A.M. Splash: Gascon Questions Mirkarimi's Guilty Plea; San Lorenzo River Threatens Santa Cruz Boardwalk; CDC Says Raw Milk Risky

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said Thursday he is not convinced Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi really believes he is guilty of the misdemeanor false imprisonment crime he pleaded to earlier this week and will raise his concerns with the judge at sentencing Monday.

A consortium of activists against domestic violence called on Mayor Ed Lee on Thursday to initiate proceedings to remove Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office, calling it a "national embarrassment" that Mirkarimi remains sheriff after pleading guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in a domestic violence case.

Continuing a promising trend, sales of existing single-family homes in the Bay Area increased by 10.7 percent in February compared with a year ago -- the biggest hike for that month in five years, according to a report released Thursday.

A growing chorus of voices is calling for the firing of a UC Berkeley administrator who helped triple her secret sex partner's pay over five years. Calling Diane Leite's punishment "an affront" to the university, several UC Berkeley professors have asked the school's provost to investigate how the matter was handled. They are aghast that, instead of firing her, the university reassigned Leite from her assistant vice chancellor post and will still pay her $175,000 a year.

A second straight day of heavy showers moved the rain-swollen San Lorenzo River perilously closer to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on Thursday. The rain has caused the river to deviate from its normal course and run parallel to the amusement park, threatening to undermine the century-old tourist attraction.

More than four months after an Occupy demonstration shut down the Port of Oakland and devolved into violence, at least nine separate investigations into the ways police officers dealt with the protests in Oakland and on University of California campuses in Davis and Berkeley remain unresolved.

Sonoma County's health care system has been ranked among the best in the nation, and local leaders are crediting a family medicine training program in Santa Rosa and a large network of community health clinics as key factors.

...Raw milk has not been pasteurized, or heated to kill bacteria. A recent CDC study said raw milk products accounted for 36 percent of individuals sickened in milk-related disease outbreaks from 1993 to 2006. That's a large percentage considering that only an estimated 1 percent of milk drinkers consume raw milk.