Police

Vincent Calvarese, Sheriff's Deputy, Arrested on Domestic Violence Charges

An alleged domestic violence incident at the Gold's Gym on Market Street concluded with police arresting a sworn Sheriff's Deputy, who was charged with assault and false imprisonment. Lieutenant Vincent Calvarese was arrested Thursday evening at the 2301 Market Street gym. District Attorney spokeswo ... More >>

DA George Gascón Says Probe of Alleged SFPD Perjury Isn't Conflict of Interest

Independent of what?​Update: KGO reports this morning that the FBI is launching its own investigation into the allegations over the police misconduct during a drug bust earlier this year. The agency will look into possible civil rights violations among other violations.Original story, Thursday, Ma ... More >>

Police Union Head Has 'Concerns and Regret' Over Gascón Appointment

George Gascón​The head of San Francisco's police union is circulating a bulletin to members today that expresses surprise and concern over the appointment of SFPD Chief George Gascón as the city's new district attorney.The memo also strikes a positive note, however, pointing out that a former c ... More >>

SF Jails Wrong Luke Smith For 11 Days, Lawsuit Claims

They all look the same to me...​In an apparent jailhouse version of babies accidentally switched at the hospital, the San Francisco Sheriff's Department allegedly switched identification numbers of two Luke Smiths who happened to be in jail at the same time last May, according to a new lawsuit. Th ... More >>

Patrol Special Cops' New Leader Says He Won't Shy Away From 'Confrontation' With SFPD

Patrol Special Officer Alan Byard​The San Francisco Patrol Special Police, a private security force that has co-existed alongside city-employed police officers since the days of the Gold Rush, has elected a leader to head its officers' professional association.The Patrol Special Police Officers As ... More >>

Database Reveals Who's Earning $12.2 Billion in Bay Area Public Employee Salaries

​A database of more than 200,000 Bay Area public employees charts just who's earning $12.2 billion in public salaries. (It's a big database, so it takes a while to load up).  Coming tops on the Bay Area News Group-compiled cavalcade of information: Nancy Farber, chief administrator of Washing ... More >>

D.A. Kamala Harris Appoints Iran-Contra Prosecutor to Handle S.F. Criminal Cop Scandal

John Keker, who went after Iran-Contra defendant Oliver North (pictured), will soon be looking into the SFPD.​District Attorney Kamala Harris announced today that she will appoint a high-powered private attorney to review the growing scandal over her office's failure to disclose the criminal backg ... More >>

Why the police commission doesn't discipline bad cops

Will S.F. Take Well-Paid Cops Off Street to Shovel Horse Shit?

Will San Francisco make a dubious move?​Earlier this month, Matt Murphy was told he'd be laid off from his city job, and likely replaced by a uniformed police officer. Since Murphy already works for the police department, that's not so outlandish an idea. But since his job largely consists of shov ... More >>

Legal Weapon

Don Cameron trains cops in how to use force, and then defends them in court when they're accused of going too far.

Yet Another San Francisco Vehicle Fire

www.lcpstc.org​The other day we wrote about how San Francisco was attempting to reclaim its mantle as The City That Knows How ... To Burn Cars from the East Bay. Well, the hits keep coming. Shortly before 1 a.m. this morning, police officers spotted a vehicle burning at Alemany and Naglee in the E ... More >>

Newsom and Gascon Annouce Drop in Violent Crime A Week After Gascon Admits Record-Keeping Flaws

​A week ago, the San Francisco Examiner broke this story about how the San Francisco Police Department statistics are botched, and have been for some time, particularly in the area of aggravated assaults. Somehow, the department failed to include domestic violence incidents in ... More >>

Fourth Suspect Arrested For Allegedly Beating Up Movie Actor on Muni

via IMDB.comChristopher Borgzinner looking his best, i.e. while not riding Muni​We've been keeping tabs on the campaign of Supervisor Bevan Dufty and the police department to make it less likely you'll be pummeled or robbed on Muni, which seems to be happening a lot these days. Well, it seems othe ... More >>

S.F. Cops on BART Glass-Shattering Incident: C'est La Vie

Every once in a while, we give a call to a veteran San Francisco police officer with 20 years of patrol experience. Naturally we phoned him up to get his take on the weekend incident in which a BART officer removing a disorderly man from a train resulted in a  YouTube video titled "Officer Br ... More >>

Missing 86-Year-Old Dementia Patient Found in S.F.; Unsure Where He's Been For Two Weeks

Menlo Park's Paul McAdoo turned up safe and sound -- but no one really knows how​Yesterday we urged readers to call the cops if they saw 86-year-old Paul McAdoo of Menlo Park, a dementia patient with a yen for hopping on buses or trains and taking them to parts unknown. Since McAdoo went missing f ... More >>

Say Hello To My Little Friend: S.F., Meet CompStat

Can the SFPD saved by the miracle of computers? ​ Wednesday morning, at the unveiling of the city's new crimefighting tool, CompStat, San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon had the city say hello to his not-so-little friend and implementer, LAPD detective Jeff Godown.Gascon intend ... More >>

Police Change Policy: Will Cease Towing and Impounding Cars of Unlicensed Drivers -- Sort Of

Still always good to have...​San Francisco is about to get a lot more friendly to unlicensed drivers. After a series of meetings over the last year with immigrants' rights groups and the ACLU, the police are halting their mandatory policy of towing off and impounding cars driven by unlicensed mot ... More >>

Castro businesses step into the SFPD's turf war with private security officers

Proposed Rule Change Would Allow New Chief to Purge Top SFPD Brass

Chief George Gascon​New San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon has not announced plans to liquidate top SFPD brass and fill positions with his own people, as he did during his first year as chief of the police department in Mesa, Arizona.Notwithstanding, a proposed amendment introduced by Superv ... More >>

Will Police Chief's New U.S. Homeland Security Gig Undermine S.F. Crime-Fighting?

