S.F. police post far-out comments on union’s Facebook page

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr is known for being a nice guy who’s receptive to complaints and who usually says the politically astute, compassionate thing.

The leaders of the Police Officers Association? Not so much.

We reviewed the union’s Facebook page and several editions of its monthly journal and found some musings that are, well, pretty far out there for San Francisco in 2015.

Earlier this month, for example, the union’s Facebook page had a post about the killing of Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14, allegedly at the hands of an undocumented felon who’d been deported five times and released from jail in accordance with San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy.

“He is an ILLEGAL ALIEN not an undocumented immigrant and if he was where he belonged (Mexico) this innocent victim would still be alive,” the post reads.

In the June edition of its journal, former POA President Gary Delagnes wrote that the national conversation about racism in policing in light of myriad recent shootings of African American men by police officers is misguided. “There is no evidence, statistical or otherwise, to prove systemic racism in American policing,” he wrote.

Instead, Delagnes said African Americans simply commit crimes at much higher rates than white people because of “poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunity and nanny-state dependence that have plagued the African American community for centuries. ... Cops are thrust right into the middle and told to analyze it, control it, fix it, and do so with kid gloves.”

While the POA did condemn the racist and homophobic text messages that were exchanged between 14 officers and made public in March, it is providing attorneys to the officers for their legal defense.

The POA also printed in the May edition of its journal a column by a Mission Station sergeant stating that the officers had every expectation the texts would remain private. (The texts included “Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!” and “All n— must f— hang.”)

“It has been said loudly and often that the erstwhile private conversations reflect a character that is incompatible with that required by the policing profession,” the POA column said. “This, however, is a dangerous tack to take. ... The use of offensive words in private conversation is not by itself an indicator of poor character.”

Another column in the April journal says that “attacks on police officers in San Francisco ... are well orchestrated by race baiters, ambitious mediocre politicians, purveyors of bad grades in journalism school, and other assorted miscreants.”

POA President Martin Halloran said he stands by every word and regrets nothing the union has printed. “I’ve made my positions very clear in the last few journals of the POA,” he said. “If it’s not clear in the journal, I don’t know how much more I can say it.”

Delagnes said he doesn’t regret anything he’s written either. He said people who are pontificating about racism in police departments “are doing it in a classroom setting without ever being in a radio car.”

He added that anybody who defends police these days is given a bad rap and labeled a racist.

“Unfortunately, most people in America and most of the African American leaders I’ve seen, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, don’t want to have an honest conversation about it because it doesn’t fit the agenda,” he said. “We’re not scared to have an honest conversation.”

Suhr said he certainly doesn’t agree with everything the POA leadership writes.

“The POA is the POA, and I’m the chief,” he said. “Gary says a lot of things.”

Now, the POA is taking its tough style to the Democratic County Central Committee, which is kind of like the football team picking a fight with the debate club.

The DCCC is due to take up a resolution Wednesday supporting the work of a committee in the public defender’s office that came up with ways to improve modern-day policing. Like pretty much every resolution the DCCC takes up, passage wouldn’t actually do much of anything.

The plan that came out of Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s office recommends many strategies the SFPD is already adopting, including officers wearing body cameras and undergoing bias training, and providing statistics on the age, race and gender of those detained for certain crimes.

The DCCC resolution supporting Adachi’s work actually praises the SFPD for being at the forefront of adopting such changes.

But still, the POA leadership is hopping mad about it, has written DCCC members numerous letters opposing it and has gotten the committee twice to hold off on even discussing it. According to the most recent letter from Halloran to the DCCC, the union disagrees with the tone of the resolution and dislikes that Adachi’s stationery letterhead is included in it.

In the current issue of the POA journal, Halloran says the DCCC members and other politicians who raise these issues “paint all of the SFPD with a broad brush, then try and grab their 15 minutes of fame on the backs of the hard-working, dedicated, and committed members of the SFPD ... Enough is enough!”

(We must say, we feel sorry for anybody whose 15 minutes of fame comes from serving on the DCCC.)

Kelly Dwyer, who wrote the original resolution, said she grew up in Los Angeles and her black stepfather had many negative encounters with police there. She said she was pleasantly surprised to learn the SFPD is making strides to deal with racism, but that she doesn’t understand why the POA leadership opposes the resolution so strongly.

“It’s hard to work with this kind of threatening attitude,” said Dwyer, whose name will ring a bell to readers of this column for having to give up her DCCC seat to move to Vacaville after a huge rent increase on her single family home in the Sunset District. DCCC members Hene Kelly and Petra DeJesus, who’s also a police commissioner, have picked up the resolution for Dwyer.

The POA’s actions in quashing debate at the DCCC are similar to those that successfully killed a resolution put forward by Supervisor John Avalos in December supporting local and national protests against police brutality and condemning racially biased policing.

Delagnes wrote e-mails to supervisors who favored the resolution, which would have had no real effect on anything, and said the POA wouldn’t ever work again with anybody who voted in favor of it. Delagnes accused Supervisor Malia Cohen of “losing her mind” for initially supporting it.

Avalos said he thinks the POA leadership’s writings and style don’t mesh with San Francisco, but also don’t reflect the police force as a whole. He said he never interacts with Delagnes or Halloran. “I take my cues from how they write about me in their paper,” he said.

The journal bashes District Attorney George Gascón on a monthly basis and has no kind words for Adachi either.

“They make it a point to send me a complimentary copy, so I’m appreciative of that,” Adachi quipped. “The question is whether or not their rhetoric of the past should be the rhetoric of the future. ... I think the Police Department is rapidly changing.”

The SFPD is very diverse for an American police department and participates in countless programs to benefit minority communities. But to some, the union’s head honchos do the force no favors.

Angela Chan, an attorney, immigrant rights advocate and former police commissioner, said it was troubling that the POA’s main response to the Steinle killing was to use the phrase “illegal alien” in all capital letters “and then proceed to go on a tirade using this racially loaded, dehumanizing and ignorant term.”

Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, noted that a recent edition of the Street Sheet contained a rebuttal to Delagnes’ column stating black people commit a lot of crime and police aren’t racist.

“If anyone is wondering whether racism exists within the SFPD, they need only read the police union journal where they can find a resounding, loud ‘Yes it does,’” she said.

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer who covers City Hall politics. E-mail: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf