Officer who interviewed the possible kidnapping victim also transferred.
Jaxon Van Derbeken, The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco -- A lieutenant at the heart of the controversy over how the San Francisco Police Department handled a possible kidnapping in the Tenderloin has been shifted to an administrative post, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
Lt. Jerry Lankford, a 24-year veteran of the department, had been assigned for several years to the department’s Ingleside station, where he was a watch commander. He has been shifted to the administration bureau, acting Chief Alex Fagan said Tuesday.
Lankford has been under scrutiny since July 1, when officers spotted his Cadillac Escalade in the Tenderloin about 2:30 a.m. just after a woman told police she had been dragged into a similar SUV nearby. One officer told a police dispatcher that he intended to stop Lankford’s SUV, but then reported that he had lost it.
The officer who interviewed the possible kidnapping victim said Capt. Patricia Jackson, the night supervising captain, had ordered that Lankford’s name be omitted from the police report on the incident. Jackson has since been transferred to the police academy.
The woman did not pursue the kidnapping case, and the criminal investigation into the incident is closed.
In addition to its internal investigation into the Tenderloin incident, the department’s management control unit is looking at an earlier traffic stop in which Lankford had covered his SUV’s rear license plate with a golf towel. The officer who pulled Lankford over early May 5 later reported that he was “aggressive and confrontational.”
Lankford was moved into administration retroactive to July 19, according to the department’s transfer list. That was also the day Jackson was sent to the police academy.
Fagan said Tuesday that Lankford has been on vacation for much of the time since the Tenderloin incident, although he was briefly acting captain of the Ingleside station in early July.
Lankford will be on extended loan to the administration bureau, Fagan said.
“During the course of these investigations, it’s sort of routine that we take people off the street and put them in non-public contact positions,” Fagan said. “As the case started dragging on, we felt it was appropriate he should be moved.”
Lankford has been assigned a project updating department orders and manuals,
Fagan said.
He said the investigations into the May and July incidents are taking longer than he expected and that it will be at least two more weeks before they are done.