonstrators with no order to disperse. Both incidences were later the targets of class action suits against the city of San Francisco, although the former, undertaken by the Lawyer's Guild, would not be resolved for nearly a decade.

Soon thereafter, a gay and lesbian community newspaper, theSan Francisco Bay Times, published a cover graphic of Hongisto's head pasted on the body of a lesbian activist. The activist, dressed in a police uniform, held a giant baton with one end protruding from the groin area as if it were an erect penis. The headline screamed, "Dick's Cool New Tool:Martial Law", in reference to the police actions. What happened afterwards is subject to dispute. Hongisto claimed that he had asked members of the police union to gather copies of the paper to show members of the rank and file what he was enduring in the activist press, in reaction to their criticism of his supposedly failing to properly defend their conduct of the arrests during the King riots. Around 2,000 copies of the free papers were taken fromnews racks by three officers and later found stored at theMission District police station. Hongisto was publicly accused of ordering theconfiscation of the papers in attempt atcensorship, a charge he continued to deny up to his death. After a hearing, the San Francisco Police Commission found him culpable, and Mayor Jordan dismissed him.^[12] One of those three officers,Gary Delagnes, later became president of theSan Francisco Police Officers Association.

In 1993, Hongisto married Susan Chavez, who was 23 years his junior.^[13] On September 24, 1994, Chavez Hongisto died of an asthma attack brought on by smoking crack cocaine.^[5]

Hongisto left public life to become a full-time businessman and real estate investor, apart from an unsuccessful run for County Supervisor in 2000.

Hongisto died of aheart attack on November 4, 2004, at the age of 67, leaving behind a son and daughter.^[4] He married four times,^[4] and was living with a 31-year-old girlfriend at the time of his death.^[2]

• George Washington High School, San Francisco.

• 1936 births
• 2004 deaths
• People from Itasca County, Minnesota
• Dennis Kucinich
• 20th-century American politicians
• American people of Finnish descent
• Sheriffs of San Francisco, California
• Cleveland Division of Police
• People from Bovey, Minnesota
• San Francisco Board of Supervisors members
• San Francisco Police Department chiefs

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