Will tough-talking George Gascon kill the federal goose that lays golden eggs that buy police departments neat toys like this?​Top S.F. crime-fighter is one of two new hats on the head of tough-talking new police chief George Gascon. He also last month signed on as a member of U.S. Homeland Securi ... More >>

Lucky George: Incoming San Francisco Police Chief Says He Was About to be Canned From Old Job

George GasconIncoming San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon -- the subject of this week's SF Weekly cover story -- is certainly walking into a dicey situation in his avowed attempts to shake up San Francisco's problematic police department. But it's better than filing for unemployment, which he c ... More >>

For Entertainment Purposes Only

The Entertainment Commission is supposed to regulate S.F. nightclubs, but it won't — and often can't — punish scofflaws. The results are sometimes tragic.

Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of General Strike Falls Amid Renewed Police-Labor Feud

See you on the waterfrontThis Sunday, July 5, San Francisco's International Longshore and Warehouse Union will hold a procession to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Bloody Thursday, the clash between police and striking longshoremen during the city's 1934 General Strike that led to a permanent lo ... More >>

Police, Muni Alter Time and Space: 24 Hours Becomes One Month In Quantifying How Cops Bill Transit System

But can he make the buses run on time? Albert Einstein's famous -- and famously dumbed down -- explanation of his Theory of Relativity was "If you sit on a stove for a minute, it feels like an hour. If you sit next to a pretty girl for an hour, it feels like a minute." It warrants mentioning that, a ... More >>

Activists Say SFPD is Trashing City ID Cards

Pretty fancy 'garbage'Neighborhood activists complained to supervisors today that San Francisco police officers are showing "disrespect" for people holding the municipal identification cards the city began distributing in January -- including one alleged incident where an officer in the Tenderloin ... More >>

Here's a Shock: Cop Sues Taser Over Stun-Gun Safety

Apparently, Taser training's not as fun as it looksThere are times when real-world events conspire overwhelmingly to defeat arguments for a policy or theory. Think about the fate of Soviet-style collective farming, say, or -- to pull an example from the past year's headlines -- the idea that unregul ... More >>

Advance Notice Regarding Homicide Catching On

Elmo gets it.Earlier today Joe Eskenazi encouraged transparency and openness from all of San Francisco's would-be killers. He was kidding and all, but later in the day, we noticed that at least one guy may have actually read our blog and followed Eskenazi's advice.  That would ... More >>

Stay Away ... Please

Can cops keep an accused drug dealer from roaming the Tenderloin?

Win Free Swag -- from the Cops!

To protect and serve ... and give away swag!This just in from The Snitch's favorite police report writer, Capt. Paul Chignell of the Taraval Police Station: What is the name of the revered Deputy Chief of Police from the 1970s who lived on Santiago and died suddenly in his early 50s? First to answer ... More >>

UCSF Study Shows Huge Spike in Deaths Immedately After Cops Adopt Tasers

Over the past several years, police departments across the country have adopted the Taser, a brand of electroshock weapon, as a "less-lethal" alternative for when things get hot. The stun guns have been touted for their ability to reduce fatalities in law enforcement, b ... More >>

No Sanctuary

Police slow to help crime victims who are here illegally.

San Francisco Police Department Can't Stop Homicides

Can't We All Just Roll Along?

There is a way bike riders and car drivers can more safely coexist, and help the environment.

Mirkarimi drops a bomb: Maybe the police should work for the Supes

Local NAACP Head Accuses Berkeley Cops of Wanting to "Kill Every African-American That They Can."

Castro Halloween: ‘100,000 People are Coming. Where Will They Urinate?’

Halloween In Fallujah: Castro Cops Promise Barricades, Ambulances ... Possibly Chaos

No. 1 With a Bullitt

San Francisco's murder rate is at its highest level in a decade. Whose fault is that?

Letters to the Editor

Week of Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Homeland Sinecurity

A chat with the man who does nothing, all day long, for the Department of Homeland Security

Innocence Arrested

Albert Johnson was exonerated for a crime he didn't commit, but not before spending over a decade in prison. Why guiltless people get jailed -- and how to stop it.

Death and Access

When police officers and death coincide, the public has a right to the official record of the event

Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang -- You're Dead

Two-plus months after police shot Idriss Stelley 20 times, they still won't release their reports on the death

Breaking the Cycle

Marin County has a program to protect bicyclists. In S.F., we keep killing them.

Policing the Vice Squad

Investigations launched into money collected from massage parlor workers

The Face of Lying

UCSF's Paul Ekman, a national expert on the science of lying, helps police (and journalists) determine whether perps (or presidents) are practiced prevaricators

Poisoned Probe

How police bungled the exotic poison-for-profit case known as Foxglove

Megan's Law Goes to Class

Schools plan to tell parents where sex offenders live; is it caution or hysteria?

Paper Trails

Paper Trails