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ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this photo taken Jan. 15, San Francisco police Sgt. Yulanda Williams is shown in Richmond, Calif. San Francisco police officers are being asked to take an oath co-authored by Sgt. Williams to turn in any colleagues who display intolerant behavior. Creation of the oath was driven by Williams, who sued the department after discovering she was the subject of racist text messages among several officers.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Jan. 14 photo, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr is interviewed in San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO » San Francisco police officers are being asked to combat racism in the ranks and take a pledge to turn in colleagues displaying intolerant behavior, such as slurs and jokes targeting people of color, gays and women.
The pledge is part of a broader public relations campaign by the embattled police department to repair frayed relations with minority neighborhoods and community activists.
The campaign comes amid growing tensions between police and black communities that are shaking up departments across the country and have led to the dismissal of top brass in some cities, including Chicago. Politically progressive San Francisco is not immune from the unrest. The Dec. 2 shooting of a young black man clutching a kitchen knife by five officers has increased racial tensions and sparked calls for the police chief’s removal.
So far, San Francisco’s mayor has stood behind the chief amid the emergence of racist text messages exchanged among several officers and a judge’s decision that he failed to punish the officers in timely fashion.
Police say Mario Woods, 26, had stabbed a stranger earlier that day, ignored commands to drop the knife and shook off blasts of tear gas and shots from a bean bag gun before officers opened fire.
Police say only one of the five officers involved was white, but protests over the shooting persists. Mayor Ed Lee has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
Chief Greg Suhr said the pledge and the “Not on My Watch” campaign had been in the works long before the Woods shooting, but the incident gave the project new urgency. Several angry protests were organized in the rough neighborhood where Woods died. And people demanding the chief’s dismissal disrupted the mayor’s inauguration on Jan. 8 and briefly shut down the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 18.
Yulanda Williams, who leads a minority police officers group, helped initiate the pledge after she found that a white colleague used a black slur in text messages to other officers complaining about her promotion to sergeant. Other text messages exchanged among Williams’ colleagues contained racist and homophobic insults and slurs.
“I will not tolerate hate or bigotry in our community or from my fellow officers,” the seven-sentence pledge states in part. “I will confront intolerance and report any such conduct without question or pause.”
The department has also launched the website http://notonmywatchsfpd.org/ which instructs citizens and officers on how to file complaints against the police. The website includes a 10-minute video produced by a former television journalist, showing the chief, several officers and civic leaders reciting and discussing the pledge and the importance of rooting out intolerance in the ranks.
Law enforcement experts say San Francisco’s pledge is a novel way to try and tamp down rising tensions.
“I think it sends a good signal,” said University of South Carolina School of Law professor Seth Soughton, a former police officer and law enforcement scholar. “But whether or not the signal is strong enough remains to be seen.”
The Rev. Amos Brown, head of the local NAACP, chapter supports the pledge and called it a “step in the right direction.”
The police officers’ union has endorsed the pledge, though San Francisco Police Officers Association president Martin Halloran says reciting it is voluntary.
The police chief hopes every officer will recite the voluntary pledge every January to help instill a culture of tolerance and accountability. Police cadets read the pledge Jan. 15 at their graduation.
“I really think it’s important that the public hear us say the words,” Suhr said.
The pledge is one of several changes Suhr made in the department since the racist text messages emerged from a police corruption case. Suhr has been trying to fire eight officers implicated in the scandal, but a judge recently ruled that he waited too long to discipline them after discovering the texts two years ago. Suhr is appealing.
Suhr reintroduced a proposal to equip officers with stun guns to help deal with confrontations like the Woods shooting and has announced a number of other “use-of-force” policy changes.
Officers must now report whenever they point their guns at suspects. Firearms training has been changed to emphasize other “less-than-lethal” options. And the department is developing ways to deal with knife-wielding suspects.
The pledge is not asking officers to “snitch” on one another, Suhr said. Rather, he said, it is intended to reinforce that the police department reflects the tolerant and diverse culture of San Francisco.
“It’s what we swore to do,” Suhr said. “People that would use racial epithets, slurs and things like that clearly fall below the minimum standard of being a police officer. A cop needs to show character and point that out.”
Police work hard, only to see the justice system releasing them back onto the streets.
Soon the police will be routing out intolerance in the general public, arresting or shooting intolerant people.
sorry, but what the heck is that in the first picture?
The future SF police chief…. yikes
They should be pledging to be extremely intolerant of criminals who harm and terrorize law abiding citizens. More PC BS, just like HPD’s mission statement which doesn’t say a thing about arresting criminals, but points out that things are done in the “spirit of Aloha”.
S.F. has changed so dramatically since the early 80’s. From what I would have considered a place to visit we’ve decided to passed on future visits…sad.
Notice where the two of the three escapees went to when they escaped from the high security prison? They probably thought of the liberal, sanctuary city, root out intolerance, attitude of San Francisco’s administration. I’m going to think twice about visiting S.F. in the future.
The Fed can change and modify the laws to their discretion but in
the end folks they cannot change the peoples feelings and thoughts.
S.F. is on my list of places to avoid, even to read about that place
gives me the creeps.
Progressives object to the government collecting phone data to identify terrorists who want to kill us. They call it spying and a violation of privacy. So now the most progressive city in the country wants police to spy on each other supposedly to root out intolerant behavior, such as slurs and jokes targeting people of color, gays and women. It is only a matter of time before police in Hawaii are asked or forced by a law to do the same thing. Can you imagine our police not being allowed to use terms such as local, haole, kotonk, Buddahhead, flip, lolo, mahu, moke and boffer and being turned in for being intolerant if they do? We will end up with the entire police forced being turned in.
The SF police department is developing ways to deal with knife-wielding suspects. What other ways are there except with a pistol which are issued to police officers to protect themselves and the public? Police officers should not risk their lives by trying to stop or subdue knife wielders by some other method. This is another example of political correctness trumping common sense.