S.F. Police Chief Suhr is hit by scandal but lands on his feet

A series of scandals has rocked the San Francisco Police Department in recent months, but the man at the helm of the troubled force has managed to remain unscathed and continues to have the unyielding support of the mayor and the Board of Supervisors.

Widely praised as easygoing and personable, Police Chief Greg Suhr so far has navigated through the incidents with no apparent jeopardy to his own job security.

But a closer examination of his responses to each crisis raises questions about their consistency and effectiveness — and about whether Mayor Ed Lee, who handpicked Suhr for the job, is willing to intervene in a department facing criticism on a variety of fronts.

“All organizations, whether public or private, reflect their leadership,” said Mike O’Reilley, a former police officer outside San Francisco and an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Cal State East Bay, of the scandals at the SFPD. “They exhibit historic failure of leadership on the part of the mayor’s office and the Board of Supervisors and an indifference to public safety.”

Suhr, 56, in an interview, acknowledged 2015 has been a difficult year.

“It’s Murphy’s Law,” the chief said of the string of crises. “It’s really, really hard right now trying to rebuild the trust that has been damaged in some communities. With each unfolding story, it just gets harder and harder. That’s been my primary concern.”

The most notable scandal involves racist and homophobic text messages exchanged among 14 officers, which thrust liberal San Francisco into the debate about racism in police departments across the country. Over several months, there have been a $725,000 settlement of a whistle-blower lawsuit against Suhr and accusations that a police drug sting targeted only African Americans.

Problem-plagued lab

The city’s police crime lab also remains plagued with problems, including a lab technician and supervisor failing a DNA proficiency exam in March, jeopardizing hundreds of cases. Disarray at the lab recently prompted Suhr to claim the department couldn’t clear its backlog of rape kits — he later said he had explained the situation badly and the lab would be able to test the kits. The department and Suhr also face a lawsuit for police shooting a man in the back in February in the Mission.

Despite all this, City Hall officials remain united in their support of Suhr. Lee, who promoted Suhr to chief shortly after taking office in 2011, refused to talk about the issue with The Chronicle despite repeated requests for an interview for this story.

“The mayor has full confidence in the chief,” his spokeswoman, Christine Falvey, said. “He thinks the public knows that and The Chronicle knows that. ... He doesn’t see this as a crisis.”

But not everybody shares that attitude.

“Accountability starts at the top,” said Sgt. Paget Mitchell who has worked at SFPD for 21 years and who gave a declaration in the whistle-blower case against Suhr. “When all this comes out, and there is not a blink from anybody, it’s just surprising.”

Bigoted text messages

The biggest recent jolt to the department was the revelation in March that 14 officers had exchanged text messages in 2011 and 2012 that included salutes to “white power,” called African Americans “monkeys” and said they should be shot, called mixed-race children “half-breeds” and said “All n— must f— hang.” They also used disparaging language toward gays, Mexicans, Filipinos and others.

The texts surfaced in a federal court filing by prosecutors related to a case against Sgt. Ian Furminger, who was sentenced in February to 41 months in prison for taking thousands of dollars during searches of drug dealers and their homes.

Suhr has repeatedly said he learned of the messages only in January, but some in law enforcement find that hard to believe.

The chief said the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division knew about the text messages at least as far back as December 2012, but could not inform him or take action against the officers because of a federal judge’s protective order in Furminger’s case that evidence be kept confidential.

But the protective order did not mention the Police Department, phone records or text messages, so there was nothing to prevent Internal Affairs from informing the chief about the racist texts.

“It shouldn’t have taken this long for the department to have done something about it,” said David Alan Sklansky, co-director of Stanford Law School’s Criminal Justice Center. “If what kick-started them into action was having it become public in a filing, it’s disconcerting. It shouldn’t take that.”

‘There was a breakdown’

District Attorney George Gascón, Suhr’s predecessor as police chief, also questioned the chief’s timeline of events. Gascón said Internal Affairs generally keeps an investigation hidden from the chief only if it involves the chief himself or the entire department.

“There was a breakdown,” Gascón said. “Where the breakdown was, I don’t know.”

After the texts became public, Suhr apologized for the officers’ conduct, calling the messages “reprehensible” and announcing his entire department would undergo bias training. He called on the Police Commission to fire eight officers and impose lesser punishment for the other six.

