On Thursday, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee asked for and received the resignation of Police Chief Greg Suhr. This was the worst form of political expediency. As I have previously written, elected officials are primarily interested in staying elected, and Lee caved into the type of anger in the public and the press that now threatens the job security of every elected official in this country and of good police leaders from coast to coast.
Suhr’s “resignation” came hours after officers in a squad spotted a 27-year-old woman sitting behind the wheel of a car that had been reported stolen. The woman fled, and crashed. While attempting to extract the woman from the crashed vehicle, a single shot was fired. The woman later died.
Pressure had been mounting for the resignation of Chief Suhr since December when five officers fatally shot a knife-wielding man who refused to comply with commands to drop the weapon. Protesters were outraged again in April when an officer shot and killed a man who refused orders to drop a large knife.
While details of the fatal shooting that occurred Thursday are scarce, we do know in both of the other aforementioned shootings, officers were making split-second decisions while facing subjects that were armed. The local press and a small — but incredibly vocal — segment of the population failed to understand the situation those officers faced and blamed the cops instead of the assailants.
Meaningful progress
Anti-Suhr protesters had also rallied over a texting scandal involving a number of officers who exchanged messages perceived to be racist and homophobic. Following an investigation, Chief Suhr fired those officers, but apparently not quickly enough for those who protested.
Lee and Suhr had even up until recently been working closely together to implement a variety of reforms — some aimed at reducing police shootings — and had jointly called upon the Justice Department for help in reviewing the agency’s policy and procedures.
But Lee said Thursday, “The progress we’ve made has been meaningful, but it hasn’t been fast enough.”
The fact is, Suhr was effectively leading a host of successful programs to improve the relationship between the department and the citizens they serve. Suhr was consistently out on the sidewalks talking with people — not just attending community meetings (which he did often) — in order to ensure that citizens could better understand the deep commitment he had for his city.
Suhr grew up in San Francisco, went to college in the city, and was a devoted law enforcement officer there for some 34 years.
The fact is, Mayor Lee throwing Suhr out will not expedite any reforms. In fact, Suhr’s exit will almost surely slow down any effort to improve the department in any way.
A lousy thing happened this week, and this great police leader essentially got fired for it.
A bleak future
I’ve never worked for Chief Suhr, nor have I trained with him, but I’ve lived in San Francisco for more than two decades and he is by a wide margin the very best chief we’ve had during that time. I’ve sat and talked with him on several occasions, and he’s a great man who cares deeply about the citizens he serves and the cops who serve under him. When he led the line officers in one of the toughest neighborhoods in this city, he was admired by the community. He was respected by his troops — a “cop’s cop.” When he was promoted, everyone was sad to see him go — and that says a lot.
In essence, Suhr got fired because of political pressure, and the future of law enforcement may be far bleaker than I had previously allowed myself to imagine. Here’s my prediction: If this trend continues unabated, crime rates in this country will rise, because the most cops will do is take a report, file said report, and figuratively — and perhaps literally — hide someplace quiet until the next radio call.
If that’s where we’re going, it will ultimately be the innocents who suffer. And that, my friends, is a very sad thing.
