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San Francisco is trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers, after businessman Marc Benioff slammed the city's homeless and drug problems. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is visiting four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive. Candidates from outside of the state of California will take a written test, a physical ability test and an interview to see if they make they cut. A police spokesperson told the San Francisco Standard that the number of estimated applications this year is 2,104, nearly a 20 percent increase from...

Megyn Kelly isn’t buying the San Francisco Police Department’s version of events as it investigates the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. “I know enough to smell a rat,” the former Fox News and NBC star said during her podcast on Monday. During an interview with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on her SiriusXM podcast on Monday, Kelly blasted any notion that the attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, was politically motivated, pointing out that the suspect, David DePape, 42, is a “lunatic.” “I feel like at a minimum, the SFPD has egg on its face because even under the most...

A Facebook post apparently published by a San Francisco Police Department investigator has renewed concerns about bias and the department’s role in weeding it out. The post, which appears to come from SFPD Investigator Ernie Ferrando’s personal Facebook account, includes a meme mocking Brittney Griner, a professional basketball player who was recently sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison after authorities there purportedly found marijuana vape canisters in her luggage. Griner, who is Black and a lesbian, reportedly has a medical prescription for cannabis and is appealing the sentence. In one half of the meme, labeled “How it started,”...

A birthday celebration at San Francisco's Ocean Beach on Saturday afternoon was interrupted by a man who at one point hurled a soda can, smashing a woman's face, one of the group members said. *** The San Francisco Police Department responded to the incident on the beach near Taraval Street at 3 p.m. and arrested a suspect. The three women and two teenage girls in the group noticed the man sitting about 30 feet away from them as they were having their picnic, Pillai said. "When we saw him approaching, we were uncertain what to do," she said. "He came...

A Twitter dispute between the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the city's police union is heating up. The online incident comes after the transit agency tweeted they would no longer transport officers to anti-police protests.... Then came the tweet and a response from the police union...."lose our number"

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Seven San Francisco police officers accused of sending racist and homophobic text messages have been suspended, and the police chief has recommended that they be fired. Chief Greg Suhr announced Friday that he has asked a police oversight committee to approve firing the officers. Six others face disciplinary actions that include reassignment to positions that don't have contact with the public. Another officer tied to the investigation already has resigned. The text messages "are of such despicable thinking that those responsible clearly fall below the minimum standards required to be a police officer," Suhr said in...

White is right — in activists’ book.  That is, the right color to ignore when it comes to stories of people shot by police.So says American Thinker editor Rick Moran while reporting on the shooting of a pellet-gun wielding white man on Sunday by San Francisco police. The Washington Post describes the incident: The shooting occurred in the parking lot of the San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station [at 5:20 p.m. PT]. In a statement, the department said that the confrontation began when police sergeants asked a man in the station’s restricted lot to leave. Instead, the man stood in...

(01-09) 14:08 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A bicyclist who was struck by a tow truck in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood was traveling in the wrong direction on a one-way street, police said Thursday. The bicyclist, a 31-year-old woman who has not been identified, was hit at Seventh and Folsom streets at about 5 p.m. Wednesday. She had been riding west on Folsom, which runs one way in the opposite direction, said Officer Albie Esparza, a police spokesman.

The day before Halloween in 2012, Donnie Fowler, a lobbyist from a little-known tech start-up called PredPol, e-mailed a confidential login and password to the San Francisco Police Department's chief information officer, Susan Merritt. The password allowed Merritt to log into an online mapping tool that, according to Fowler and his business partners, was already predicting where crimes are likely to happen across San Francisco. Fowler was, if his company is to be believed, giving the SFPD the keys to the next generation of crime-fighting, a program that draws from the past to help police, presumably, change the future. PredPol...

A San Francisco police officer shot and wounded an armed 22-year-old parolee in the city's Mission District late Thursday, prompting a protest by dozens of people hours later, authorities said. Another group gathered in the area Friday night, vandalizing banks and a restaurant. A plainclothes officer, part of a curfew enforcement team, shot the man after he allegedly pulled a Tec-9 assault-style pistol in the 200 block of 14th Street at 8:06 p.m. Thursday, police said. The wounded man, whose name was not released, was taken to the hospital. Police said his injuries were not life-threatening. Police described him as...

When suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi first came under investigation for domestic violence against his wife, he had to surrender his guns. But police investigators had a hard time obtaining them from Mirkarimi, who may have misled investigators about their whereabouts, according to documents filed in his official misconduct hearings. As a member of the Board of Supervisors, the progressive stalwart consistently favored gun control. He once drew court opposition from the National Rifle Association over a move to strengthen The City’s rules for handguns in homes. Yet when it was time to surrender his guns, Mirkarimi didn’t immediately hand them...

In the game of megabuck public paychecks, outgoing San Francisco police brass are hauling away the gold. New city records show that former Police Chief Heather Fong - who retired in 2009 - received a grand total of $528,595 in her final year.The goodbye check included her final year base pay of $187,875, plus $303,653 for unused vacation, sick and comp time, plus $37,067 in other pay.Now that she's gone, she's pulling down an annual pension of $229,500 for life. Former Deputy Chief Charles Keohane, who exited in 2009, received $516,118 in his final year - $325,503 from accrued vacation,...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A former San Francisco police lieutenant who weathered numerous allegations during his career, including that he loitered around prostitution hot spots, has filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the city. Jerry Lankford, 54, claims he was forced to retire after being wrongly accused of being unprofessional when he rapped his badge against a Starbucks window while the coffee store was closed. The 30-year department veteran said he was unfairly placed on unpaid administrative leave in February and had no choice but to retire after being accused of "conduct unbecoming an officer" at the Starbucks in the West Portal...

When George Gascón became San Francisco's police chief, it was a revelation. He held news conferences without checking with higher-ups, and called back reporters promptly to offer unvarnished opinions. Compared with the usual bunker mentality at SFPD, it was a whole new world. I once asked someone in City Hall if Gascón would be asked to tone it down. "They'll let him go until he puts his foot in it," they said. This week he did. At a breakfast meeting Wednesday to discuss the earthquake-safety bond measure, Gascón veered off onto the topic of terrorism. He said that San Francisco...

An organized effort by a group - small, vocal and far left - has decided it needs to put police Chief George Gascón in his place. It began with a smack-down rant by Supervisor Chris Daly during the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, and was followed up the next day when the Police Commission voted 4-3 not to support Gascón's plan to arm his officers with Tasers. Gascón, who called the vote "ridiculous," withdrew his proposal, but this is far from over. The progressives may have overplayed their hand on this one. ..."I think this has very little to...

The San Francisco Police Officers Association's leadership has been told to muzzle it after signing a letter accusing onetime Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, of being behind the nearly 40-year-old bombing at a San Francisco police station that killed a sergeant. We hear that both U.S. Justice Department reps and Police Chief Heather Fong put in calls to the union to find out just what they were doing talking out of school about an active investigation that may be ready to make a move soon in the 1970 bombing at Park Station. The word was,...

San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong's decision to retire after nearly five stable but uninspired years on the job, comes just as Mayor Gavin Newsom is facing two tough political challenges with the city's powerful police officers union: budget cuts and the need for the union's backing for his 2010 gubernatorial bid. Faced with a staggering city budget deficit, Newsom has asked the Police Officers Association to give back the 6 percent raise he agreed to in the last contract - just as he is asking other unions for givebacks. So far, the police rank and file have said no...

San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong, who rose through the ranks to become the city's first female chief nearly five years ago, will announce her retirement today on a radio program hosted by Mayor Gavin Newsom.She plans to step down in April, once she reaches her fifth anniversary as San Francisco's top cop and after she helps with the search for her successor, she said. Fong has served in the police department for more than 30 years.The announcement ends speculation about her long-rumored departure and comes as the city approaches its 100th homicide of the year.Fong told The Chronicle that...

Sarah Palin has accused presidential candidate Barack Obama of "palling around" with terrorists - referring to his acquaintance with a former member of the Weather Underground. So who were the Weather Underground? Embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, with many of the grievances of the civil-rights movement still unanswered, the US government was facing widespread protests in the late 1960s. Often those who rebelled were rich in idealism but unable or unwilling to take concrete action. On 8 October 1969, all that changed. A newly-formed group of left-wing extremists, dubbed the Weathermen, went on the rampage in a well-planned...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A man who was shot by a San Francisco police officer while fleeing to avoid a panhandling citation has died, authorities said today. The man died at 6:25 p.m. Sunday at San Francisco General Hospital, according to the medical examiner's office. His name wasn't released pending notification of his family. The shooting occurred about 3:20 p.m., after someone complained to police about a panhandler on the median strip of Van Ness Avenue at Greenwich. An officer responded and went onto the median to cite the man, who was uncooperative, said police Sgt. Steve Mannina. When the officer...