Some of the officers whose jobs are in jeopardy are challenging their firing in Superior Court, arguing that state law requires the SFPD to take disciplinary action within one year of learning of officer misconduct. Suhr believes the clock should have started when he learned of the messages, not when Internal Affairs did. The Police Commission can’t make its decision until the Superior Court judge weighs in, but it’s conceivable the officers could be reinstated or have the matter wiped from their records.

In any case, thousands of cases the officers worked on could be in jeopardy. Gascón is now investigating them.

Gascón, who maintains a frosty relationship with Suhr, was irate to learn of the text messages by reading The Chronicle and not directly from the chief. And he isn’t the only person who was upset to learn of the texts that way. Sgt. Yulanda Williams, president of Officers for Justice, a minority police officers’ union, said she heard rumors about the texts and asked Suhr about them directly.

“I was assured that my members had nothing to worry about,” she said.

‘Chief didn’t tell me’

Two days later, she read the details in The Chronicle and learned that she was named in the text messages as a “n— bitch.”

“My chief didn’t tell me, ‘There is something going on, and I just want to let you know and your name has come up in it,’” she said. “I consider it an outright betrayal.”

Suhr maintains there’s nothing he could have done better or differently in regard to the fallout from the texts.

“I took care of it as best as I knew,” he said. “I don’t think there has been a chief, at least in my time, that ever sent eight officers with the singular recommendation for termination to the commission like I just did. ... We do have some racism within the Police Department, and I’m about getting rid of it.”

After the messages came to light, Lee released a short statement calling for “immediate disciplinary action” for the officers and calling the messages “hateful.”

Otherwise, Lee has been largely silent on the police scandals. His response stands in contrast with the big news conference called in 2005 by former Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-Chief Heather Fong to announce the immediate suspension of 20 officers for making videos that mocked minorities and treated women as sex objects.

Unlike the district attorney, public defender and sheriff, the police chief in San Francisco is not elected and instead serves at the pleasure of the mayor. Public Defender Jeff Adachi said it’s the mayor’s job to investigate the failings of the Police Department, including the text message s.

“The mayor’s response has been to let the department work it out,” Adachi said. “But in the case of the texts, that demanded a response. It was egregious and national news.”

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s department has had its own recent scandals, including allegations that deputies staged fights between jail inmates for entertainment. Lee has taken a notably different stance toward incidents in Mirkarimi’s department than Suhr’s. In April, Lee pinned the blame for the jail fights on Mirkarimi, saying, “There has to be strong leadership for that not to happen.”

Lee, who tried unsuccessfully to oust Mirkarimi from his job after a domestic violence conviction in 2012, has not spoken to the sheriff in three years, and has rejected many of his requests for additional funding.On the other hand, Lee meets with the police chief weekly, appears regularly with him in public and has dramatically boosted Suhr’s department funding.

“It’s sad that one would play politics with public safety,” Mirkarimi said.

‘He’s a great leader’

Suhr has deep roots in the city. Critics and supporters alike give him credit for returning calls quickly, confronting criticism head-on and admitting when problems arise. He has also formed solid connections with minority communities, including in Bayview-Hunters Point and the Mission, where he previously served as captain.

“He’s a great leader,” said London Breed, president of the Board of Supervisors and an African American woman who grew up in public housing in the Western Addition. “When he finds out about things, he does what he feels he needs to do to try and address it and nip it in the bud.”

He is a product of San Francisco’s tight-knit Irish-Catholic parochial schools. Some in the Police Department and at City Hall say privately that Suhr is a “good old boy” with such strong ties to the St. Ignatius and University of San Francisco communities and the powerful police union — they overlap quite a bit — that he won’t be ousted.

Suhr joined the police force in 1981, rising to become deputy chief. In 2003, he was one of the command staff members indicted for allegedly conspiring to obstruct the investigation of “Fajitagate,” in which three off-duty officers reportedly beat up two men over takeout fajitas. A judge eventually dropped the indictments, saying they were baseless.

Suhr was demoted by Fong in 2009 for not following department protocol in reporting a domestic violence incident involving a female friend of his who called him after she was attacked by her boyfriend.

Rank-and-file support

Lee chose Suhr as chief 4½ years ago after saying the popular department veteran had been fully vetted and all of his baggage was already known. Unlike his predecessors — Fong and Gascón — Suhr has strong support from the rank-and-file and the influential Police Officers Association union, a big donor to political candidates.

