Incidents
Office of Citizen Complaints
Police Administration
Civil Lawsuits
Criminal Prosecution

The 2,000-person San Francisco police department is supervised by a civilian Police Commission. Civilian complaints of abuse are investigated by the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) investigators who are not part of the police force. The city's population is not passive in the face of police misconduct. Despite this outside scrutiny, however, the police force has failed, at times, to hold officers who commit abuses accountable, and high-profile violations continue. According to a 1996 investigative report by the San Francisco Examiner, the city was paying large amounts in civil lawsuits following officer-involved shootings, but the officers were not being disciplined by the department, or criminally prosecuted.1 The study compared police shootings per every one hundred murders: San Francisco officers shot fatally, on average, 4.1 people for every one hundred murders in the city between 1990-95, a higher rate than Los Angeles, New York, or Oakland.2 About 75 percent of the people shot and/or killed in shootings by the police force between 1993 and 1996 were minorities or people in low-income areas.3

Following a high-profile death in custody of an African-American man in June 1995, relations between the city's residents and its police force soured dramatically. San Franciscans have a well-earned reputation for community activism and protests against perceived injustices, and have organized to express outrage over incidents of brutality. Describing community criticisms, the vice president of the police officers' union recently stated that the city is "...without a doubt the most difficult city in America to be a cop. Cops are finally saying: You know what? We've had it."4

1 Seth Rosenfeld, "S.F. pays big when cops shoot civilians," San Francisco Examiner, December 29, 1996.

2 Ibid. According to the report, the average number of civilians killed each year by police, per one hundred murders, 1990-95 were: New York 1.6, Oakland 2.2, Los Angeles 2.2, San Francisco 4.1, San Diego 5.3, San Jose 5.8. Although the methodology, which is used by the highly regarded Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), was criticized by police officials as flawed, PERF states that it shows how police use deadly force relative to the level of violence of the community.

3 Rosenfeld, "S.F. pays big when cops...,"San Francisco Examiner.

4 Mary Curtius, "Despite progressive policies, S.F. police, public at odds," Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1997.