San Francisco’s Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned from office last night. Suhr left his position after vowing not to and, after the latest shooting incident between SFPD and an unarmed woman. Activists throughout the city had been calling on Suhr to step down for months; five residents of the city engaged in a 17-day hunger strike as part of protests to get rid of Suhr. Ultimately, Suhr stepped down after being asked to by San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee, who had previously been Suhr’s strongest defender. Speaking to reporters last night, Lee said that the progress the police department had been making was not being made “fast enough.” In regard to the latest shooting Lee said
“These officer-involved shootings, justified or not, have forced our city to open its eyes to questions of when and how police use lethal force. [...] The community is grieving, and I join them in that grief.”
According to Bay Area journalist Dave Cook, activists in the city are angry it took one more police shooting for the mayor to pull his support from Suhr. “Suhr leaves behind a trail of dead bodies since he was appointed chief in 2011 He is not alone in the carnage,” said Cook in a Facebook posting Thursday night. “Next on the list needs to be Mayor Ed Lee who has been a lapdog for White Supremacy in SF. Mayor Lee set the tone for the mass killing, overt racism and racial animosity manifested by SFPD. He stood by like a coward and let this happen.”
A 27-year old woman was sitting in a car that was reportedly stolen in the Bay View district when police approached. They say the woman attempted to drive off and crashed into a vehicle. A police officer fired one shot, killing the woman. Police report that there was “no immediate indication that [the woman] had a weapon or tried to run down [the] police officer before the shooting.
The Department of Justice announced it was investigating the use of force and ethnic disparities in arrests by the San Francisco Police Department this past February.
Obviously. that wasn’t in the nick of time.