S.F. police union reelects Montoya as its president by narrow vote in runoff

Tony Montoya was reelected as president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association by a scant 86 votes Sunday after a runoff election.

Montoya received 848 votes from the union’s membership, edging out Rich Cibotti, who had 762 votes, according to election results obtained by The Chronicle.

The election was forced into a runoff after Montoya failed to secure 50% of the votes during elections for the union’s executive board late last month.

Montoya pledged to take a more diplomatic approach to city politics than his predecessors after taking over when former President Martin Halloran resigned in May 2018.

Montoya famously fired union consultant and former President Gary Delagnes over a controversial Facebook post shortly after the late Public Defender Jeff Adachi died last February.

Cibotti, a San Francisco police sergeant at the Tenderloin Station and an attorney who defends officers in police discipline cases, ran to be a tougher leader in the mold of Delagnes and Halloran.

While Montoya may have taken a more calculating approach in City Hall, his policies and decisions were never a significant departure from the union’s longheld stances.

Most recently, Montoya called on the federal government to step in when San Francisco’s new progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, opted to pull back charges against a man accused of attacking police with a bottle.

The defendant, Jamaica Hampton, 24, was shot by police in the altercation and his leg was amputated during his hospitalization.