May 20, 2016

San Francisco Police Chief Resigns Following Recent Police Shooting

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San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr has resigned following a shooting by San Francisco police officers. SF Mayor Ed Lee asked for Suhr’s resignation and then announced it at a press conference at City Hall Thursday evening. The announcement comes just days after Suhr indicated he had no intention of leaving the department.

But this morning, A 27-year-old black woman was shot by SFPD officers in the Bayview neighborhood around 10am. Police said officers pursued the woman after they spotted her driving a car that had been reported stolen. During a chase, the woman crashed the vehicle. At that point police tried to pull her out of the vehicle and an officer fired one shot, Suhr said at a press conference following the shooting.

For months, demonstrators have been calling on Mayor Lee to fire Suhr because of numerous scandals that have plagued the police department over the past year. Four city supervisors had also called for Suhr’s resignation. Last spring, fourteen SPFD officers were implicated in an private exchange where officers sent racist and homophobic text messages. Two more officers were implicated in a similar exchange last month. And the shooting of Mario Woods, a 26-year-old black man whose shooting by several officers Mayor Lee called death by “firing squad,” last December sparked a review of SFPD policies by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing. Most recently, five San Francisco activists went on a 17-day hunger strike in protest of the department and demanding that Suhr be fired. The hunger strike ended last week.

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