SAN FRANCISCO -- Embattled San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned Thursday after Mayor Ed Lee asked him to step down, hours after a 27-year-old woman in a stolen car was fatally shot by a police sergeant.
Lee said he could no longer support Suhr after speaking to him about the fatal shooting of an African-American woman after she refused to stop for police.
“I have previously expressed confidence in Chief Suhr because I know he agrees with and understands the need for reform,” Lee said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “But following this morning’s officer-involved shooting and my meeting with Chief Suhr this afternoon, today I have arrived at a different question of how best to move forward.”
Suhr had been on the ropes for months, battered by controversies over other fatal shootings by officers and two scandals involving officers sending each other racist and homophobic text messages. Still, he appeared to hold the mayor’s confidence until Thursday's police shooting.
Deputy Chief Toney Chaplain will serve as acting chief, Lee told reporters.
There have been eight fatal shootings by San Francisco police officers in the last two years, according to KRON-4 TV.
They included the December killing of Mario Woods, a stabbing suspect who was shot 20 times as he shuffled along the street. Suhr said officers opened fire in self-defense, but horrified pedestrians shared videos that appeared to show cops shooting before Woods moved in their direction.
“This last shooting was the final straw,” said San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, a frequent critic of the police, adding that he wasn't surprised by Suhr's departure.
The sergeant involved in Thursday's shooting in the Bayview neighborhood apparently violated department rules that prohibit firing on a vehicle unless an officer’s life appears in danger, Adachi said.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced in February it would investigate San Francisco police because of repeated officer-involved shootings.
Protesters for months had called for Suhr’s removal. A group of five went on a hunger strike on April 21 outside the police station in the Mission neighborhood, calling on Lee to fire Suhr. They were hospitalized 16 days after they stopped eating.
Suhr’s job was further threatened this spring as the department revealed that four cops sent each other messages with derogatory comments about blacks, Latinos and LGBT people, among others.
With his public support dropping over the last year, Suhr attempted to fortify his position and remake the department by announcing reforms. In April, following the texting controversy, he called for sensitivity training for officers.
That followed his announcement in March that the department would revise its policy for using force.
San Francisco NAACP branch President Amos Brown said Suhr was a “decent man" and compared the city’s situation with Chicago's, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired the police commander in December after disputed shootings by officers. Chicago's ouster of its police superintendent, Brown said, "did not solve the problem."
"It was not solved because there’s a culture created by a collective unit of human beings that does not change with the removal of one man,” said Brown. “We’ve got to move forward in a collaborative way to make sure that officers will be fair, just and compassionate, and that the community will respect officers who are doing the right thing.”
Suhr, a veteran of the San Francisco police force, had been chief since 2011, when Lee appointed him to replace George Gascon, now the city’s district attorney.
