good evening and welcome to kqed news room. the allegations against innovate store leeland yi of san francisco and others have generated enough drama for the popular netflix series "house of cards." today in an unprecedented move, the state senate suspended yi along with two other democratic senators embroiled in scandal. yi was arrested wednesday along with suspected chinatown simon chou. the fbi probe ensnared more than two dozen people. at the center of the charges, multiple crimes including bribery, drug distribution, arms trafficking, even murder for hire. shock waves are rippling throughout california. joining me now for the latest developments are nathan haverson from u.c. berkeley. melissa lagos an investigative reporter. and scott, you were at the s meeting today when the suspension decision was made. now the governor has called for all three senators to resign. what's the mood like in san francisco? >> angry, disgusted, shocked. this is the second time in go two months a state senator has been caught allegedly taking bribes from fbi agents in senate history in california no member has been suspended. today three different lawmakers suspended by their colleagues, not allowed to come back to the center leaders say until they're either cleared of their charges. leeland yi takes us to a whole different level. the conversation all year has been about one corruption issue or another whether it was ron calderon caught allegedly taking bribes from fbi agents or roger clyde who was suspected of living outside his district. but bringing in assault weapons from the philippines from a guy pushing for strict gun control makes the charges to a whole different level here. >> marie, let's connect the dot as little bit for the folks at home. it all started with raymond shrimp boy chou. he introduced undercover fbi agents to keith jackson, who is a political consultant and who used to be head of the school board here in san francisco, who's also a close friend of leeland yi. and then keith jackson, you take the story from there. >> so yeah, keith jackson came into the picture it seems like with leeland around 2011 when the senator was running for mayor here in san francisco. and kind of came out as a fundraiser consultant. not quite clear exactly how they kind of hooked up. but essentially, jackson started getting close to chou and others within this chinatown tong and eventually started hitting up thighs undercover agents for campaign contributions. essentially over the next few years, they struck a bunch of deals to make large contributions, well above the city and state limits, next change for in one case a letter and a phone call in support of something at the department of public health, some sort of contract, some legislation that was pending, even a proclamation for a shrimp boy's chinatown association which not sure why that would cost $6800. and culminated as the senator, according to this affidavit, 137 pages that the feds laid out, got sort of more desperate for money and started approaching them about getting this arms trafficking deal, saying he could get shoulder-fired missiles from the philippines potentially. >> and he was desperate for money because he had campaign debts from his run for san francisco mayor, and also he was running for secretary of state. he has now dropped out of that race a day after his arrest. >> that is a whole other layer. scott mentioned the gun stuff. leeland had been an outspoken advocate for gun control measures including trigger locks and cracking down on some automatic weapons. he also was a huge proponent of open government. he was running for secretary of state, which is the state-wide person who oversees elections. so it's interesting. and yes, what the affidavit says is yes, he was desperate to retire this mayoral debt and raise enough money to become secretary of state. i don't know if that all adds up in terms of the amount of money. $70,000 in a mayoral race isn't a ton of money ultimately. but it does seem the picture they paint is of somebody who's increasely sort of despondent and unhappy and desperate to make this work. he's been in office since 1988, i believe. maybe he was just worried about losing his job. >> he's been one of the most prominent asian american politicians in the state. >> absolutely. >> he was the first chinese american elect to the state senate in the assembly first asian american to serve as speaker pro tem. >> his district was about to be eliminated by redistricting. >> yes. so he needed that secretary of state job. i think that might have added to the desperation. i want to ask you, nathan, you met -- let's turn our attention to raymond chou. you met raymond chou about a year ago for a documentary project you've been working on with u.c. berkeley. you've continued to follow the tong, his group in chinatown. what do we know about him? >> well, there's actually quite a bit of information just because he has been such a notorious figure for so long. he came to the united states when he was 16, didn't speak a lick of english. went to galileo high school. got into an altercation pretty quickly. got caught up in street gangs in chinatown rapidly. became an enforcer. and my conversations with him, his first illegal assignment here if you will was to do a hit -- not a hit, to beat up a union leader of a local teamster. and that assignment came from a mafia boss. so they paid him several thousand to go beat up a guy. raymond is a martial arts expert. and from that kind of get go he remained a very notorious figure, growing higher and higher and more powerful. until in the early 90s when he was arrested he was essentially running a large percentage ofation organiof asian organized crime in the united states. >> what's most amazing about the senator and these 25 other defendants, 22 of whom were arrested this week, three of whom outstanding, it reads out of hollywood. you mentioned "house of cards." somebody asked me today what happens to these offices whooik while the senators are out. i joked haven't you watched "house of cards." but it's