The biggest controversies hanging over the SFPD: the fatal shooting of an unthreatening burglary suspect that was caught on video in December, the fatal shooting of a homeless man in murkier circumstances in April, and two rounds of revelations about racist and anti-gay text messages sent by police officers.

Until a week ago, Suhr was in an odd middle ground. He was under fire from activists but also from his own officers, whose union depicts him as a coward who refuses to stick up for a police force that by and large acts professionally.

However, the local political establishment seemed generally in his corner, including some prominent commentators. Suhr was seen as a relative source of stability in a city rocked by an ongoing investigation of a massive corruption scandal that took down state Sen. Leland Yee, among others, and appears to be zeroing in on Mayor Lee.

Making officers promise not to be racists

Despite years of criticism from San Francisco’s progressive media, Suhr wins praise from some San Franciscans for seeming to have his heart in the right place. Agreeing with some of protesters’ complaints, he formally requested a U.S. Justice Department review of his department, which is now underway. Suhr also drew national headlines for his policy of having officers take an annual pledge not to be racist or intolerant.

Yet critics says the kindest possible assessment is that Suhr may be a good person, but he is in over his head in dealing with a department mired in the past — specifically the ugly culture of big-city 20th-century police departments. Some outsiders surveying the situation agree. 

“If you have a poorly managed department without standards of accountability, everybody sinks to the bottom,” Samuel Walker, a retired criminal justice professor from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, told the Associated Press.

But in Mayor Lee’s most direct comments on the matter earlier this month, he disagreed. “I just don’t believe that having a different chief automatically gains the kind of groundwork that we are already gaining with the reforms that we have,” Lee said at a news conference in which he announced new policies meant to lead to fewer police shootings.

Willie Brown backs chief

The San Francisco political heavyweight offering the loudest support for Suhr is Willie Brown, the African American former mayor and Assembly speaker. This is from his Saturday column in the San Francisco Chronicle:

I feel sorry for Police Chief Greg Suhr.

From the tone of the attacks against him, you’d think he was the guy who put 20-plus bullets into Mario Woods [the suspect shot in December]. That he was one of the guys sending out racist texts. That he personally ordered the stopping and frisking of every person of color in the city.

In truth, he’s one of the most progressive police chiefs the city has seen in decades.

But every time he makes a move to reform the SFPD’s culture, whether it be to improve racial sensitivity or come up with smarter use-of-force policies, he’s overshadowed by another story about some cop’s inappropriate behavior.

The 82-year-old California political legend also took a pointed shot at the protesters.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin suggested at a recent board meeting that they bring in me to broker a peace deal between Mayor Ed Lee’s administration and the Black Lives Matter people, as I did during the last labor stalemate at Muni.

Are you kidding? Muni drivers are rational geniuses compared with these protesters.

Suhr appears safe for now — unless there is another dubious fatal shooting or still more racist police text messages emerge. That could prove the last straw.

After a spate of enforcement scandals that raised the ire of many in Los Angeles, bodycams began to catch on as a policy measure that could shield police from wrongful litigation and protect citizens from civil rights abuses.

But with continued nationwide unrest surrounding police misconduct — culminating in presidential candidate Hillary Clinton voicing support for nationwide body cameras — the significance of California’s approach to the technology took on an increased importance.

Controversial legislation

In an effort to tip the balance of the bodycam advantage less in favor of police, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, introduced AB 66, a bill intended to limit police access to material videotaped on their own bodycams.

“By a 5 to 1 vote, the Assembly Public Safety Committee approved AB 66, which includes the controversial provision that prohibits police officers from viewing body camera footage before writing their reports,” U-T San Diego noted. According to Weber and the civil libertarians supporting her proposal, the importance of keeping bodycam evidence under wraps outweighs the inconvenience police will face as a result.

But, as NPR reported, “many law enforcement groups aren’t buying that. They have rallied in opposition to the measure, saying it that would undermine accurate police reports — and that it presumes that the police will lie.”

Interviewed previously by U-T San Diego, “Weber said the primary role of body cameras is to de-escalate incidents between police and the general public, not to serve as a reference for officers as they write reports.”

