Tuesday, December 08, 2015

SF Top Cop Suhr to Post His Calendar Online?

My recent public records request to police chief Greg Suhr for several months of his calendars produced responsive files that shed light on how our top cop earns his salary.

At the December 2 police commission meeting, I urged the president Suzy Loftus to direct Suhr to make his calendar available on the web. Paper copies of the calendars I obtained were handed to Loftus. She needs to weigh in on this issue.

I followed up this week and emailed my plea to Suhr to get his calendar up on the SFPD site and received this reply today:


He's not putting his calendar online. In response, I asked why the chief was keeping his calendar offline and what factors went into his decision. It's not satisfactory for the chief to make a one-sentence denial of my request. Suhr would give taxpayers and voters a much-need ray of govt sunshine if he took the step of sharing his calendar online.


Another police accountability concern of mine is the lack of a coherent and fair social media policy, especially regarding circulating mugshots of arrested suspects or, as in the Hot Cop of the Castro hit-and-run scandal where the SFPD withheld Chris Kohr's mugshot.

This Wednesday, December 9, starting at 5:30 pm, the police commission will meet at City Hall and among the important items on the agenda is a status update on social media policy for the department.

A crucial matter is learning from the SFPD exactly how many platforms or programs - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest, etc - the public affairs office or other divisions maintain, the named personnel responsible for each platform and behind every Twitter account, and how SFPD output is archived.

The meeting will also delve further into the killing last week of Mario Woods by SFPD officers, the use of tasers and de-escalation tactics. It's going to be a long and hopefully productive meeting.

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