John Lescroart by The Hearing Page B

high moral tone, it had opened the coffers of local contractors who before Gironde would not have given her the time of day.
    And now, having reminded everyone of that, shemoved on to the usual pablum that her staff had spun from the statistical flotsam garnered from any number of often-conflicting sources, taking whatever numbers made her look best.
    They’d had setbacks early on, she admitted, but the numbers on violent crime were down in “the last several months”—actually only in January, but this number had been down enough that Sharron could bring in November and December, when crime had actually been up, and the average would still be less than it had been in the late summer and early autumn.
    They were sending more criminals to jail. This was true because the D.A.’s prosecutors were accepting pleas in exchange for shorter jail terms rather than taking criminals to trial. This speeded up the process and let felons out of jail sooner, but Pratt could say they were sending more bad folks to the slammer.
    She followed up by stating that she was accomplishing all of her good works in spite of the continuing lack of cooperation from the police department. During her last election campaign, she’d fashioned some minor, unproven and isolated allegations of police brutality into a major plank of her platform. She was going to seek out and prosecute bad cops. She was going to create a task force. She was going to bust the “good old boy” network of redneck cops, never mind that the San Francisco police department was fully integrated as to gender and race at all levels of command, and also had fewer police brutality incidents or complaints than any other city of comparable size in the United States.
    The district attorney’s office, Pratt concluded, was functioning “with an efficiency that is the envy of every other bureaucracy in the city and county of San Francisco.”
    She looked out over the crowd, deciding that she had them, that the time was ripe. Lifting some pages from the podium, she dropped them onto the table next to her. “All that said,” she continued, “it must be admitted now that, with hindsight, I can see that some of the outreach programs, initiated by my office in the early days of thisadministration, and with the best of intentions, may not have achieved the success that I hoped for.”
    A palpable sense of expectation swept the room. Suddenly people were sitting up straighter, paying attention. She paused significantly, lifted her chin, steeled her gaze. “In preparation for coming to talk to all of you today, late last week I had written the usual political speech to tell you how well we’re doing. And in fact, as I’ve indicated, there are areas of success to which we can point with pride. Now, though, I’m going to leave my prepared remarks. Please bear with me as I speak from my heart.
    â€œLast weekend, the city suffered a terrible loss. I’m speaking, of course, of Elaine Wager, not only the daughter of our late beloved senator but in her own right one of the great lights in the city’s firmament.” Pratt paused for a sip of water, gathered herself and went on. “One of the most difficult lessons I’ve had to learn on the prosecution side of the bar is that there is real evil cast among us. My training and background has led me to try and understand the causes of antisocial behavior and to seek solutions through incarceration, yes, but also through counseling and education. I remain proud of the programs we’ve adopted that seek to temper justice with mercy, that have tried to inject compassion and understanding into the judicial process.
    â€œBut the events of the past few days have brought home some hard truths and today I am here to deliver a message that may have become blurred in my administration’s zeal for fairness, tolerance and empathy for desperate people who are driven to