By Susan Sward, Lance Williams
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Police Department is doing a better job of intervening with officers who repeatedly resort to force, inducing some to stop routinely using fists, pepper spray and batons when making arrests and confronting people at crime scenes.
But experts believe problems remain with a small group of officers who wield far more force than their peers, The Chronicle found in a review of how the department has used force since the newspaper’s 2006 investigative series on the topic.
The “Use of Force” series concluded that the department had failed to control violent officers despite having records identifying many of them. It also described how the department rarely subjected force-prone officers to serious discipline, used them to train rookies, and often left them working on the streets.
Police Chief Heather Fong, now retired, and the Police Officers Association criticized The Chronicle’s series, saying it didn’t accurately portray the department and challenging some of the statistics on which the report was based. Despite the objections, Mayor Gavin Newsom cited the series when calling for an unprecedented study of the department that, three years later, has resulted in top-to-bottom reforms now under way.
The Chronicle series and scandals such as the 2002 fight between off-duty officers and citizens over a bag of steak fajitas gave the city the “impetus to go forward” with reform, said Theresa Sparks, president of the Police Commission, who resigned Wednesday to become director of the Human Rights Commission.
In two crucial shifts, she said the 2,400-officer department is putting more emphasis on community-based policing of neighborhoods and has increased use of civilian personnel to do paperwork, freeing detectives to investigate crimes.
“The department is now monitoring force very, very carefully,” Sparks said.
Putting their lives on the line
By the dangerous nature of their jobs, officers must risk their lives when they confront violent criminals and at times must use force to gain control of situations. In March, people were reminded of the deadly risks officers face on the streets when four Oakland police officers were killed by a fugitive parolee before he was slain.
Using force “is part of law enforcement,” Assistant Chief Jim Lynch said. He added that if everyone cooperated during arrests, “we wouldn’t need force, but that’s not the reality of human behavior.”
According to the department’s regulations, officers are permitted to use a reasonable amount of force to protect themselves or others.
Problems arise when officers repeatedly resort to force in a manner that exceeds what is necessary. That tramples on people’s rights and undermines the public’s confidence in police departments as institutions they can trust, says law enforcement expert Samuel Walker.
Here is a rundown of some of the changes The Chronicle pinpointed since the series was published:
Fewer repeaters
From 1996 to 2004, the period considered in the “Use of Force” series, 28 officers were named three or more times on the department’s “feedback report” lists, which identify officers who most frequently resort to force. Of them, five appeared five times on the list, which the department says is a nondisciplinary means of identifying officers with potential behavioral problems. One appeared six times, and another was listed nine times.
In the four years since then, only four officers made the list three or more times: Three were on the list three times, and one made it eight times.
These statistics “suggest that intervention is having a positive impact, as there are fewer repeat officers,” Assistant Chief Lynch said. He added that frequent appearances on the list don’t necessarily mean that an officer was using force improperly. Experts also praised the decrease in repeaters.
Fewer complaints
In the nine-year period before the series ran, the department received an average of 394 unnecessary force allegations per year, according to the civilian-run Office of Citizen Complaints. In the four years after that first review, there was an average of 330 allegations per year. That is a 16 percent drop.
More force by a handful
In U.S. police departments, it is common for a small number of officers to use force more frequently than peers, and in San Francisco that phenomenon is increasing for unknown reasons. In the years before the series, 100 officers were responsible for 25 percent of the reported force. In the past four years, an even smaller group - 79 officers - was responsible for 25 percent of the force.
In the years before the series, the 10 officers who logged the most use-of-force reports averaged 38 incidents per year. Since the series, the top 10 averaged 54 reported incidents a year.
Officer Stephen Benzinger, 34, a 10-year veteran who made the top 10 in both periods, said his ranking was a measure of his effectiveness and his job’s difficulty.
“I took more illegal firearms off the streets of this city than almost any other officer in the department,” he said. “This work brings me into contact with dangerous and violent individuals. This is unfortunate, but it is a fact of police work.”
