A sheriff who can’t shoot straight
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi just can’t seem to stop embarrassing himself and the city he was elected to protect and serve.
Is it really asking too much of a sheriff to demonstrate the baseline requirements of the job: Obey the law, follow the department rules, keep inmates in jail and provide straight answers to questions? Mirkarimi has come up short on all counts. His tenure was tainted from the start, when he was placed on probation after pleading guilty in a domestic violence case, and it has been marked by a steady succession of blunders and misjudgments. He put public safety at risk by imposing a policy that went beyond the law (effectively putting a “gag order” on his deputies to keep them from cooperating with federal immigration authorities) and even defied a department policy he signed when he failed to inform police about his October 2014 collision in a cityowned car.
His license to drive was suspended when he then failed to file the required report with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
His hubris and incompetence know no bounds.
In the latest Mirkarimi mess, a Sheriff ’s Department sergeant in charge of the shooting range was reassigned to a jailhouse post after he questioned whether the sheriff, a former probationer, was eligible to take a marksmanship test. Sheriff ’s Department officials have denied that the transfer was made in retribution or that Mirkarimi had anything to do with it. But it’s telling that concern about the suspiciously timed transfer is being raised by the leader of the department association representing supervisors and managers. As Capt. Lisette Adams noted, “It could be for a shortage of supervisors, but other supervisors, were not moved from nonpositions.” It’s also instructive that the association has endorsed Mirkarimi’s challenger, former interim Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, in the November election. No doubt the department’s dedicated professionals are tired of having its reputation tarred by their leader.
Mirkarimi finally got his chance to take the marksmanship test on Sept. 18 — and he failed to achieve the required 80 percent score.
We won’t draw judgment on whether San Francisco is safer or more dangerous with an unarmed sheriff. We’ll also stay out of the dispute of whether he is violating department rules that require sworn officers to pack a firearm while wearing a uniform in public.
The larger question is whether Mirkarimi belongs in that uniform.
The courts deprived him of his gun, the DMV suspended his driver’s license, and now it’s the voters’ turn to take away his badge in the Nov. 3 election.