San Francisco Police Chief Steps Down after over 8 Years

By J.D. Morris, Megan Cassidy and Michael Barba

Source San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott, who presided over a steep drop in reported crime but struggled to eradicate the city's notorious open-air drug markets, is stepping down after more than eight years on the job, Mayor Daniel Lurie said Wednesday.

Scott, San Francisco's longest-serving police chief in decades, will become the chief of a new in-house police force for Los Angeles County's Metro public transit system. The announcement of his departure ends months of speculation about Scott's future after Lurie was elected mayor in November in the wake of his campaign focused on public safety and shaking up the status quo at City Hall.

While crime has recently fallen on Scott's watch, residents and businesses became frustrated during the pandemic with chaotic streets, open-air drug sales and property crime. Critics said the police department was ineffective and slow to react, and persistent concerns about public safety helped fuel the 2022 recall of former District Attorney Chesa Boudin and former Mayor London Breed's loss to Lurie last year.

Scott has worked closely with Lurie and Breed to ramp up policing against drug-dealing hot spots, but the efforts have so far failed to eliminate the problem, and some residents say the city is merely pushing drug activity from block to block. Still, Lurie said Wednesday that he was pleased with Scott, crediting him for working to reduce crime and reform policing in San Francisco.

"I want to express my profound gratitude to the chief for his service to our city," Lurie said at a news conference in his City Hall office.

Lurie said he would work with Scott over "roughly the next six weeks" to "ensure a smooth transition." Scott's first day at his Los Angeles job is June 23.

Paul Yep, a former SFPD commander serving as Lurie's chief of public safety, will serve as interim chief, Lurie said. Yep is "the right person to lead the department through this period of transition," Lurie said. Yep, standing next to Scott, cracked a smile and nodded when Scott referred to him as "Chief Yep" for the first time.

Scott said that serving as the chief of police in San Francisco over the past eight years "has been one of the greatest honors of my life. We accomplished what we set out to do and made the department better and helped this great city to become safer."

Scott highlighted a handful of accomplishments under his leadership, including a historic drop in homicides, gun violence and car break-ins and a wave of new technologies including automatic license plate readers and drones that have "resulted in us catching more criminals."

Trading his San Francisco police uniform for a suit and tie several hours later at a Los Angeles news conference announcing his new job, Scott said he was enticed by the opportunity to build a new public safety department from scratch.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in my mind," Scott said in Los Angeles.

Scott, then a 27-year veteran officer who had most recently served as a deputy chief in Los Angeles, positioned himself as a champion of police reform who was empathetic and community-focused. One of Scott's key achievements came earlier this year, when the department closed out what had been nearly a decade of oversight.

Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said in a statement that her union appreciated Scott's "diligence and leadership" in implementing the reforms necessary to end that oversight period.

"While we may not have always agreed on issues, we valued and respected each other's roles," McCray said.

Other city leaders who worked closely with Scott lauded him in the wake of the announcement.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who worked under Scott as a former SFPD spokesperson, praised Scott in a statement as "an accomplished reformer and extraordinary leader."

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she was "devastated" by Scott's departure, calling him a "tremendous partner from day one."

"We have spent the last almost three years in the trenches, trying with every breath to turn this city around," she said.

But Jenkins also said that the progress made in recent years was "fragile," and that the city couldn't afford to have an extended period of instability in its highest ranks of police. Scott's departure comes weeks after his second-in-command, David Lazar, announced his own retirement, leaving the department's top two leadership positions in limbo.

Lurie will choose Scott's successor from a list of names forwarded to him by the city's police commission, the oversight and policy-setting body for SFPD. The commission will begin its search for a new chief in the coming days, Lurie said. He recently won more power over the commission after ousting one of its progressive members who had been appointed by Breed. A majority of the seven-member commission is now aligned with Lurie.

Yep said he would not be a candidate for the permanent chief role.

"To the officers of the San Francisco Police Department, I know the challenges you face and the sacrifices that you make. I will have your back and I will expect the highest standards in return," Yep said. "... And to my fellow San Franciscans: This is your police department. We are here to serve you, protect you and earn your trust every single day."

Whoever replaces Scott will take charge at a time when San Francisco has seen a precipitous drop in crime. The number of crime reports fell about 30% in the first quarter of this year, continuing a decline the city saw last year, when car break-ins — a longtime nuisance in the city — plunged to a 22-year low.

But open-air drug dealing and illegal street vending remain major problems in neighborhoods such as SoMa, the Tenderloin and the Mission. Lurie has been trying to crack down on the most troubled spots, including by ordering more police enforcement along Sixth Street. He also deployed a large police van to the BART plaza at 16th and Mission streets after merchants and residents complained that problems were pushed into their neighborhood.

The department also continues to struggle with a chronic staffing shortage of about 500 officers, and renewed scrutiny over its abundant use of overtime.

Prior to Scott taking the helm in early 2017, the city had been without a permanent chief since the May 2016 fatal shooting of Jessica Williams, which prompted Suhr's resignation.

That incident followed the Dec. 2, 2015, killing of Mario Woods, a Black suspect in a stabbing, which sparked widespread outrage and frayed police relations with communities of color — relations already damaged by the emergence of bigoted text messages exchanged among several officers.

Following the Woods shooting, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a collaborative review of the city's force that, months later, found a "department with concerning deficiencies."

Scott said at Wednesday's news conference that Lee, the former mayor who appointed him, wanted San Francisco to "enter a new era of policing" and had called on Scott to accomplish that goal.

The outgoing chief suggested that he had lived up to that mandate.

"We accomplished what we set out to do and made the department better and helped this great city to become safer in the process," Scott said.

__________________

Visit www.sfchronicle.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.