Other trends
Meanwhile, the department’s reported use of force edged up slightly. Before The Chronicle’s series, officers reported using force 956 times per year, on average; since that first review, the average was 1,019 per year. Lynch said the increase may reflect that officers were more diligent about reporting their use of force. Also, he noted that today’s department has more officers on the street - up 15 percent in recent years.
In addition, both before and after the 2006 series, only a few officers underwent formal disciplinary proceedings for using force, records show.
SFPD’s troubled tracking record
The department’s effort to keep tabs on its officers’ use of force stretches back decades.
In 2003, the city controller’s office and the American Civil Liberties Union both issued reports calling for a modernized, computerized tracking system to alert the department quickly to officers’ problematic behavior.
Progress was slow. It was only after The Chronicle highlighted the need for a tracking system that the project became a high priority.
Responding to the series, Newsom pledged to “run roughshod” over the department to ensure it would have a computerized system in place by the end of 2006.
Technical problems caused delays. Now it is hoped San Francisco’s early intervention system, as it is called, will be up and running by December, at a cost of $744,000. Until then, the department is relying on an interim program that to get much of the same information the new one will provide.
“While I am not satisfied that we missed our target date, the leadership of the police department has embraced this program,” Newsom said in a written statement.
Among the items the new program will track are use of force, lawsuits, on-duty vehicle accidents and citizen complaints.
D.P. Van Blaricom, a Bellevue, Wash., police practices expert, said it is crucial for police departments to do all they can to identify officers with behavioral problems. Then, he said, they need to be counseled, retrained, transferred and, if all else fails, fired. But he adds that departments often are reluctant to take such steps.
“The great secret of this business is that 98 percent of police officers are good people trying to do a difficult job well,” Van Blaricom said, “and the great mystery is why departments tolerate the other 2 percent that we would all be better off without.”
7-year SFPD officer leads in use of force
In the past four years, Officer Jesse Farrell ranked No. 1 in the Police Department when it came to using force on the streets of San Francisco.
Department records show that on 39 occasions from 2005 to 2008, Farrell, 32, used pepper spray, his baton, his flashlight or his fists on people he confronted in the course of his job as a patrolman - more than any other San Francisco officer.
His name also appeared eight times - more than anyone else’s - on the department’s “feedback report” list of officers repeatedly using force.
During that same four-year period, most officers in the department reported using force only once or not at all.
Farrell joined the department in 2002. Most of the incidents in which he used force occurred when he was stationed in the high-crime Bayview district, where there has been tension for decades between local residents and police. Today, Farrell works out of Park Station in the Haight.
Farrell didn’t respond to requests for interviews.
Steve Johnson, a spokesman for the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said Farrell is a hardworking officer, honest and effective. “Hopefully, the public realizes that police work can be very difficult, and occasionally there are times when use of force has to be implemented,” Johnson said.
Assistant Police Chief Jim Lynch declined to comment on Farrell’s record, citing privacy laws. By state law, the disciplinary records and complaint histories of California police officers are sealed from public view.
But a review of four years of incident reports found that Farrell used his flashlight five times on people he encountered, his pepper spray half a dozen times and his baton a dozen times.
In four incidents, Farrell used force on bicyclists whom he stopped for such violations as riding on the sidewalk or riding after dark without lights.
In 2007, Farrell used pepper spray on a man who had called police to report that he had been the victim of a carjacking and two armed robberies in Hunters Point. In his report, Farrell wrote that the man, Andre Williams, 34, seemed agitated and had had slapped the leg of another officer who approached him.
In an interview, Williams said he did nothing wrong.
“The people I called to help me - I get pepper-sprayed by them,” he said.
Samuel Walker, a police practices expert, said an officer who uses force as frequently as Farrell is overdoing it.
“The numbers indicate he stands out from his peers in a negative way,” Walker said.
Copyright 2009 San Francisco Chroncile