true. there is gun running, coke deals, conversations in dark karaoke bars and whispers and secrets. and the facts that a state senator got caught up in this is just interesting. it really speaks to a lot of what people think might happen in these sort of shady organizations, but what nobody knows. >> can i tell you what blows my mind here? they ran four years of wiretaps and surveillance on shrimp boy gangster. i'm really into gangsters. this is interesting. four years. but what do they get? they get money laundering, they get some stolen alcohol and some counterfeit cigarettes. four years. that's what they get. they run it on a state senator and his crony for one year and get international arm trafficking, drug smuggling, they get pay to play and they get -- >> murder for hire. >> -- murder for hire. so really it seems like all the excitement's in the capitol. >> speaking of the capitol, let's go back to the capitol and talk to scott deter. the three state lawmakers embroiled, three in three months essentially. is this a case of a few bad apples? or it says something bigger about the state of ethics in our state legislature? >> i think it raises a lot of questions about ethics. i think there's frustration from good government folks, because there's not really a clear solution here. how do you address the fact that a lawmaker is allegedly trying to ship arms in from outside the country to get just a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions? california already has pretty tight compared to other states campaign finance laws, ethics requirements, reporting requirements. so there's a question of what can you do to solve this problem. but going back to those wiretaps, you have recordings of leeland yi allegedly saying hey we have to be careful because the fbi just busted one of my colleagues for taking bribes. little does he know that the fbi's listening in on that conversation as well. i think when you have two -- the right case is not about living in the district. you kind of have to separate that here. but when you have two different lawmakers simultaneously being so willing to take money in order to do official business, i think a lot of people are concerned about how many of those conversations are happening when the fbi isn't listening. >> you bring up an interesting point. clearly leeland yi had some idea about what the legal boundaries are in the conversations mentioned in that entitlement. marissa, does this bring up a point about possible concerns about entrapment in that a lot of these scenarios were fabricated by the fbi? does it raise the issue of entrapment and make it more difficult for them to prove these charges in court? >> well, i think what you see if you read the large document is that they were very careful to make the charges around the senator specifically federal charges, in which the entraepment laws are slightly different. under federal law you can nudge somebody towards things as long as it's something they would have probably done otherwise. so i think the feds were very careful in the way that they presented this case against the senator. they also have multiple charges against him on the bribery front. only one on the arms trafficking. if you add them up up to 125 years possible prison time. i would be surprised if we saw this go to trial. i think that when you throw charges like that at somebody there's probably a big incentive on both sides to cut a deal. who knows what else they might want to hear from him. >> we've heard a lot about leeland yi and raymond chou. we haven't heard quite as much about keith jackson. what do we know about him? >> as you said earlier, he's a form school board president here. over the last 10, 15 years he worked as a consultant on the hunters point shipyard project, both i think directly for lenar corporation but also through sam singer. crisis communications expert. and he's really a bit of an enigma here. i've talked to people who said he's the nicest guy in the world. i can't believe this happened. we've talked to other people who said you know he was always a little shady. but fact that he got so deep into this sort of underworld, the feds allege that he was doing gun deals with his son, that they had sort of pushed saying if you need a hit taken out we can help you facilitate that. certainly they're saying he was selling drugs. so it really doesn't jibe with his public persona. bribes might be one thing. when you go into murder for hire we're in another realm. >> real quickly, nathan, are there other names in that indictment tied to the chinatown gangs? >> yeah. george nie has been charged. he was a form leader in the waching. some of the publications i've been reading now are saying he's still a current member of the waching. that wasn't my understanding but he was a form leader in the waching and arrested and fled to hong kong for a few years in the 90s. >> and also more court appearances expected next week. >> yeah, we'll see. leeland yi will be in court on monday for an arraignment. everyone else, shrimp boy and keith jackson were in court on friday. they were denied bail. so i think most of the other defendants will be back up in front of a judge next week. >> okay. much more to come. well, scott detro in sacramento, marissa lagos and nathan habberson thanks for joining us. you will find all kqed's coverage of this story at kqed.org. when susan heldman was chosen five years ago as the first female chancellor in the history of u.c. san francisco she was in charge of drug development at the biotech company genentec. in addition to its various schools, including medicine, dentistry and nursing, she took over the $4 billion enterprise at a time of severe budget cuts. at the end of this month she leaves ucsf to head up the bill and mel linda gates foundation in seattle. chancellor heldman sat down i believe and being in san francisco, being in california i think it's in our dna to believe that healthy dialogue and debate brings better outcomes. >> chancellor susan hellman, thank you so much. >> thank you. gentrification as