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Approximately 200 people gathered at Thurgood Marshall High School on Wednesday night Feb. 24 to air their grievances toward the SFPD at the first of several town hall meetings, which are part of the formal review currently being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s Community Oriented Policing Services program (COPS).<\/p>\n
The town meetings give the COPS panel from Washington D.C. an opportunity to hear the concerns of the community and learn about their perspectives and relationship between the SFPD, before initiating collaborative reform.<\/p>\n
The process comprises three phases: intake and initiation; assessment and data collection; and monitoring and implementation. The first phase will consist of developing an informal set goals after meeting with the SFPD and conducting the town hall meetings. COPS will then come back to make those goals public in order to get feedback from the community before being finalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s critically important to have this community input because if we can\u2019t get the perspective of the community as we formulate goals and objectives on the front end, then we\u2019re ultimately going to come up with a product that\u2019s not as effective as it could be,\u201d said Troy V. Williams, COPS supervisory grant monitoring specialist.<\/p>\n
At the first town meeting on Feb. 24, the school\u2019s auditorium was half-full, however people were still loud and made their presence known as they chanted \u201cFire Greg Suhr,\u201d and \u201cJustice for Mario Woods.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd formed lines on both aisles of the auditorium, as people stood waiting their turns to speak into the microphones. They shared their concerns and expressed their displeasure of city officials and the police department.<\/p>\n
Many were displeased with the two-minute speaking time limit.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re limiting our voices, let us speak,\u201d many people yelled.<\/p>\n
Most of the speakers exceeded the two-minute limit.<\/p>\n
\u201cJustice delayed is justice denied,\u201d yelled Felicia Jones of the Justice 4 Mario Woods Coalition, as the COPS panel sat quietly listening to the other speakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are aware that this is not an investigation,\u201d said Jones once it was her turn to speak on the microphone. \u201cThat this is nothing more than window dressing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams, who facilitated Wednesday\u2019s meeting, took the crowd\u2019s words to heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a black man and as an individual who grew up in an urban area who has had his own encounters with the police, I understand what\u2019s going on,\u201d said Williams. \u201cI know that there are a tremendous amounts of travesties and injustices that occur in our community. I also know that there\u2019s good police out there and so we\u2019ve got to try and have the fortitude, leadership and the courage to work our way back to a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting back to a better place doesn\u2019t necessarily require firing Chief Greg Suhr; according to some it means creating better policies and the making an effort to win the trust of the community once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe message [from the crowd] boiled down to two things: a desperate need for accountability, and \u2026 great skepticism that a collaborative review could achieve the sort of reforms that are needed in the San Francisco police department,\u201d said retired ACLU police practices specialist John Crew. \u201cThat\u2019s why the community was calling for a civil rights division investigation, which could be enforced by a court of law.\u201d<\/p>\n
After COPS publicly announces its goals, the agency will spend 8-10 months working with a team of nationally recognized experts to gain a better understanding of the department\u2019s processes and how they can be improved. In order to conduct the assessment, COPS will have open access to SFPD\u2019s files, data and operations.<\/p>\n
At the end of the agency\u2019s assessment, it will produce a report with data and recommendations and present it to the community.<\/p>\n
During the second phase, COPS will oversee and assist the implementations of the recommendations over a period of 18 months. They will publish two reports. One will be of SFPD\u2019s progress after six months and the second one will be at the end of the agency\u2019s commitment with the department.<\/p>\n
COPS will be holding another town hall meeting on Tuesday, March 8 at Mission High School and another one on Thursday, March 10 at Gateway High School. Both meeting are scheduled for 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[su_slider source=”media: 29541,29542,29543″ limit=”30″ link=”image” target=”blank” width=”700″ height=”460″ autoplay=”0″ speed=”500″][su_menu][\/su_slider] Approximately 200 people gathered at Thurgood Marshall High School on Wednesday night Feb. 24 to air their grievances toward the SFPD at the first of several town hall meetings, which are part of the formal review currently being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":29541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3929],"tags":[8003,7995,8009,5443,8319,6161,3589,8321,8001,7511,7993,8007,7499,7071,3593,8317],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-29540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-news-en","tag-collaborative-reform-initiative","tag-cops","tag-department-of-justice-en","tag-ed-lee-en","tag-felicia-jones","tag-george-gascon-en","tag-greg-suhr-en","tag-john-crew","tag-justice-4-mario-woods-coalition","tag-mario-woods-en","tag-office-of-community-oriented-policing-services","tag-policing-practices-and-accountability-initiative","tag-racist-text-messaging-scandal","tag-san-francisco-police-department-en","tag-sfpd-en","tag-troy-v-williams","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n