. (Ekevara Kitpowsong/Special to S.F. Examiner)
By Jonah Owen Lamb on March 30,
2016 5:30 pm
The San Francisco police union’s
ongoing effort to discredit a panel on police bias has now taken aim at the body
for seemingly not allowing several hand-picked black officers from testifying
and countering negative characterizations of the department.
But the Police Officers
Association’s misinformation campaign is getting old, says the body’s head.
“This is indicative of the game
playing and waste of time the POA has been playing since the beginning,” Anand
Subramanian, head of the Blue Ribbon Panel, told the San Francisco Examiner on
Wednesday. “The way they operate, the tactics they use…shows they cannot be
taken seriously.”
Since its inception last year,
the panel –- created by District Attorney George Gascon after news emerged of
the racist text messages that were sent by 14 officers — has been under fire
from the politically powerful POA.
The union’s latest missive claims
that panel officials denied the union’s request to let several black officers
speak.
“How can you really hold your
Panel out to be fair and impartial if you refuse to allow the testimony of Sgt.
Tracy McCray, Inspector Clifford Cook, and Former Cmdr. Leroy Lindo, three
African American officers who dispute Sgt. [Yulanda] Williams’s skewed views
about the Police Department?”
Williams, the president of
Officers for Justice, a black officers association, testified that the San
Francisco police culture has demonstrated its racial biases as was seen in a
series of racist text messages uncovered last year.
The union subsequently attacked
Williams for her statement in a letter distributed to all its roughly 2,200
members.
Subramanian said the union’s
latest claims are simply untrue. Martin Halloran, who heads the union, was
invited to speak to the panel twice but declined, said Subramanian. What’s
more, the officers mentioned have spoken in closed interviews with the panel as
have others.
Subramanian added the panel will
not take direction on how it operates from the union.
“The real irony is that the POA
blocked our access to officers and is now complaining that they we will not
talk to officers in the way that they demand,” Subramanian said, alluding to a
letter sent to union members saying officers should come to the POA before
talking to the panel.
As part of its latest public
relations campaign, the union has blamed Gascon for rising property crimes
because of his backing of Prop. 47 and hired a consultant, Nathan Ballard, to
head up its efforts opposing police reform in The City. As part of this recent
campaign against the DA and the panel, two union leaders said in statements
made to their own lawyers that they had seen Gascon make racist remarks himself
in a Massachusetts bar several years ago.
The district attorney’s office
has denied Gascon made such remarks. Gascon, a former chief of the San
Francisco Police Department, has previously said the department is insular and
has officers who are racially biased.
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