Mistakes doomed DUI case against former firefighter Michael Quinn

A seemingly simple drunken driving case against a former San Francisco firefighter whose rig struck a motorcyclist collapsed under the weight of police and Fire Department bungling, inexplicable delays and dubious testimony, a Chronicle review of grand jury transcripts shows.

The two-year prosecution of ex-firefighter Michael Quinn — whose rig was involved in the crash that badly injured Jack Frazier on the night of June 29, 2013 — ended abruptly Friday when a judge found the investigation was so badly botched there had not been any legal justification to arrest Quinn.

Quinn’s criminal attorney has said prosecutors unfairly sought to “bury” his client with unrefuted grand jury evidence and that he was the victim of injustice. Prosecutors say they will probably appeal the decision by Superior Court Judge Kay Tsenin, hoping they can salvage their case against Quinn, now 44, the son of a retired SFFD battalion chief.

A Chronicle review of more than 1,100 pages of grand jury testimony reveals pervasive problems in the probe of the crash that occurred on the busy Saturday night before the annual Gay Pride Parade.

The evidence showed it took police more than four hours after Quinn showed up at his fire station to perform the test to establish he was legally drunk.

Given 'more consideration’

Other testimony showed the officers failed to secure Quinn’s firehouse locker. Ultimately, one officer acknowledged Quinn was “given a little more consideration” that night because he was a firefighter.

Grand jury evidence showed that the Fire Department failed to properly verify the accuracy of the Breathalyzer test equipment it had relied on to show Quinn was drunk.

Several firefighters — including two assistant chiefs — were suspended by Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White for mishandling the incident. A number of those firefighters have challenged their suspensions.

In dismissing the three drunken driving counts against Quinn, Tsenin cited what she said was a “Keystone Cops” investigation that made it impossible to establish the legal basis for the arrest, let alone the charges.

The tangled case began when the motorcyclist, now 52 — who had the green light — hit Quinn’s rig at 11:33 p.m.

Video evidence presented to the grand jury showed the truck did not slow as a precaution — as required by department rules — when it ran the red light at Fifth and Howard streets at about 25 mph.

Prosecutors showed the grand jury other video evidence that Quinn guzzled more than 3½ pitchers of water at a nearby bar to flush his system and chewed gum to cover his breath.

One firefighter who visited him in the Chieftain bar was there when Quinn vomited in a trash can. But when asked by a superior about Quinn’s whereabouts about 20 minutes later, Warren Der acknowledged he did not say anything about what he had just seen.

“I didn’t remember seeing Quinn in the pub,” Der told the grand jury. “I think at the time I didn’t remember.”

Prosecutor Michael Sullivan suggested that Quinn left the scene just after midnight because Assistant Fire Chief Art Kenney had just arrived and Quinn “knew he was going to be tested.”

Quinn walked out the side door of the bar and vanished. The first traffic officer at the scene, Erik Leung, testified that he was delayed 30 minutes because it was a very busy night and arrived after Quinn had left.

Leung asked about the driver, and firefighters told him Quinn was gone. Leung wrongly assumed Quinn was being tested for drugs and alcohol. Leung acknowledged that he assumed the motorcyclist was at fault based on what he was told and never tried to find Quinn before he left to interview Frazier at the hospital.

Quinn eventually showed up at Station No. 1, near Fifth and Folsom streets, just after 2 a.m. He was supposed to be tested for alcohol with equipment that had to be regularly certified as accurate. But, as it turned out, the equipment Assistant Chief Dave Franklin used to test Quinn had not been properly calibrated.

High blood alcohol readings

The California Highway Patrol requires that such equipment be tested every 10 days, but the Fire Department altered that standard to once every 30 days, the grand jury was told.

Quinn registered a 0.188 percent blood alcohol level at 2:13 a.m. and 0.187 when he was retested three minutes later. In Quinn’s third test, at 3:05 a.m., the equipment registered a blood alcohol level of 0.161 percent. All three readings were at least twice the legal limit to drive a car and far above the 0.04 limit to drive a fire rig.

Leung, the first officer at the accident scene, testified he was busy with robbery suspects and that it wasn’t until about 3:30 a.m. that he received word that Quinn was at the fire station.

After arriving 47 minutes later, Leung learned of the repeated breath tests and saw that Quinn was confined to a small communications room at the station.

But rather than arrest Quinn, Leung asked fire officials if he wanted a union representative present. He acknowledged that Quinn was “given a little more consideration” because he was a firefighter.

It wasn’t until after 6 a.m., when another police investigator, Lori Cadigan, arrived, that Quinn was finally given a blood test. Leung wrongly told Quinn he had no choice but to consent to a blood test, however. Officers are by law required to give someone suspected of driving under the influence a choice of test methods.

Even at 6:17 a.m., Quinn’s blood alcohol level was at 0.11 percent, still above the legal driving limit of 0.08 percent and suggesting he could have had as much as 0.31 percent blood alcohol at the time of the crash.

Evidence presented to grand jury showed that police never secured Quinn’s locker. The Fire Department secured the locker a day after the incident and found nothing incriminating when they searched.

'I went by the book’

Leung defended his actions, even when the prosecutor stressed that delaying to allow for union representation could have meant the loss of critical evidence of alcohol in Quinn’s blood.

“I went by the book to the best of my ability,” he said, adding that there is “no hard and fast rule” on when to test in such a situation.

Quinn quit his job after the incident. Frazier is suing him and the city in civil court, with a trial set for later this year.

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com