‘Run, Paul, Run?’ Mayor’s office says it won’t happen with interim SFPD chief Paul Yep. 

One of the many legacies of Mayor Ed Lee is that, after even the most apparently straightforward statement, San Francisco journalists are forced to ask elected officials, “Okay, for real?” 

That’s because after then-mayor Gavin Newsom decamped for Sacramento, the Board of Supervisors elevated Ed Lee to be the ostensible caretaker mayor in 2011, following his unambiguous, explicit pledge that he would not run in the 2012 mayor’s race. 

Lee ran in the 2012 mayor’s race. He won. Perhaps the most incisive quote I’ve heard about this came from former District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly: “I believe Ed Lee believed he was not gonna run. But I knew he was gonna run, because I know how shit works.”

Fast-forwarding to the present day, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott announced last week that he’s heading back south at the end of next month to be Los Angeles’ top transit cop, and Paul Yep will be tapped to serve as interim chief.

Both Mayor Lurie and his new top cop have made their own explicit pledges: Yep, Lurie’s public safety “policy chief,” says he’s not a candidate for the permanent police chief job. The mayor’s office reaffirmed to us that Yep would not be the permanent police chief. 

Okay. For real? 

It’s unfortunate, but getting answers to questions like these in San Francisco is a bit like killing a vampire: You need to make sure you finish the job. So, for what it’s worth, when asked directly if there are any circumstances in which Yep would be permanent chief, the mayor’s office referred back to its earlier statement. It remains unclear how long Yep might be interim chief while a replacement is ostensibly sought. 

Mayor Lurie is a decent and honest man. It’s easy to see why he and his staff might be confused as to why their seemingly unambiguous, explicit statements about Yep’s role are being parsed to the nth degree. But this is not a city with a decent and honest history, and 2011 is not the Dark Ages. With special regard to so-called interim personnel decisions, this sort of thing has happened before. 

After Lee became “caretaker” mayor, a “Run Ed, Run” movement, as calculated as pi to a billion digits, emerged. Things are going so well! Why change just for the sake of changing? What’s breaking an explicit and unambiguous promise in politics anymore? Run, Ed, run! 

That could all happen again. And this time, it needn’t even be cynical or nefarious. Yep, after all, did not get this job by making dubious promises.

Sometimes people really do change their minds, especially if underlying circumstances change. And, by the time that Scott departs to oversee the buses and trains of Los Angeles at the end of June and Yep becomes interim chief, this department will have changed a whole lot. 

Bill Scott is leaving. So is his right-hand man, Assistant Chief David Lazar. But that is not all. Oh no, that is not all: Mission Local has learned that every deputy chief, all five of them, has either put in for retirement, is expected to soon do so, or is already on disability leave. The deputy chief slot for the airport bureau is already vacant. We are on the precipice of a nigh-unprecedented sea change of the department’s upper echelon.  

That’d be the case even if Scott wasn’t departing. But he is, and there will surely be a nationwide search for the next chief, though this city has, in the past several years, spent handsomely on national searches only to hire someone who’s already in the building. Internally, however, the pickings have been thinned out at the SFPD; it harks to Warriors coach Steve Kerr peering down his bench at a critical juncture and seeing Pat Spencer smiling back at him. 

Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to see Spencer light it up and ruin this analogy. But, long story short, there is no slam-dunk internal candidate within the SFPD, and any internal hire would necessitate dipping into the second tier of the command staff. A leadership vacuum is brewing. This will be happening as Yep — Lurie’s trusted point man on public safety, a staunch Lurie supporter and a popular law-enforcement figure in the politically indispensable Chinese American community — is stepping in for Scott. 

Yep, the policy chief for public safety, was only being paid some $84,000 a year, less than a third of the salary of his fellow policy chiefs, as a part-time employee. This structure allowed him to collect his $265,000 pension. He will freeze his pension while serving as chief. 

Both Yep and the mayor’s office say that Yep will not put his name into the running to succeed Scott. Yep has also said he intends to be a “bridge” to the next chief, which, for good or ill, mirrors Joe Biden’s exact language when he was running for office in 2020. Either way, there’s a lot of time between now and the deadline to make that submission: In May 2016, Chief Greg Suhr resigned under pressure. The document advertising the job vacancy was created in late July and applicants were given until Aug. 31 to enter their names.   

That’s plenty enough time for the situation to change on the ground. To be fair, There’s also time for Yep to potentially distinguish himself on the job. There’s certainly enough time for a movement urging him to stay, be it organic or ersatz, to emerge. 

Back in February, we noted that Lurie’s surrogates, in private, were very clear about what department heads they wanted out: MTA boss Jeffrey Tumlin, health department director Dr. Grant Colfax, and police chief Bill Scott. 

Tumlin made it easy: His contract was up on Dec. 26, before the new mayor was sworn in. While there was talk of extending him for a year, Tumlin opted to step down: He seems to be contentedly documenting European mass transit on Bluesky. Colfax resigned next, leaving on Feb. 7. Scott — that was more difficult. 

The mayor can unilaterally fire the chief. But he cannot unilaterally install the chief’s permanent replacement; the mayor must choose from the names submitted to him by the police commission. This is usually a near-autonomic function, as the mayor appoints four of the seven commissioners on the police commission — and, traditionally, mayors have exerted top-down control over the commission on matters far less consequential than naming a new chief. 

Yet the presence of politically unpredictable commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone created potential complications. Lurie put it to the Board of Supervisors that Carter-Oberstone be removed from the police commission and, on Feb. 25, nine of them agreed to do so. Now, Lurie de facto controls the commission again. And, whenever Board President Rafael Mandelman gets to naming a replacement for Jesus Yáñez — and, whomever he picks, it ain’t going to be Bobby Seale — Lurie will cement even more control. 

If not for the presence of Carter-Oberstone on the commission, it’s hard to imagine Scott wouldn’t have left, or been made to leave, long ago. With Carter-Oberstone’s departure, Scott clearly saw he was checkmated. No fool, he’s lined up the top job at the nascent Los Angeles Metro police department, just in time for the 2028 Olympics.

After eight years of being a political piñata in a town where he was never truly wanted by many in his department and loathed by its influential union, he can head back to his hometown for a lower-pressure job that still pays a king’s ransom — up to $350,000, on top of the pensions he’ll earn after decades of public service.

Lurie still reminds audiences that public safety is his No. 1 priority, even at neighborhood gatherings where people want to talk about upzoning. Now, he will be able to put his chosen person atop the police department, a department that will soon need to have its entire upper echelon restocked. 

There are, clearly, a lot of weighty decisions to be made in the coming weeks and months. For real.