In reply to Jarrod Valentine.

the hazards of wealthy donors throwing money at propositions because someone asked them to.

How was the estimate of “more than one in three San Francisco police chases over recent years ended in injury or death” calculated? The chart in the linked article shows 38 total injuries and fatalities out of 150 pursuits. Not great, but far less than 1/3.

In reply to nomad.

San francisco, you need to stop the infighting between yourselves and come together and solve the city problems. The data for San Francisco is not good:https://www.data-z.org/state_data_and_comparisons/city/sanfrancisco

Larsen, for his part, said he was unaware of that process.

this sums up everything chris larsen knows about the police commission. what a joke.

Both sides of criminal enforcement needs reforms. If you are looking at this from only one side of the cup, instead of both sides, this is wrong. There are has to be balance for both sides to resolve the crimalitity problem. The cops and police commissioners have to be able to do their jobs. There has to be checks and balances on both sides for things to work. While both sides are arguing, the city is losing its taxbase (employers and employees), businesses are closing or leaving, city government will eventually cut services, implement other cost cutting procedures, citizens are leaving are not good. If you look across the bay, Oakland is becoming more like a ghost town. If this something you want SF to become, you are doing a great job of being a problem rather than a solution of your own doing. The blame is the fault of poor city governance, which has to make compromising corrective actions for its taxpayers and businesses if really cares about its future. If you don’t this soon, expect to be like Oakland that had so much potential to be more but lost it due to many bad years of poor governance.

The police union has all the power in SF. They need to be broken. I don’t know if its possible but a mayor (whoever that will be) needs to put them on the sidelines and call in the National Guard for law & order. Break it and start over. Otherwise, this (lack of a PO ‘doing their job’) will continue for another 50 years. Also, to one of the points above, I have seen firsthand the true lack of qualified candidates for the academy. The diversity policy is a joke.

The police union in this city has been corrupt and a bully for years. These are the people who wrote E and exactly why people should vote against it.

In reply to Guscio.

But crime by cops get a pass from you?

Campers,

SFPD is more like that Mob Army in ‘Blazing Saddles’ than a real Police Force.

They put 10 Officers on Foot Patrol out of 2,300 and brag about their Foot Patrols.

They told Police Commission Vice President Max Carter-Oberstone that getting him some data he asked for would take 3 months and he sat down and hammered available Public Records on Google and got the stuff in 20 minutes.

Worse thing is that they very recently stopped arresting felons (I’d call beating a 14 Mission Bus driver bloody a ‘felony’) standing right in front of them to make Chesa Boudin look bad.

Cause their Union told them to.

They don’t listen to the Chief.

He was appointed by the Mayor and is an LA Out-of-Towner who didn’t attend a Catholic San Francisco High School and Gascon laughed and didn’t believe it when he heard that’s how they picked Command Staff then found out it was true.

They are like a 2,300 Student High School that lasts for 30 to 35 years.

They need an Elected Police Chief to get this directionless gang running around carrying guns.

I walk through 16th and Mission at least couple times a day cause I’m a Local at 14th and Valencia and nosey and the cops should establish a Home Base even if it’s just a car and then one stand there and the others fan out in different directions for a block each around the BART Plaza and meet people.

They all just stand around like a bunch of ducks quacking to each other.

I know some of em and they are nice dedicated guys and gals.

And, for gods sake they don’t know any better.

They are poor led.

Don’t give them or the Mayor any more power.

I’m trying to get Lurie to offer to give up the Mayoral power to appoint the Police Chief if he’s elected and work for a Charter Amendment to make the position one responsible to the People at the Ballot Box.

So far, he hasn’t taken any of my ideas but he’s leading in the polls so there’s that.

No on E for so many many reasons, most of which because it gives the ‘Blazing Saddles’ gang more power.

What’s that line ?

Yeah …

“Badge !!??!! I don’t need no STINKING Badge !!??!!

Speaking of Lateral Transfers with Violent Pasts is another story …

No on EEEEEEE

Yes, on the Giants.

Spring Training going yet ?

h.

1

In reply to Guscio.

You’re against crime, unless it’s committed by a Police officer, apparently. Prop E is about reducing police accountability and oversight.

” Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and brief CEO of OpenAI, gave $49,000 in support of the ballot measure but told Mission Local he was not familiar with it.” Perfect. It could not be better said Emmett. You have so much money, $49,000 is chump change. We can’t expect a man of your eminence to bother himself with such trivialities. But you’re so brilliant, even your ignorance pays off. Relieving officers of the onerous task of reporting on use of force will open up plenty of time for video games. Ka-ching!!

In reply to Guscio.

Everyone is against crime!
No one is in favor of crime.
But let’s vote for something that works not something dumb that clearly will cause more harm than good.
Don’t be stupid, vote no.

In reply to Jennifer.

That’s what they say, isn’t it? But what if it isn’t true? We’re roughly the size of Seattle, and have 300 more officers. Columbus, Ohio has about 300 more than us, but a population of another 100k. There are many similar-size cities with comparable forces (yes, some have another hundred or so).

To the extent there is a shortage, how does that explain a 95% decrease in traffic citations? I promise we haven’t lost 95% of the force.

The reason you never see police on the street isn’t because we don’t have any. It’s because their management is happy to let them do nothing. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten quite used to it. I’m not sure how we get them to start doing their jobs again.

Prop E is basically the wish list of the Police Officers Association. BigMoneySF either doesn’t know (Larsen) or doesn’t care (Tan, GrowSF) what the Police Commission is or what it does. This is a PR job for BigMoneySF which needs a big win this year (or maybe, with any luck, they will pull up stakes and head for Austin, or Fairfield). What restrictive reforms were instituted in SF after George Floyd Chris? Of course our beloved Mayor Breed is running a law-and-order campaign to get the cops, Republicans and money lenders on her sinking ship. Richard Nixon would be proud of you London.

