But Suhr’s abrupt exit isn’t likely to yield a quiet interlude in San Francisco politics. Instead, the question for residents is this: Who will be the next city big shot to be taken down?

Mayor Lee is seen as a likely target of corruption investigations by both the FBI and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon.

The FBI’s long-running “Operation Whitesuit” probe focuses on political bribery, Chinese-American gangs, money laundering and booze- and gun-running. It has already yielded criminal convictions against now-former San Francisco state Sen. Leland Yee,  former San Francisco school board president Keith Jackson and its initial target, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a legendary gang figure who claimed to have gone on the straight and narrow in recent years.

Spinning bribery web around mayor?

Chow and Lee have long had many mutual acquaintances and were seen together on many occasions at city banquets and civic functions, leading to speculation about improprieties. But it was only in late January that a specific law-enforcement threat to Lee emerged. That’s when Gascon — apparently working in concert with the FBI — arrested two former employees with the city’s Human Rights Commission on allegations that they took bribes to set up meetings with Lee. An undercover FBI agent says that Nazly Mohajer, a former agency commissioner, and Zula Jones, a former staffer, took $20,000 from him in 2011.

Lee has flatly denied any wrongdoing. But he admitted meeting the undercover agent. Meanwhile, authorities also have a tape in which Mohajer and Jones can be heard talking about ways to use the apparent bribe to pay off Lee’s 2011 campaign debts without drawing attention.

Former city Supervisor Bevan Dufty and other Lee allies have floated the theory that he is the victim in the case, done in by overzealous, imprudent aides. But Gascon didn’t just accuse Mohajer and Jones of bribery and money-laundering. He also filed related charges against Jackson, the already-convicted school board president — clearly trying to depict the alleged bribery as part of the larger criminal conspiracy that the FBI’s been targeting for many years.

Fire chief accused of ignoring severe problems

But Schur and Lee aren’t the only San Francisco leaders in hot water. Joanne Hayes-White, the longest-serving fire chief, is accused of ignoring public concerns and of borderline incompetence.

Hayes-White joined the San Francisco Fire Department in 1990 and quickly moved up the ranks, becoming chief in 2004. Her defenders depict criticism of her as politically driven, especially by a fire union with whom she has locked horns.

But a KQED report last month — while noting the union’s key role in the criticism of the chief — pointed to several areas of legitimate concern. The short list:

• According to a 2015 grand jury report, Hayes-White has done a weak job of making sure emergency-response times meet acceptable standards and has failed for years to address the reason for delays: an aging ambulance fleet prone to breaking down.
• Her department has a backlog of investigations on cases large and small, with some dating back four years. Hayes-White is blamed for refusing to listen to outside voices who say she needs to beef up her arson task force.
• Her department is accused of doing a bad job of regularly performing adequate safety checks on San Francisco’s hundreds of older apartment buildings. Hayes-White’s top aide admitted problems after a fatal four-alarm fire in the Mission District in January 2015.

But she had little choice after a bombshell San Francisco Chronicle investigation documented that the building had passed its most recent safety inspection in August 2014 despite a number of obvious warning signs. At the building, the newspaper wrote, “fire inspectors found safety violations for years — missing fire extinguishers, blocked fire escapes, inoperable smoke alarms and locked exits … . The building also had no fire alarm or sprinkler system because state and local laws don’t require those protections for older buildings with more than 16 apartments. And though the building had a required smoke alarm that could have alerted tenants to the fire, it never sounded. Residents told The Chronicle that someone disabled it after repeated false alarms.”

Hayes-White’s defenders depict the criticism as being ginned up by the fire union to gain advantage in ongoing debates about pay, staffing and hiring. But KQED’s reporting suggests that there is more in play than just political jousting.

Over the last 16 months the department has come under criticism for doing a weak job of documenting fire safety violations in the city’s older apartment buildings after a series of deadly fires. It has also come under scrutiny for moving too slowly to reduce a backlog of hundreds of fire investigations going back several years.

Fire chief for 12 years as problems built

Hayes-White, who was appointed fire chief in 2004 and by some accounts is the longest-serving fire chief of a large city in the U.S., can’t say she inherited her department’s problems. A San Francisco native, she joined the department in 1990 after graduating from the University of Santa Clara and quickly moved up the ranks, being promoted to lieutenant in 1993, captain in 1996 and then acting battalion chief that same year.

During her 26 years with SFPD, the quality of department management has been increasingly questioned.

Last June, a civil grand jury report found, among other things, the Fire Department’s emergency medical response times fail to meet state standards, in part because of “a chronic lack of serviceable ambulances.” The grand jury also found that half the department’s ambulance fleet exceeded its expected service life of 10 years and that the agency lacks a strategic plan for replacing ambulances and other emergency equipment. …

One high-profile example of the equipment problems: the failure of the department’s “jaws of life” devices after last November’s tour bus crash in Union Square.

The complex tools, used to cut open vehicles in which victims are trapped, were unable to cut through the high-grade steel of vehicles involved in the accident.

That’s also from KQED.

Mayor and police chief also have many critics

Meanwhile, Mayor Lee appears to be the ultimate target of an influence-peddling corruption investigation by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon that is apparently piggybacking on information from the far-reaching FBI probe that led to the corruption convictions of former state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, and legendary Chinatown gang figure Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, among others. In January, Gascon arrested two former employees of the city’s Human Rights Commission and alleged they had tried to sell access to Lee to an undercover agent.

Police Chief Suhr faces multiple problems. On Feb. 1, the Justice Department launched a probe into his department after complaints from the ACLU and African-American groups over police violence. In December, cellphone videos caught officers shooting to death Mario Woods, a 26-year-old crime suspect, as he walked away from them toward an open area. The contention that Woods was an immediate threat to public safety has drawn broad ridicule.

Suhr has faced criticism from both sides: from officers who say he doesn’t stick up for them in an era in which police feel under siege and from activists who say he has condoned bad behavior for years.

Suhr is also caught in the middle in a scandal that began a year ago over text messages showing officers using racist and racially charged language. Activists wants the 14 officers involved to be fired. Suhr’s most prominent response has been to ask his officers to make a seven-point pledge not to be racist and intolerant.

But a fresh round of racist texts from another group of officers emerged late last month, prompting national coverage of the disarray within Suhr’s department. Gascon, the DA, told The New York Times that he had profound questions about the SFPD’s internal culture, given that “officers involved in the new case were sending offensive texts even as the city investigated 14 of their colleagues last year for sending and receiving similar messages.”