S.F. police: No letup on the reforms feds have recommended

The San Francisco Police Department said Tuesday it remains committed to the reforms recommended last year by the Department of Justice, despite Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent announcement that his office will shift resources away from assisting local jurisdictions with community policing efforts.

“Our work is not done,” San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said in a statement. “The SFPD are determined to strengthen trust between law enforcement officers and the communities we serve.”

Sessions said last Wednesday that his office would focus more on delivering resources to local law enforcement agencies that would help fight violent crime, rather than “expensive wideranging investigative assessments.”

The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, began reviewing the San Francisco Police Department following the 2015 killing of Mario Woods and other deadly police shootings. The federal report, released in October 2016, recommended 272 department-wide changes.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee hired Chief Scott in December as part of an effort to implement the reforms. Former Chief Greg Suhr resigned amid intense public backlash, following several high-profile police killings of African Americans and Latinos.

The recommendations, which the Police Department characterized as a “road map” to building trust between officers and the public, included better tracking of use-of-force incidents, updating community policing efforts and being more transparent in its disciplinary process. The department said it had moved forward with 45 percent of the Department of Justice’s recommendations before Sessions’ announcement.

The report also said the Police Department should “strongly consider” giving officers electronic stun guns as an alternative to using deadly force. The city has been holding recent community forums to gather public input about whether to equip officers with stun guns. Scott and the police officers’ union both support arming officers with stun guns.

“We are committed to working together with City Hall to pursue sensible reforms that protect the public and police officers,” Martin Halloran, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said in a statement. “Tasers, which were included in the Department of Justice recommendations, are a key issue for police officers and we will keep advocating for them.”

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi expressed concern over Sessions’ move away from the police reform initiatives and called for the California attorney general to step in.

“The fact that the Department of Justice is jumping ship and abandoning its critical oversight of reform efforts is of grave concern,” Adachi said in a statement.