Police union must honor reform plan
Imagine a deep-pocketed and domineering special interest lobby that uses menacing scare tactics, bombastic marketing and sizable campaign donations to expand its power at the expense of public safety.
You may think of the National Rifle Association. But there’s another powerful organization in town that employs intimidating strategies to drive reactionary policy at the cost of progress — the San Francisco Police Officers Association.
The POA — the police union— is in many ways nothing like a union. It does not belong to the San Francisco Labor Council. Unlike other workers, its members have life-and-death power over San Francisco’s residents and visitors.
But its actions are what’s most troubling. The POA takes hardline, anti-reform stances that prioritize police impunity over safety and accountability, even denigrating courageous whistle-blowers in the police department and recently disparaging San Francisco Police Chief William Scott for terminating an officer who shot and killed an unarmed civilian. It uses inflammatory tactics that destroy community trust, such as making light of Black Lives Matter. It invariably tries to bully those who call for improved policing — including elected officials, prominent popular culture figures such as Colin Kaepernick, and even its own members who don’t toe the line.
Like the NRA, the POA has amassed influence that frustrates adoption of even popular, commonsense reforms. One way it has undermined public safety is by using or claiming labor law privileges to block, weaken and delay sensible reforms that would make San Francisco safer.
For example, in 2016, President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice and the city collaborated on a review of the Police Department, resulting in 272 robust recommendations to increase safety and justice and bring San Francisco’s policing into the 21st century.
These recommendations were enthusiastically and unanimously endorsed by city leaders. The late Mayor Ed Lee guaranteed their implementation, even after the Trump administration abandoned the process. Chief Scott was hired because he led similar reforms in Los Angeles. The department has been engaged in an expensive and wide-ranging process to implement the recommendations for almost 18 months now.
Yet the POA still attempts to undermine the reform process. For example, it brought a baseless lawsuit against the city, attacking a new, urgently needed use-of-force policy called for by the federal experts’ recommendations. When the POA lost its suit, it immediately appealed.
The POA also paid signature-gatherers to put Proposition H on the June ballot, which would strip the Police Commission and police chief of their authority to set or amend policy controlling when Tasers can be used. Instead, the POA’s new law would allow officers to use Tasers without attempting de-escalation of the situation, even against people who are not violently resisting. Further, future changes to this lax standard would require another election or a four-fifths vote of the Board of Supervisors.
Contrasting it with the collaborative policy-setting process the police department and commission have been pursuing, Scott called the POA’s ballot end run “the antithesis of the spirit of many of the [DOJ] recommendations.” Whether you support Tasers or not, this ballot measure is not the way to determine San Francisco’s Taser policy.
Luckily, there is a rare opportunity to rein in the POA and facilitate the DOJ reforms.
Right now, the city is negotiating a new contract with the POA that likely will cement the city’s police officers as among the nation’s highestpaid. This contract should include a provision — like the one demanded by the #NoJusticeNoDeal campaign — ensuring that, in return for higher pay and benefits, the POA will not invoke labor law processes on any policy enacted or issued to implement the DOJ recommendations.
It’s high time for City Hall to insist that the POA contractually agree to “get with the program” and stop resisting reform.
Anand Subramanian is a senior director at PolicyLink and served as executive director of the San Francisco Blue Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Law Enforcement. John Crew is a San Francisco resident and a retired police practices expert for the ACLU.