Photo by Charles Russo
The chief was running late. As a group of Guardian reporters filed into his modest, comfortable conference room on the fifth floor of the Hall of Justice, an aide told us that Police Chief George Gascón was still meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom at City Hall, and that we'd all have to cool our heels for a while.
While we were waiting, Michelangelo Apodaca, a public affairs officer in the chief's office (he called himself an "image strategist") stressed the recent sea change at SFPD, labeling it "new coach, new approach." (It appears, however, that the mayor is still pushing his so-called "quality of life" agenda. "I just came from a meeting where I got beat up for not doing enough about public drinking and public disorder," the chief belatedly told us.)
But once we got into the interview, Gascón was friendly, candid, thoughtful, and accommodating, and spent nearly an hour discussing his philosophy of law enforcement, his vision for San Francisco, and his positions on some tricky and divisive problems.
We left with the impression that the new chief, although hardly in agreement with us on a number of issues, is far more open than his predecessor, willing to shake things up in the moribund department — and sometimes, interested in discussion and compromise on progressive concerns.
"My philosophy of policing is very heavy in community involvement, very transparent," Gascón told us.
Gascón said he's moving quickly on implementing many of the items that he's promised, such as creating a COMPSTAT (computerized crime and staffing statistics) system that will be accessible to the public. He plans to launch it Oct. 21.
And beyond the technology, he seems interested in shifting the top-down structure of the department. "I said that we would reorganize the department in certain levels and do certain levels of decentralization to increase resources at the neighborhood level so that we actually have people within the police department who have greater ownership of neighborhood issues," he said. "And we're going to do that in November. I stated that we would have community police advisory boards at each of the stations, and those basically will be neighborhood-level people, anywhere from 10 to 20, for each station. We'll work with our local captains on neighborhood-related issues."
He said that improving how the department does community policing will have a two-fold impact. "One is, the cops get to understand better what the community really wants. The other is that the community gets to understand better what the resources really are.
"Everybody wants a foot-beat cop," he continued. "Everybody wants a fixed-post cop. Everybody wants a cop in every bus. If we had 10,000 people, then perhaps we could fulfill all those wishes. The reality is that we don't."
EXPENSIVE CRACKDOWN
But the most tangible impact of Gascón's tenure so far has been his crackdowns on drug-related activity in the Tenderloin, where more than 300 people at a time ...
These drug sweeps are way out of line and the new chief needs to knock it off or face eventual strong public opposition.
We want him to focus on stopping dangerous violent criminals, not arresting people on non-violent drug crimes and unnecessarily filling our jails and prisons with such people, who will then, at high expense to our budget, learn while incarcerated the very anger and violence that we should be attempting to prevent; rather than breeding more of it by sending essentially innocent people to prison.
If these all too typical reactionary drug busts are how Mr. Gascon intends to build his law enforcement career, he needs to apply for a job in Texas or Oklahoma, and leave San Francisco.
San Francisco prides itself as a "Progressive" city. The police dept was never innovative nor progressive. It's leadership lack fresh ideas or forward thinking. They only operated from day to day and busy themselves by putting out fires and going to community meetings. We never heard from the front line officers who patrol our neighborhoods. Never ever had one attend any of our meetings. It was only the executives who would show up and tell us what we wanted to hear. There was too much talk not enough action.
The City of San Francisco has a new Chief. I like what I've been reading and hearing about him. He is a breath of FRESH air. How will he go about changing the SFPD? That's a tough job and to me it's like Obama trying to change Washington DC. But one trait I do notice about him is that he has a vision. He has a plan to make the SFPD one of the best in the State of California. You can see the determination in his voice and face when he talks about changing the SFPD. We have to ask ourselves what are we doing to help him change the status quo? Without the community support's he will fail.
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