A rival workaround

While Sacramento and law enforcement debate the bill, California’s ACLU chapter has taken matters into their own hands. A new app created by the group, called “Mobile Justice CA,” gave users the ability to “record cell phone videos of possible cases of police misconduct and then quickly save the footage to the organization’s computer servers,” as Reuters reported. “The California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said the app will send the video to the organization and preserve it even if a phone is seized by police or destroyed.”

Mobile Justice CA will even push an alert to nearby users’ phones, allowing them to seek out the location of the possible misconduct and observe the situation firsthand.

Municipal disagreement

The city of Los Angeles, which pioneered the gradual introduction of bodycams into a troubled metropolitan environment, also took fresh steps to implement a more formal regime regulating the way the devices are used.

The L.A. Police Commission recently voted to codify new rules covering bodycams, but not without a fight. As CBS Los Angeles reported, “Commissioner Robert Saltzman cast the lone dissenting vote after an often-contentious debate that lasted nearly two hours, saying he was ‘frustrated’ that commissioners and the public were not able to view and comment on the policies before the LAPD reached an agreement with the police officers’ union.”

But Commission President Steve Soboroff, an early and vocal supporter of the cameras, “argued that the public has had many opportunities to give input and that the commission will have the opportunity to re-assess the policies once the officers have actually put the body cameras to use.”

Election-year politics

Adding a final layer of complexity to the clash of interests around body cameras, state Attorney General Kamala Harris, currently angling to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Ca., has vowed to equip special agents employed by the state Department of Justice with bodycameras of their own. “With increased focus on allegations of racial bias and police violence across the country, Harris earlier this year directed her division of law enforcement to review the Justice Department’s own special agent training on implicit bias and use of force,” the Sacramento Bee noted.

By Katy Grimes

For at least four to six months, the Capitol City Freeway (I-80) in Sacramento has been devoid of painted lanes.

I took this photo last week, driving West on I-80, near P. Street, and the Hwy. 99, Hwy. 50, interchange. This is what this section of freeway has looked like for months. I was on the freeway again over the weekend, and it looked the same.

While Caltrans has been resurfacing this section of I-80 at a snails’ pace, drivers have had to fend for themselves.  This resurfacing has taken months… probably six months at this point in time.

Frankly, I am impressed with Sacramento drivers. The Capitol City Freeway, I-80 dissects downtown Sacramento and is one of the most heavily used freeways in the vicinity. So far, I’ve only seen near collisions, bumper rubs, really bad lane changes, and lots of honking and middle-finger salutes. I started avoiding that section of freeway when possible.

Two months ago, I tried to locate information about the project on the Caltrans website, but merely got a couple of dead links, and could not find the name of the project manager. But other projects were listed, and included the names and phone numbers of the project managers.

Monday, I finally stumbled on this when I searched the Caltrans website for ‘Hwy 50’ and ‘Capitol City Freeway’:

US 50

    [IN THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA AREA]
MOTORISTS ARE SUBJECT TO LANE REDUCTIONS IN EACH DIRECTION FROM 9TH ST
TO 34TH ST /IN SACRAMENTO/ (SACRAMENTO CO) FROM 1000 HRS TO 1700 HRS MONDAY
THRU FRIDAY THRU 1/14/13 – DUE TO CONSTRUCTION

and this:

– CAPITAL CITY FREEWAY
THE SOUTHBOUND CONNECTOR TO EASTBOUND & WESTBOUND US 50 /IN SACRAMENTO/
(SACRAMENTO CO) IS CLOSED FROM 2300 HRS EACH NIGHT TO 0500 HRS EACH MORNING
TUESDAY THRU THURSDAY THRU 1/17/13 – DUE TO CONSTRUCTION – A DETOUR
IS AVAILABLE

According to Caltrans, the road project is supposed to end Jan. 17. What a coincidence! I wonder if they will add lanes, instead of the free-for-all this section of freeway has become.

I am stunned that California’s transportation and road work agency has allowed this resurfacing project to drag on so long, and never even put in temporary lane stripes. Driver safety is such a risk, I’m shocked that a television crew hasn’t been out here filming.

What is this state coming to? Is there any accountability? And why doesn’t Caltrans make it easy to call?