Members of the Police Commission said Wednesday that they were dismayed, but not surprised, that Proposition E — aimed at weakening their oversight — appears likely to pass.
“It was an uphill battle from the outset,” said Commissioner Jesús Yáñez, who said he was “disappointed and saddened” by the outcome.
The measure, spearheaded by Mayor London Breed, brought in some $1.6 million in backing, about seven times as much as the opposition campaign. The most recent count showed about 60 percent of the votes in its favor.
Prop. E will require the Police Commission to do public outreach before it can propose or work on new policies, and gives the police chief veto power over that outreach process. It will also undo certain reform-minded oversight requirements, allowing the police department to engage in vehicle chases more readily, to use surveillance technology more freely, and to report less when they use force on civilians.
Some of the policies that the Prop. E will weaken — and the Commission’s independence — were key elements of police reform.
“So, it will kind of turn our system of government on its head,” said Commission Vice President Max Carter-Oberstone, “and go from a system where citizens oversee the police department’s policy-making process to a system in which the police chief actually has unfettered authority over policy.”
In reality, the Police Commission doesn’t have the budget or resources to execute some of the new requirements under Prop. E, said Carter-Oberstone, so this would mean the chief would likely end up waiving those requirements, in many cases.
The mayor’s office, for its part, said it will now begin a “collaborative process” with the police department — with no mention of the Police Commission — to quickly implement the changes. “The immediate goal is to develop a plan with specific milestones over the next several weeks,” a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office said in a statement.
The primary outcome for the commission, Yáñez said, would be that the police department is now empowered to do “what they do best, which is drag out processes.” But, since the commission still has the power to fire the police chief, and is still the policy-making body for the police department, the extent of Prop. E’s impacts remain to be seen.
“I think really it’s going to be figuring out, what does this new dance look like?” Yáñez said.
Although the mayor appoints the police chief and the majority of the commissioners, Breed has long pointed to the current Police Commission as the body to blame for the city’s crime and policing issues.
Under the coming changes, though, Carter-Oberstone said Breed and Police Chief Bill Scott will now be formally accountable for policy decisions and their outcomes.
“There was often the appearance of [commission] independence when, in fact, there was no independence from the political branches,” Carter-Oberstone said. “If it wasn’t clear before, it will be clear now to the public who has ultimate responsibility for SFPD policies.”
Vehicle chases
Prop. E, for example, allows for loosened restrictions on vehicle chases, despite data showing that one in three chases result in injury, often to innocent bystanders.
“The voters will now know exactly who is responsible for our vehicle policy … now, this is the mayor’s policy,” Carter-Oberstone said. “We’ve already had a spate of deaths and serious injuries in the recent past, so I really do worry about the safety of the public in the wake of this change.”
Reporting requirements
As for use-of-force reporting, the police department was charged in a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice review to improve its record-keeping, due to a long history of disproportionate force used against people of color. Last year, the police department reported that Black people were 25 times more likely than whites to have force used on them.
“By weakening independent oversight and undermining reforms that are designed to protect the public and hold SFPD accountable, Prop. E is going to make San Francisco less safe,” said Yoel Haile, the ACLU NorCal’s director of criminal justice, “particularly for Black and Brown residents, who have been over-policed and subjected to use of force at disproportionate rates.”
Prop. E also mandates a reduction of reporting on police officers’ use-of-force and other activities to 20 percent of their work hours. But Yáñez said the department does not sufficiently track its officers’ time spent on administrative tasks. And those tasks, he said, are often important.
“A lot of police work is administrative work,” said Yáñez. “In order to get evidence into court, you have to write a really good report that can stand scrutiny in court.”
Surveillance and facial recognition
Prop. E will also allow the police department to use drones and new surveillance cameras, not subject to the city’s rules that require vetted surveillance policies — or the city’s ban on facial recognition technologies.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who championed that law in 2019, called the new measure “sensationalistic” and unnecessary, as proposed surveillance policies are typically approved. But he said the coming changes were a “limited carveout” that did not fundamentally impact surveillance oversight, and that voters clearly wanted to see action.
That carve-out could have larger implications, though: Prop. E could, de facto, allow facial-recognition technologies to be used new drones and surveillance cameras.
Peskin said he pointed this out to the mayor’s office, and was assured that was not the intention of the ballot measure, a fact he said he found ironic and unfortunate.
“It was so quickly and sloppily written … that’s what happens when you’re engaged in the business of performative politics.”
Oh, yay, we get to see more of what we saw in Lucca’s entryway a couple months ago! Guess we’re only going to undo this mistake after a few random pedestrians get crushed by a cop car chasing some guy with expired tags.
Law abiding citizens are the most likely ones not to have expired tags. Ignoring little issues will always lead to larger ones.
*Oklahoma Bomber Timothy McVeigh -Caught driving with a MISSING REGISTRATION TAG (also had loaded .45 in his jacket.
*Henry Joseph Horton IV-stopped having BROKEN TAIL LIGHT was found in possession of knives and documents of his planned killing spree.
*Ted Bundy a serial murderer (over 30 victims) – stopped from driving with his HEADLIGHTS OFF and captured.
*Joel Rifkin (killed 17+ women)-caught driving a car without a license plate. He was also found with the dead body of a 22 year old woman in the trunk.
Max Carter-Oberstone was the primary reason we had Prop E. His ego was so huge that it became the tail that wagged the dog.
Now we’ll see what the investment in robo-taxis was really about: SF is going to be the testing ground for robo-cops, a much more lucrative market for multinational corporations than taxis.
The Police Commission is one of the city’s biggest problems. Hopefully this will help begin the turnaround.
Playing “hopefully” with people’s lives is not a good game.
I’m really looking forward to more cops crashing into each other. 30 or so years ago, two cops had to drive so fast because someone had a knife that they crashed into each other and, well, they died. The difference between 50 and 30 mph over a distance of half mile or so is enough to kill someone (or sometwo, or somethree …) but will make no difference in what happens at the crime location. But, if cops keep thinning their ranks, we’ll have to worry about “full staffing” issues again and, I don’t know, try Prop B again.
Bad Cop, No Donut- Sounds like you are referencing the death of Jon Cook who was a proud member of the SFPD and the LBGT community. God bless his soul. And no, he was not rushing to the scene of a person with a knife. He was responding to the scene where a domestic violence suspect, who had gouged his girlfriend’s eyes out, was resisting arrest.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Cruisers-Crash-S-F-Cop-Killed-3-others-hurt-2829443.php
Added citation and agreed.
This situation had nothing to do with pursuit policy, but a terrible sequence of events that ended his life in the response of duty.
Nope, not referring to that. It was a man in the street with a knife.
Bad Cop, No Donut- Surely you can cite the incident you are referring to, just like B did.
Seems the Mayor has learned from the SFUSD recall. The citizens on the
street are fed up with WOKE Police Commission. The Mayor understandably
wants to keep her $ 350,000+ a year job.
Ironic that Mister Performative Politics himself is leveling the same criticism against the Mayor he is running against.