Two days after the #Frisco5 hunger strikers stopped their fast they were vindicated - in all fifty-two diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades.
On Monday, as #Frisco500 participants marched in front of and around City Hall, taking up where the #Frisco5 left off in demanding that Chief Suhr resign or be fired, a volunteer, independent Blue Ribbon Panel, convened by the San Francisco District Attorney, released a scathing report on the San Francisco Police Department.
Scathing enough that anyone who reads about it who isn't named Mayor Ed Lee With Head in Sand should immediately conclude that Suhr should be fired and cited for gross ineptitude.
As the Hills.org headline about the panel's report put it
SF Police Department is a total godawful mess
Some of the key takeaways from the report as noted by 48hills:
- the department allows rogue officers to operate with impunity and there's a profound lack of accountability at all levels
- SFPD is influenced by the [Police Officers Association] and the POA's influence has been an impediment to open dialogue and sustained reforms.
- The SFPD has fine policies around racial disparities in policing, but those rules aren't getting followed
- African American and Hispanic people are far more likely than whites or Asians to be searched after traffic stops, although there are far fewer instances when those searches lead to the discovery of anything illegal.
- hiring and promotion process is a disaster - there are no clear rules, there is no transparency and no published criteria.
- actual and perceived nepotism [exists] in the department.
- the public basically has no idea whether officers are ever held accountable at all
- The discipline imposed by the chief of police is almost always mild, mostly just admonishment.
- The Office of Citizen Complaints has not sustained a complaint of biased policing since 2012, although more than 200 have been filed.
and, as perhaps a summary
John Crew, a former police-practices lawyer for the ACLU, noted in his public comments... "We have invested in professional law enforcement... And what we got was amateur hour."
The report doesn't even go into the wanton disregard SFPD officers have for the Chief's instructions (or else they realize, perhaps, that his directives are of the "wink, wink, nod, nod variety"). As Karen Fleshman notes on medium.com notes today
In 2013 Chief Suhr issued a Department Bulletin, "Response to Mental Health Calls With Armed Suspects" that says in relevant part "if officers have reasonable cause to believe that the person suffering an apparent mental crisis is not a threat to any other person the officers shall observe, maintain a safe distance, and attempt to stabilize the scene until the arrival of the Supervisor who will assume command."
[And] In the wake of Mario Woods December 2, 2015 killing, the San Francisco Police Commission recommended a change in use of force policy announced February 22, 2016. Chief Suhr claims he has been continuously emphasizing the time and distance of the 2013 directive.
[But] SFPD struck again, killing [homeless, possibly mentally-ill, no threat to the public] Luis Gongora... within 22 seconds of arriving on the scene.
and
District Attorney George Gascon and Public Defender Jeff Adachi call SFPD "systemically racist." It is rare for a District Attorney and Public Defender to agree on anything.
San Francisco Police Department Chief Greg Suhr seems incapable, or unwilling, to make meaningful changes in his department and has clearly perpetuated, for the five years of his tenure, a culture that should be anathema.
In fact just today, yet ANOTHER racist text by a veteran SFPD officer was revealed:
The San Francisco Examiner has since learned Sgt. Lawrence Kempinski, a 17-year veteran who most recently worked in the Bayview Station, allegedly made the remarks in front of other officers who reported the incident.
Kempinski allegedly said he only transferred to the station to "kill n----rs," according to a source in the department.
The #Frisco5 have been right all along. That Mayor Lee continues to stand with his Chief of Police is tragedy, farce, and disgrace.
Below are some tweetpics and tweetvideos from yesterday's day long action at City Hall and from the Blue Ribbon Panel public presentation.