interpreted by youth. that's the focus of a new work by the push dance company as it explore the transformation of the bay view hunter's point neighborhood in san francisco. concerns about whether local residents will be priced out of their own neighborhood are brought to i loto life in a uni performance that premieres this weekend combining dance with poetry. >> the sights and sounds seem familiar. a room fills over with focused intensity as a dance troupe rehearses for its upcoming premiere. but there's nothing ordinary about this performance. it's called the point shipyard project. and it's a genre bending mix of poetry and dance created with the help of the third street youth center and clinic. >> we are collaborating in order to learn more about the toxic cleanup at the bay view hunter's naval shipyard and how that will affect the youth at the center ten years from now. >> it was a place in the area [ inaudible ] it was never safe when the government came in. caution. >> the bay view hunter's point neighborhood is located in san francisco's southeastern corner. it's one of the few areas in the city that has not yet been greatly affected by gentrification. but after nearly a century at a working shipyard neighborhood, inhabited predominantly by african-americans, that's starting to change. bay view hunter's point is in the midst of a radical transformation. the third street light rail projects were finished in 2007. and $8 billion redevelopment program is in progress. and the navy shipyard is undergoing a massive cleanup of toxins. >> when i first brought the subject of gentrification to the youth center and clinic, the youth did not know about the cleanup at the shipyard. and there is going to be a whole new neighborhood and development along that area. and they wanted to know exactly how that would affect them. >> this will no longer be the hunter's point we've known all our lives. >> the long-time residents are facing a particularly complex problem. how do you support improvements to your neighborhood if they may ultimately result in the loss of your home? simpson believes you start by helping people tell their stories. >> my neighborhood -- contaminated -- after the examination i felt the discrimination. >> push ace dance company that focuses on social topics. and we usually look for stories that are untold or not really seen in the public eye. so it was very natural for us to reach out to the youth and ask them, hey, can you please tell us your stories about what you think the naval shipyard will look like in 200024. >> the youth recorded their monologues establishing a road map for creating the choreography that would merge the spoken word with movement. >> you're going to do anger like let it come through. >> for simpson, this melding of poetry and dance isn't simply a tool for social change, it's also a personal exploration. >> this is very important to the dancing. for me as a choreographer, there are parts where i take each word from the poem and make a movement specifically to that word. >> so give me some examples of certain words and how you translate that into gestures for the dancers. >> well, for example, we have brain cells. >> okay. >> contamination. examinatio examination. >> asthma. >> break them down. >> so this is the story about a young man named sam owens and his poem is talking about the discrimination in his neighborhood and how the toxins affect his ability to think, go to school, read, and just learn. >> the point ship quarter project looked to the museum of the african diaspora for support and development. it's the ideal venue for the performance. >> this was another opportunity to look at african-american culture and how we adapt and bring culture to new areas as well. >> simpson considers the piece to be part performance, part museum installation. it starts with the audience wandering through the space, interacting close up with the push dancers. by the end of the piece, the audience has been ushered into the top floor gallery to have a direct personal experience with the dancers and the words of the bay view youth. >> do not wear your pants low. do not wear dew rags or head gear. >> one of the poets is seeing the piece for the first time. >> suits are always fine as long as they can count the numbers on your back. be a number. do not be a statistic. >> to watch it turn into something that like kind of explained how i feel walking down the street in most neighborhoods, anyway, it was really comforting to watch other people feel the same way i did. >> like seven people on stage feel and understand what i'm saying and then express it in that way. it was wonderful. >> push dance company is a young company. and we're also a part of the discussion when it comes to displacement and diaspora in san francisco. the residents of bay view hunter's point are facing the question of whether or not they'll be priced out. and i think that in some ways we're kindred spirits in that artists are also being priced out. [ applause ] >> for a century, this hard-working neighborhood has supported the navy and other industries at great physical cost to the residents. but when the cleanup and redevelopment are complete, what will remain of the families, the artists, the communities that built this neighborhood from the ground up? >> i think what should happen for that area is that the residents of bay view hunter's point have a voice in how their neighborhood is being developed. >> and earlier today, another dance event took place all around the bay area and the world. professional dancers and dance fans took part in what's called dance anywhere, a simultaneous worldwide public art performance. to see some of those performances, go to kqed.org/arts. thanks for watching. have a good night.  was produced in high definition. ♪ every single bite needed to be -- [ laughter ] >> twinkies in there. >> wow. >> it's like a great big hug. >> it's about as spicy as i can handle. put chili powder in my baby foot. >> it's all over the table and a lot of

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