More sparks are flying between San Francisco police and District Attorney Kamala Harris -- this time over the D.A.'s refusal to prosecute nine women the vice cops arrested on prostitution charges during raids at a couple of "theater" clubs a few weeks back.

"It just leaves me in amazement," says vice Capt. Tim Hettrich, who likened the D.A.'s inaction to "almost legalizing prostitution."

The D.A.'s office sees it a bit differently -- calling the arrests "business as usual" and saying that while the cops were all too eager to arrest the women, they all but ignored the club's owners and the alleged johns.

If it all sounds a bit political, that's because it is.

Sex clubs have long been a tricky proposition in liberal San Francisco politics. For years, the attitude -- especially under libertine former D.A. Terence Hallinan -- seemed to be, "Don't ask, don't tell," especially at clubs whose owners were involved in local politics.

Plus, there's always been the question of whether prostitutes are criminals or victims.

Then, when the new D.A. came into office, the vice squad -- under the supervision of Fajitagate hyper-investigator Joe Dutto -- decided the time had come to start a cleanup. He called the club prostitution "out of control."

The first step was to send letters to a couple of dozen strip clubs warning that investigators would be checking on their business licenses and permits.

Photo: Chris Hardy Photo: Kim Komenich

The cops' move apparently set off an alarm at the D.A.'s office. Because the next thing you know, everyone was having a sit-down at which the cops agreed to back off until Harris could come up with a game plan that included the police and the city attorney -- after ironing out such issues as "abuse of the dancers, police misconduct during arrests and selected enforcement," according to a D.A.'s statement.

And while the cops waited ... and waited ... the public complaints kept coming in. Eventually, they decided to move on their own.

A pair of stings followed, one at the Market Street Theater and the other at the New Century Theater on Larkin Street. In each case, three undercover officers said they were solicited for sex acts by female employees within minutes.

In all, nine women were arrested -- and so was the male general manager of the New Century, who was booked for allegedly keeping a house of ill repute.

The cops said they were slam-dunk cases, but Harris' office took one look at the arrests and tossed them all.

And the bad-mouthing began.

The D.A.'s office says that the cops acted out of hand and that rather than wasting time and money on raiding clubs, they should be on the streets fighting more serious crimes.

In fact, Harris' office said in its statement, "We have had no arrests of street-level pimps and johns."

"That's an outright lie," countered Dutto, who says the cops arrest 50 to 70 johns every month. He also said juveniles picked up for prostitution are routinely interviewed in an attempt to get them to turn on their pimps.

As for the club raids, the cops say they were just doing their jobs.

"When we went out there, we found girls who were engaging in acts of prostitution in the (illegally enclosed) booths, and that's why we took action, " Hettrich said.

This being San Francisco, there's always another card in the deck somewhere. In this case, it's the feeling in the D.A.'s office that the cops are trying to use busts as a way to embarrass Harris for her refusal to bring a death penalty case against the alleged killer of Officer Isaac Espinoza, a popular cop who was shot to death in the Bayview this past spring.

Hettrich called the "payback" spin "absolutely B.S."

Maybe, but it does underscore the still-testy feelings between the two camps down at the Hall of Justice.

Hot evidence: One of the smoking guns that won the San Francisco Unified School District that $43 million fraud settlement was an e-mail between energy company reps that would have made Enron traders proud.

The case stemmed from a $23 million contract the school district awarded back in 1999 to Strategic Resource Solutions of North Carolina, a subsidiary of Progress Energy, to improve the heating and lighting systems at more than 100 schools.

School officials said they were later hit with some $10 million in fraudulent change orders. The district's former facilities manager, Timothy Tronson, was accused of taking bribes from the company to sign off on the extra costs.

Tronson is among a half dozen defendants facing criminal charges from the case and has pleaded not guilty.

Sources close to the district's lawsuit say it was an October 1999 e-mail from Strategic Resource Solutions' project manager, Thomas Marnane (also among those now facing charges), to fellow employee Steve Bowen -- and cc'd to a company vice president -- that helped put the nail in the company's coffin.

In the e-mail, Marnane boasted of how he had negotiated a "huge" $350,000 contract increase, then said the company's job-site manager had wanted to ask for even more, "but I told him he couldn't f -- the dog."

Also revealing was an e-mail that Marnane had written to his company president two weeks earlier, describing a dinner meeting he had arranged with school staff -- including Kelly Nguyen, the longtime secretary and special assistant to then-freshly departed Superintendent Bill Rojas.

"Kelly is important in the district to making things happen (75K a year special assistant)," the e-mail said. "It would take me hours to brief you on all of the nuances of this insane place and a temporary reprogramming of your brain to believe it. (Communist San Francisco)."

Still, Marnane wrote, "I can get more work beyond this change order."

By the way, the very politically connected Burlingame law firm headed by Joe Cotchett (a former business partner of Mayor Gavin Newsom) got $11.6 million for representing the school district in the civil case. Of that, Cotchett turned back $1 million to the district to save the jobs of furloughed school employees.