Vote no on Proposition H: More tasers, more problems

This June, San Francisco voters will make an important decision on whether to hand over a dangerous power to the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA).

Proposition H, a measure funded by the SFPOA, is an attempt to loosen important use of force restrictions on Tasers that were pushed onto the troubled SFPD by a team of experts from the Obama Justice Department.

If Prop H passes, San Francisco police officers will be allowed to use a taser on someone who is unarmed and poses no immediate physical threat, or on someone who says no to a police order due to confusion or mental illness. This ballot measure won’t save lives, it will allow police to be even more aggressive.

This police union behind Prop H is the same police union that for many years fought efforts to integrate the SFPD.

This is the same police union that said the officers that killed Mario Woods “acted with restraint … lawfully and within policy.”

This is the police union that said that SFPD “officers acted appropriately” when they killed Luis Gongora Pat, a homeless man who had mental health issues.

This is the same police union that said Colin Kaepernick should apologize for his protest against police brutality saying he was promoting “a false narrative and misinformation that lacks any factual basis.”

Prop H would take the power away from the Police Commission and put it in the hands of this police union.

The SFPOA may persistently deny it, but we know there are problems with brutality and racism within the San Francisco Police Department. Prop H will only make that worse.

When asked by the Department of Elections, per the normal process, to provide an analysis of the impact of Prop H on his department, SFPD Chief Bill Scott told the truth.  He called it the “antithesis” of the collaborative reform process recommended by Obama’s Justice Department, and emphasized that it would be dangerous to take the power to make adjustments in SFPD taser policy away from the chief and commission.

The SFPOA hit back immediately publicly calling Chief Scott an “abject failure” who “clearly has no mind of his own” while claiming he’d been “played like a cheap fiddle”—as though he owed a greater obligation to be loyal to the politically extreme views of the POA than to be truthful in his statements to the public.   

But the POA leadership does not speak for the entire rank and file of the SFPD.  Officers for Justice is opposing Prop H and is telling voters it “wholly supports the Chief’s, the Police Commission’s and our community stakeholders’ positions.”

District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen along with a majority of her colleagues and Police Commissioner Petra DeJesus are warning voters that Prop H is a “dangerous, misleading, special interest measure.”

Among the many groups calling for “No on H” votes are the San Francisco Democratic Party, the Latino Democratic Club, the San Francisco Labor Council, United Educators of San Francisco and the District 11 and Bernal Heights Democratic Club.

We have to stop this dangerous ballot measure.  If it passes, it can only be changed through another expensive election or a four-fifths majority vote by the Board of Supervisors.  It’s reckless and unprecedented to strip the police chief and the police commission of their power to regulate how a dangerous weapon is used by police officers.   

Nearly everyone opposes Prop H — moderates and progressives, law enforcement and civil rights leaders, the San Francisco Chronicle,  the Examiner and the Bay Guardian, District Attorney George Gascón and Public Defender Jeff Adachi, pro-taser and anti-taser, and all three leading candidates for mayor: London Breed, Jane Kim and Mark Leno.

But this well-funded special interest group has publicly threatened to spend at least a half million dollars to trick voters into approving Prop H in the June election. Police unions don’t get to decide their own use of force policies. Don’t be fooled.  Vote “No” on Prop H!

David Campos is the Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a former Supervisor and Police Commissioner.  Find more information about the “No on H” campaign at:   Votenoproph.nationbuilder.com.