Richard “Dick” Hongisto was born in 1936 in Minnesota to Finnish immigrants. He and his family moved to San Francisco in 1942 where Hongisto’s father got work at the Hunters Point Shipyard[1]. Hongisto grew up in the Richmond District, attending George Washington High, San Francisco City College[1A] and San Francisco State University[2]. While at San Francisco State he joined the San Francisco Police Department.
Hongisto was an in-your-face kind of guy. Good looking with dark hair and blue eyes, he was always vocal and never afraid to tackle thorny political issues head on. He was the community liaison officer for the LGBTQ community and a co-founder of Officers for Justice which filed a discrimination suit against the City and resulted in the changing of hiring and promotional practices of minorities within the SFPD. Hongisto was the only white witness to testify at the trial.
In the late 1960s Hongisto abruptly resigned from the SFPD and became a reporter for KQED. In 1971 he came out of nowhere to declare his candidacy for San Francisco Sheriff. He won the election because of the support from the minority voters he had advocated for while working as a cop. He was the first San Francisco sheriff to hire gay and lesbian deputies and he appointed the first African American UnderSheriff and the City’s first openly gay Deputy Sheriff. In 1972 Hongisto was the first San Francisco elected official to ride in the annual San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. He publicly supported Harvey Milk’s bid for Board of Supervisors[3].
The hallmark of Hongisto’s administration was prisoner rehabilitation, specifically in the San Francisco County jails. In 1972 he convinced Bill Graham to sponsor a benefit at Winterland[4] to raise money for the County Jail Inmate Welfare Fund. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were the headliners. That same year, when he felt the mayor had not allocated enough federal funds for jails, Hongisto made national headlines when he held a press conference and told Mayor Joseph Alito to “kiss my ass”.
Hongisto became the conduit of communication between the New World Liberation Front (NWLF) and the media. Between 1974 – 1977 the NWLF claimed responsibility for over 50 bombings, including a bomb left at Dianne Feinstein’s home[5]. The Board of Supervisors was infuriated by Hongisto’s involvement with the organization, though Hongisto would claim that he was only a conduit and nothing more.
The International Hotel (I-Hotel), located at the corner of Kearny and Jackson, was built in 1907. It became a low-income single-room residential hotel that was home to a large Filipino American population. At the time, the area around the I-Hotel was called Manila Town. In the late 1960s the hotel was bought with plans to convert the land into a parking lot. Tenants were able to work with the owners in procuring a lease agreement that was to be signed in March 1969. The evening before the signing, an arson fire ripped through the top floor of the I-Hotel, killing three people. It gave the owners the excuse that the building was unsafe, but public opposition led to renovations by students and community volunteers which left the building safe for another four years. In 1973 a Bangkok tycoon bought the I-Hotel with the intention of developing a high-rise hotel and office building. The eviction of the 196 tenants gained local sympathy, including Jim Jones[6], who sent thousands of protestors to help stop the eviction. Hongisto, as Sheriff, was ordered to enforce an eviction notice, which he refused to do. The California Supreme Court ultimately mandated that Hongisto enforce the evictions. When he again refused he was fined $500 and spent five days in jail. Three months later, on August 4th at 4AM, Hongisto finally succumbed to pressure. With riot police, mounted patrols and an anti-sniper team, Hongisto led the raid at the I-Hotel, pushing through a 3,000 person human barricade that tried to block their entrance. Tenants were physically removed from the premises and Hongisto himself would be forever memorialized as he was photographed swinging a sledge hammer towards a locked door. Toilets were broken and walls were knocked down so that the building was uninhabitable. Hongisto would later say that the I-Hotel eviction was the most distasteful job he performed while in public office. The demolition of the building happened two years later, but development of the site was held up for years. Finally, in 1982, after continued public pressure, the Board of Supervisors voted that the site be developed into low-income housing. In 2005 a new residential hotel called the I-Hotel was finally built over the ruins of the old. It was added to the National Registry of Historic Places on June 15, 1977.
Soon after the I-Hotel evictions, Hongisto accepted a job as Cleveland’s Chief of Police where he only served for three months. He then went to New York City to head up New York State’s prison system, though the New York Legislature refused to confirm him. In 1980 Hongisto returned to San Francisco and ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was elected and helped place Proposition M on the ballot which, when it passed, limited the construction of high-rise commercial buildings in the Financial District[6A].
In 1990 Hongisto was elected City Assessor. He ran for mayor the following year but lost to Police Chief Frank Jordan. Jordon appointed Hongisto San Francisco’s Police Chief. His tenure lasted less than six weeks because of his handling of the Rodney King Riots[7]: he ordered an entire neighborhood in the Mission District cordoned off and the arrest of anyone found walking in it. People who were arrested were put on City buses and transferred to a warehouse along the Embarcadero. Instead of citing and releasing these citizens, Hogisto had them transferred to the Santa Rita jail in Dublin where they were processed. The Board of Supervisors immediately ordered their release. The next weekend, Hongisto had officers disrupt another demonstration, this time without an Order to Disperse. An LBGTQ newspaper, The San Francisco Bay Times, published a scathing article with a graphic cover cartoon. While Hongisto would go to his grave denying he ever had any involvement in what followed, three police officers took 2,000 copies of the newspaper off news stands and stored them in a Mission District police station. The San Francisco Police Commission found Hongisto culpable of attempted censorship and he was fired.
After decades of public service, Hongisto ran a security firm that ultimately went bankrupt. He died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 67. He had been married four times and had two children. At the time of his death he was living with his 31-year-old girlfriend. At the news of his death Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered that City flags be flown at half mast.
[1] Hunters Point Shipyard: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4237
[1A] San Francisco City College: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4490[2] San Francisco State University: story coming July 18th
[3] Harvey Milk: story coming November 27th
[4] Winterland: story coming December 31st
[5] Dianne Feinstein: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4348
[6] Jim Jones: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4114
[6A] Financial District: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4109[7] Rodney King Riots: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2912
