Supervisor John Avalos today announced his intention to mandate reforms to the Police Department’s use of force policies by withholding a portion of the department’s budget until reform metrics are met.
The proposed budget amendment would hold $200 million of the budget on reserve, with its release dependent on positive quarterly reviews by the city. Success would be measured in areas such as de-escalation of incidents and discipline for officers with multiple complaints or behavioral issues.
“We’ve been told for many years that reforms are on the way,” Avalos said. “We’re just not seeing that happen.”
In response, he will try to “use the power of our purse strings to make sure that the department is following through.”
Avalos will introduce his proposal at a hearing on the police budget at the Budget and Finance Committee on Friday, June 17. It would then be subject to Board of Supervisors approval.
Specific metrics for making sure that training results in appropriate action in the field, Avalos said, would need to be vetted by the City Attorney. But suggestions include publishing quarterly reports that describe demographic data about arrests and the number of incidents that resulted in death or injury. The reports would also track the number of complaints filed with the Office of Citizen Complaints and the subsequent disciplinary action.
Activist demands for reform focus primarily on changing the language of the department’s use of force policy from calling for a “reasonable use of force” to a “minimal use of force,” and emphasizing de-escalation techniques. The Police Commission is expected to vote on a new use of force policy, to replace the current version hailing from 1995, on June 22.
The proposal would also require the department to show progress in areas like examining the disciplinary and use of force records of officers hired from other municipalities.
Activist Adriana Camarena, who has been organizing movements in response to the shootings of Alex Nieto and Luis Gongora Pat in the Mission District, voiced her approval for the proposal.
“Alex Nieto did not have to die. Luis Gongora Pat did not have to die. Jessica Williams did not have to die,” Camarena said, naming more recent victims of deadly police shootings. “In all of these instances officers shot indiscriminately…there has been no oversight of police to change this behavior.”
Kayvan Eliasieh, a member of the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild, said the proposal would help the department avoid “unlawful killings, gunning down of communities of color and terrorizing them.”
The proposal also includes an “early intervention system” in which supervisors keep an eye on officers who tend toward the use of force and either refer them to training or reassign them, an approach Jeremy Miller of the Idriss Stelley Foundation described as “keeping track of problem officers and dealing with it.”
Father Richard Smith of the Church of St. John the Evangelist on 15th Street, a longtime activist demanding criminal charges against the officers who shot Amilcar Perez Lopez, praised the proposal for being analytical.
“One of the key points has to do with data. Gathering the data, monitoring the data, and using it effectively,” Smith said.
There were three police shootings in the Mission District in 2015. According to an analysis by the Chronicle, incidents where force was used by officers increased 50 percent in the Mission from 2009 to 2015.
“Was anyone monitoring that data? Action could have been taken,” Smith said.
The media office of the Police Department did not return a request for comment by press time. Avalos said he had discussed the proposal with Acting Chief Toney Chaplin, who advised him not to proceed. The Police Officer’s Association, the union for police officers in San Francisco, is expected to oppose the measure.
“[POA president] Martin Halloran, make no mistake, we are not anarchists. We are taxpayers who go to work every day,” said Karen Fleshman, a race educator and cofounder of San Franciscans for Political Accountability. “I have no way of knowing with confidence that when I call 911 a courteous, respectful police officer free of racial bias will respond.”
But reform or not, some question the effectiveness of having police officers respond to certain situations.
“When we are sick or when we are in need, the answer is not to call in someone with guns or with a taser,” said “Tiny” Garcia, an activist with POOR Magazine, a news magazine that covers low-income communities.
In the case of police shooting victim Luis Gongora Pat, a homeless man who camped out in the Mission District police officers were called to the scene by homeless outreach workers because they believed Gongora Pat was acting erratically and brandishing a knife.
Witnesses later said he had been swinging the knife at a tree, and was seated and not brandishing it when officers arrived.
One of the officers involved in Gongora Pat’s shooting did undergo Crisis Intervention Training, but did not follow the suggested procedures of creating time, distance and rapport with the suspect. Current suggestions for tracking the effectiveness of crisis intervention training include tracking the action taken, injuries, and complaints after calls for service involving mentally ill individuals.