Food Freebies for Police Pale in Comparison to Politicians’

Just say no (thanks).

Suppertime at a Sizzler restaurant and all is well. Not a San Diego cop in sight.

The police chief has decreed that uniformed personnel are no longer allowed at Topsy’s coffee shop, the Seven Seas coffee shop or any of 17 Sizzlers. No more receiving sustenance at less than market rates.

The chief has acted just in time.

A cop who today might ingest discount coffee might tomorrow be asking for a cut-rate jelly doughnut. From there it seems but a short fall to the hard stuff.

The thought of it depresses the soul: a San Diego cop, all strung out on rye toast and marmalade, reduced to prowling the streets desperately trying to score a cheese omelet.

Wouldn’t Anaheim just love to use an image like that to snatch away our convention trade?

Besides rescuing civic virtue, the chief’s eateries’ ban has yet another salutary effect.

It’s long been clear that San Diego’s coffee shops and family restaurants are nests of moral laxity that cops are well advised to avoid.

Remember it was at a Denny’s that Dick Silberman met to talk dirty with Chris Petti, the minor-league Mafiosi. Thereby began Silberman’s slide to disgrace, divorce and federally-subsidized housing.

And it was at a neighborhood restaurant in Mission Hills that the Hedgecock crowd first met to plot the 1983 mayoral campaign: “Tea and conspiracy, please.”

But we digress. The topic is freeloaders, and the zeal to reeducate them.

For fun, let’s peek at the “gifts” section of the disclosure forms filed by San Diego City Council members: Free concert tickets, free ice skating show tickets, free opera tickets, free dance tickets, free tickets to golf tournaments, free theater tickets, free baskets of fruit, free Stadium Club memberships, free Holiday Bowl tickets, and more.

No chump seats either: always the best in the house.

Then again, not one council member received a 25-cent discount on a cup of coffee at midnight.

So I guess they really haven’t done anything wrong.

Halls of Confusion

Cruel and unusual architecture.

The 4th District Appeals Court has ruled that a heroin user deserves another day in court because of the shoddy shape of the downtown courthouse.

The defendant had pleaded guilty as a way to avoid jail. He was warned that the no-jail agreement would be nullified if he failed to show up at his sentencing.

He failed to show and--you guessed it--the judge sentenced him to the slammer and issued a warrant.

He later appealed on the grounds that the courthouse was so confusing and intimidating that he couldn’t find the right courtroom.

Finding this argument plausible, the appeals court granted his motion to withdraw his guilty plea and begin plea bargaining anew.

The justices opined that finding your way around the courthouse is like hitting a moving target: (The building) “is an architectural onion, a crumbling, dysfunctional building which according to its posted signs is dangerous to one’s physical well-being on mere entry because of exposure to asbestos.”

Political Contradiction

Everywhere you look.

* No friendship in politics.

San Diego Councilman Bruce Henderson and challenger Valerie Stalling got down to serious eye poking in a debate Monday night.

Site of the clash: The Clairemont Friendship Center.

* Spotted at Blockbuster’s in Encinitas: A woman surveying the available videos, using her cellular phone to call her husband at home and read him the titles.

* Driving-safety groups hold a news conference today to plead with people to use seat belts.

Half of all traffic deaths here are attributed to no belts.

For drama, the news conference will be held outside the Scripps Hospital-La Jolla emergency room.

* Proof that coups are not what they used to be.

The best prop planned by the Committee to Ban the Bruce for its anti-Henderson rally Tuesday outside City Hall never materialized.

A 5-foot balloon with a caricature of Henderson (“filled with his hot air”) burst before the group left its headquarters.