This is great reporting. Thank you, Eleni.

It’s very worrisome how individuals can donate large amounts of money without a proper context and knowledge of what they’re donating to. Even if they’re well intentioned, I think determining the outcome of an election because you have the financial resources is what’s really undemocratic here, to Mr. Larsen’s reasoning.

In reply to Stephen.

It’s really true. These rules to ensure that they’re not discriminating in their use of force and enforcement requires them to do like a little bit of extra paperwork. And the response has essentially been: “If I have to document anything, I’m just not going to do any of it.” While it’s true that they are ALSO very short staffed and this is an additional burden on their time, it’s not like they aren’t raking in INSANE overtime making like $200k a year in the more senior ranks because of this.

The likely reason the police hate all this paperwork and oversight is not just because it requires them to sit down and type on a computer, it’s because it creates an accountability mechanism where they have to justify their use of force and generates stats that can be objectively counted/evaluated. There’s a huge resistance to being held accountable. It makes zero sense that the police even have a union that’s fighting these reforms. They’re public servants for pete’s sake.

Before anyone replies saying that the police are just hamstrung and really just want to get out there and do their job, definitely brush up on your SF police and police union history from 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Police_Department

They went on an illegal strike, held the city hostage, carried their service weapons and used them in their protests, got drunk and started illegally arresting counter-protestors, likely planted a bomb at the Mayor’s house, and then the Mayor gave them everything they wanted. This is the legacy of our current police force. Still holding the city hostage…

I will vote for it, because I am against crime.

It really is that simple.

When it comes to the problems of policing, most of us are like valence electrons–farthest from the core of the issue, hanging out on the outer edge buzzing around, yet the ones who get together and make important if unstable and shifting bonds and reactions. We’re seemingly trapped in a national narrative of bouncing back and forth between perspectives as we collectively now seek to “counterbalance criminal-justice reforms that went too far after the murder of George Floyd,” a position Larsen himself evokes and embodies as someone who backed Boudin and now champions the police cause with vigor. As a former Bay Area police officer, homicide detective and patrol lieutenant myself who worked with a lot of dedicated, fair and “just” officers (the majority), anyone who works long enough from the inside with a mature and honest perspective also comes to see how the deeply embedded fabric of systemic injustice is woven at least from the times of failed Reconstruction and slave patrols through Jim Crow institutional supremacy and oppression. In addition to that larger chunk of officers who mean well and might even consider themselves anti-racist, yet who still inflict systemic evils on various minority groups a few times every shift, every department also has a solid minority–far greater than “a few rotten apples”–who get together and go out “n****r hunting” each shift, using their enormous power and discretion as street corner judges and enforcers (more power than any other actor in our entire governmental system) to make racially motivated petty and genuine stops, find excuses and consent for searches, and take whatever enforcement action they can–even if that’s just a small ticket today to turn into a search-and-arrest excuse tomorrow, perhaps by some other distant officer in another town, an unknown yet aligned member of this secret modern Klan. If this isn’t rejected for length and if you’ve made it this far, then a novel solution to appeal to both of SF’s extremes (progressives and so-called moderates): revive a shameful feature of our legal past that revisionist Karens everywhere are eager to bury and forget; impose the logic and formula of Dred Scott (ideally or aspirationally as a constitutional amendment, but starting locally perhaps) on police departments everywhere: 3/5 (three fifths) of each department’s sworn officers must be a racial minority or a woman, capping white male participation in any police department at 2 of 5. No more space here to argue its many nonobvious benefits in transforming the so far intractable racist shadow of American law enforcement, nor to address the obvious first complaints (such as is it just shifting administering racist systems onto the oppressed as new oppressors and so forth, or that it can’t pass a “strict scrutiny” challenge, which it can!), but offered here to plant a seed and start a new conversation. In any event, Prop E is not the solution and just continues to hide the ball (from ourselves in our own double consciousnesses and cognitive dissonances). We can’t change the system if we still deploy the Klan. Meanwhile, the modern metaphorical Klan is currently patrolling the streets in every Bay Area police department–not just Antioch–and if here, then everywhere. Do Black Lives Matter?

The police department is so dramatically understaffed that it is impossible to do anything. They need to hire 700 officers, and Prop B (sponsored by progressive candidates) would impose a tax and put off the hiring those officers until another ballot measure in some future election is approved. That’s why we should all be supporting Prop A and not Prop B. Vote Prop A.

Prop E – any chance the PD will change their sloppy, lazy, sometimes criminal ways? I’m not seeing it, so what’s the point. Am voting NO.

The problem with police ineffectiveness is not external restraints – it’s the police themselves. Someone aptly wrote: “SFPD has effectively been on strike since 2017.” This was supported by the data showing traffic citations decreasing from 12,000 to 300 over a few years.

More recently, in the wake of George Floyd and BLM, the cops simply said, “oh, you don’t want us out there doing things? OK.” Instead of taking the lesson to be, “be thoughtful about your jobs and responsive to the community,” they took it as, “sit in your office, collect your salary, and plan for retirement.” I’ll come back to this a hundred times over the next election cycle: The Mission/Castro/Noe Valley district has ZERO police on the streets after 9 p.m. That’s policy. They’re ALL in the office, responding – maybe – to calls.

We do not need Prop E, we do not need a bigger force, we do not need to throw money at the problem, we need City leadership that says, “get off your asses.”