Police indicted over fajitas fight 'cover-up'

It started with a fight over a bag of steak fajitas. And now, mystifyingly, it has turned into the biggest scandal in the history of the San Francisco Police Department.

For several days California's city by the bay has been in turmoil after the indictment of 10 police officers, including the chief and six members of his immediate command staff. Their alleged crime: covering up an investigation into a late-night brawl last November in which three off-duty officers attacked two men as they were leaving work at one of the city's trendier restaurants.

Nobody can quite believe that such a seemingly small, if regrettable, incident has mushroomed into a major criminal investigation of the cream of San Francisco law enforcement. And nobody quite knows who to blame – the police officials themselves or San Francisco's district attorney.

The indicted police chief, Earl Sanders, is on indefinite medical leave. The district attorney, Terence Hallinan, and the mayor, Willie Brown, are at each other's throats.

The brawl was certainly bizarre. The three off-duty cops apparently jumped on the two men for the take-away fajitas they were carrying. What happened from there is unclear, not least because the most detailed evidence is part of a secret grand jury investigation. Mr Hallinan insists the evidence is genuine and shocking. But his opponents, who attended a preliminary court hearing this week, said the indictments were laughable.