S.F. officers using force less this year

San Francisco police officers are using force less often as the department enacts reforms and deploys body-worn cameras, but the uses of force continue to reveal wide racial disparities, according to department figures released Monday.

From January through March, uses of force were down 15.8 percent when compared with the same period in 2016, before the introduction of wearable cameras. Officers used force in 352 total incidents, officials said, with 802 actions taken against 427 people.

Uses of force include pointing a gun at someone — which accounts for up to two-thirds of the reportable cases — as well as using physical control, striking a subject with a baton, fist or other object, using pepper spray, or firing a beanbag projectile.

Referring to reform efforts begun in response to several controversial police shootings, Police Chief Bill Scott, who took command in January, said, “The data show that the department’s efforts to train our officers on tactics such as

de-escalation and proportionality is paying off.”

The department’s figures showed that roughly 41 percent of the uses of force in the first quarter of the year involved black people, while 23 percent involved Latinos.

According to the U.S. census, African Americans made up 5.7 percent of the city’s population in 2015, while Latino residents were 15.3 percent.

The drop in uses of force shrunk the racial disparity slightly. In the same time period in 2016, 46 percent of uses of force involved black people, and 25 percent involved Latinos. Use of force involving white people this year was up when compared with 2016.

City Public Defender Jeff Adachi, whose office is studying racial disparities in the criminal justice system, said the statistics “mirror what other studies have found across the country,” and demanded more scrutiny.

“It points to the fact that San Francisco has the same problems of officers using force against black and brown people more readily and often than their white counterparts,” he said. “It’s a result of both explicit and implicit bias, lack of effective training and most importantly, lack of accountability.”

Sgt. Michael Andraychack, a police spokesman, said the racial breakdown for uses of force were consistent with arrest rates for the same period.