A new policy is putting San Francisco’s police union at odds with the city’s police commission.
As of Wednesday, San Francisco police will no longer be allowed to conduct the pretext stops, it's when an officer pulls someone over for a minor infraction on an hunch the person may be involved in bigger crimes.
The idea is to deemphasize certain stops that many see as racially biased, the police commission said ending the stops allows the departments to focus resources on more effective public safety strategies.
But the police union sees it differently and said it’s disappointing the police commission has spent this much effort trying to keep them from keeping people safe.
Brian Cox, a deputy public defender in San Francisco described the changes going into place around a practice known as pretext stops.
“The limitations really are focused on types of stops that an officer can use to pull someone over and they’re limitations in terms of how they engage with those that are in the car following stops, any traffic stop,” he said.
There are exceptions, but that practice has changed and is now in effect after a vote by the city’s police commission earlier this year.
“The pretext stops are when a police officer makes a traffic stop for a low level offense, not because the officer is interested in enforcing the traffic code,” said Max Carter Oberstone, Vice President of the San Francisco Police Commission. “But because they have a hunch that the person driving the car might be up to no good, might be involved a crime, but they don’t have any actual evidence that the person is involved in criminal activity.”
Cox described some of the concerns.
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“The reason that is an issue is because disproportionately that happens to People of Color and that’s true in San Francisco, in California and across the nation,” he said.
On July 5, the San Francisco Police Officers Association posted images on social media of a small armory it said was seized through a pretext stop.
In statement the San Francisco Police Officer’s Association said in part:
“The police commission’s ban on legal stops provides safe passage for drugs, guns, and sex trafficking in our community. Just like shoplifters used the $950 threshold to rip off our businesses at will, drug dealers, gang members, and human traffickers will use the commission’s law to take advantage of a handcuffed police force."
In the meantime, data is being collected and will be reviewed by the commission.
NBC Bay Area reached out to San Francisco police for comment on Wednesday but did not hear back.
