Shortly after an unarmed black woman was fatally shot by police in San Francisco, Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned at the urging of Mayor Ed Lee. The move comes days after Lee defended the chief’s leadership, despite a string of department scandals and months of protests calling for Suhr’s departure.
The chief was to asked to step down Thursday, hours after a 27-year-old woman was killed by a sergeant attempting to remove her from a stolen vehicle. The fatal shooting occurred in the same neighborhood where Mario Woods was gunned down by five officers in December.
According to Lee, Suhr was committed to reforming the department, but changes haven’t been made quickly enough.
“These officer-involved shootings, justified or not, have forced our City to open its eyes to questions of when and how police use lethal force,” Lee explained. “The progress we’ve made has been meaningful, but it hasn’t been fast enough. Not for me, not for Greg. … The men and women of SFPD put themselves in harm’s way literally every day. We owe it to them to restore the community’s trust in their work.”
San Franciscans have demanded Suhr’s resignation for months, in response to multiple police shootings of black and Latino residents in Bernal Heights and Bay View, including Woods, Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez-Lopez, and Kenneth Harding Jr.. Activists launched a 17-day hunger strike in late April, because calls for drastic changes to the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) were widely ignored.
“It’s gotten to a point where people are fed up, having seen what’s happening around the country, having seen what’s happening locally,” Edwin Lindo, one of the hunger strikers, previously told ThinkProgress. “What the community is saying is we’re not gonna take it anymore. We can’t allow another killing, because it’s already been four in the past year and a half and they’ve all been people of color.”
Suhr doubled down on Tuesday, saying he would not relinquish his position. And during a phone call with the strikers early this month, Lee voiced his support for the chief, stressing that the department is in the process of implementing necessary changes.
In February, Lee and Suhr unveiled a set of department reforms that emphasized de-escalation and firearms training for officers, the distribution of bean bag guns, and equipping officers with helmets and batons for when they encounter with armed suspects. The officials also announced the creation of the Bureau of Professional Standards and Principled Policing to oversee the reforms and work with the Department of Justice, which launched a probe of the SFPD in February.
But the policy changes weren’t enough to assuage activists’ concerns about police violence.
“We march, we go to meetings, they don’t care. They keep on going like nothing,” Maria Cristina Gutierrez, another hunger striker, told Mission Local last month. Gutierrez, Lindo, and at least three others argued “radical” action was needed to end extrajudicial killings.
Following Suhr’s resignation, Toney Chaplin was named head of the SFPD. He has worked for the department for more than two decades. The change comes amid a growing text message scandal involving officers who sent racist and homophobic messages to one another.