Suhr also got credit from the black community for quickly rejecting the mayor’s 2012 call for the SFPD to institute a stop-and-frisk program to reduce gun violence. The chief, as well as the entire Board of Supervisors, church leaders and community groups, said it would lead to racial profiling.

Supervisor John Avalos had the strongest words against Suhr of any supervisor who was interviewed for this story.

“I wonder whether he should be in charge of the department based on recent events,” the supervisor said. “He has a very good public face, but when you dig down deeper, what has changed under his leadership?”

Suhr said he appreciates the support at City Hall and that the responsibility for fixing the department’s problems rests with him.

“I’m the chief of police,” he said, at times appearing to grow emotional. “I will do the best I can for the city of San Francisco, and if at some point in time when it’s my time to go — and maybe this is it — then I will go having done the best job I could.”

Scandal and response

The exchange of racist text messages among 14 San Francisco Police Department officers made national news in March, but it certainly hasn’t been the only scandal at the department in recent months.

What happened: In April, the city agreed to pay $725,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former police attorney who claimed Suhr had fired her as retaliation.

Kelly O’Haire had recommended in 2009 that Suhr be fired for not filing a police report after learning a female friend had been battered and choked by her boyfriend. Suhr was demoted and, upon becoming chief in 2011, fired O’Haire. Suhr said the firing was part of a larger cost-cutting measure.

Court documents show District Attorney George Gascón, Suhr’s predecessor, said in a deposition he thought O’Haire had been fired for retaliation, but that when he told Mayor Ed Lee and his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, they did nothing.

What Suhr said: The chief maintains he allowed other people fired during the cost-cutting move to stay on the job long enough to receive additional retirement benefits, but unintentionally neglected to do that for O’Haire. He says the settlement is intended to make up for those lost benefits, but denies there was any merit to her claims.

Lingering questions: Randy Strauss, O’Haire’s attorney, said only two other people in the department were laid off with O’Haire and neither was allowed to stay on longer to receive extra benefits. Richard Nichelman, who worked in the records division, confirmed that he was laid off and told to leave the same day.

What happened: Police on Feb. 26 shot and killed Amilcar Perez-Lopez, 21, a Guatemalan immigrant, on Folsom Street near 24th Street. Police had received a call about a man with a knife chasing another man.

What Suhr said: On March 2, Suhr said at a town hall meeting in the Mission that Perez-Lopez had charged an officer with a knife raised over his head. at which point the officers fired in self-defense.

Lingering questions: Perez-Lopez’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in April against the city, Suhr and the officers. A private autopsy showed Perez-Lopez was shot in the back.

Suhr told The Chronicle he was simply relaying what his officers had told him. But he also said after Perez-Lopez charged the officers with the knife, he turned and charged another man behind him. That’s when the officers shot, hitting him in the back, Suhr said.

Arnoldo Casillas, the attorney for the Perez-Lopez family, said he wasn’t surprised that Suhr did “a 180” and “created a better lie” to suit the evidence. He added that witnesses will testify that Perez-Lopez was fleeing police when he was shot.

What happened: A technician and supervisor in the city’s police crime lab fudged DNA data in a December child molestation case and in March were found to have failed a DNA proficiency exam, which should have barred them from processing evidence. That jeopardized hundreds of cases the two worked on.

What Suhr said: He said all the cases would be reworked if necessary. Earlier this month, it emerged that the lab staff had no idea how many old rape kits existed and which ones were untested. Suhr would not apply for a grant to get the old kits tested, saying the lab was “maxed out.” After a barrage of negative press, he reversed course and said he would pay for it out of his department budget.

Lingering questions: The crime lab is being examined by a new task force District Attorney George Gascón created to look into many ongoing problems in the city’s law enforcement agencies.

What happened: In April, federal public defenders filed papers in U.S. District Court alleging that a Tenderloin drug sting by the San Francisco Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. attorney’s office was racially biased. Operation Safe Schools, conducted in 2013 and 2014 to clamp down on drug dealing near schools, resulted in 37 arrests, Every one arrested was black. Defense attorneys say police video shows potentially biased behavior.

What Suhr said: Suhr defended his officers. “As unfortunate as it looks that everyone was of the same race, the other thing they had in common is they were selling drugs around schools.” All the cases are proceeding.

Lingering questions: This, along with the racist text messages and the long-standing fact that 47 percent of people arrested in San Francisco are black despite making up only 6 percent of the population, paints a picture of racial bias in the SFPD. Suhr said he is doing everything he can to root out racism.

— Heather Knight and Emily Green