SF police commissioners question racial disparities with use-of-force data

San Francisco police commissioners on Wednesday questioned police officials about the department's use-of-force report for the first six months of this year.

They focused on why there were 502 use-of-force incidents involving Black people, more than any other ethnicity.

The commissioners wanted to know why in a city where Black people make up only 5% of the population, they somehow made up 44% of police use-of-force incidents during the first half of the year.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the comission said this data points to a racial bias issue in the department.

The San Francisco Police Officer's Association pushed back, saying the report is faulty,

The union noted that the data compares uses of force to the city’s residential population instead of to criminal suspects, the Chronicle reported. If the commission looked at the racial makeup of crime suspects and arrested individuals, the uses of force against Black people would not seem so disproportionate, according to the police union. 


 

San Francisco Police DepartmentNews