San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr Resigns After Officer-Involved Shooting

PHOTOS from left: San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr speaks to reporters following today's fatal officer-involved shooting in the city's Bayview District. Credit: Sara Gaiser; File photo.

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr has resigned following today's fatal officer-involved shooting in the city's Bayview District, Mayor Ed Lee said today.

Lee said in a news conference at City Hall late this afternoon that he asked for Suhr's resignation after a 27-year-old woman in a stolen vehicle was shot and killed by a police sergeant this morning, the third fatal officer-involved shooting in San Francisco since December.

The mayor, who publicly supported Suhr following the previous two shootings, said "Today I have arrived at a different conclusion about how best to move forward."

Lee has appointed Tony Chaplin, former head of the department's homicide detail, as interim chief and said he will work with the city's Police Commission on a search for a new permanent chief.

He said the recent fatal police shootings, including that of Mario Woods in the Bayview in December and Luis Gongora in the Mission District in April, "have forced our city to open its eyes" about how officers use lethal force. "This has never been about personality or politics, it's been about performance," Lee said.

Work on reforms to the department following the shootings "were not fast enough, not for me and not for Greg," Lee said. The mayor said Suhr, who took over as chief in 2011 and has been with the Police Department for 33 years, is "a true public servant and he'll always have respect from me."

He said Chaplin, the new interim chief, has served in the department for 26 years and has an "established record of commitment to the city's diverse communities."

Chaplin before today was serving as deputy chief in charge of the department's Professional Standards and Principled Policing Bureau.

Today's shooting of an apparently unarmed woman occurred after officers spotted a stolen vehicle around 9:45 a.m. on Elmira Street in the Bayview District.

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The officers attempted to make a traffic stop, but the driver attempted to drive away. She made it only a short distance away on before she crashed, striking a truck, according to police. The officers got out of their vehicle and attempted to detain the woman. A witness told police that as the officers were trying to detain her, she was trying to drive the vehicle forward and backward.

One of the officers, a sergeant whose name has not yet been released, fired a single shot that struck the woman, who was taken to San Francisco General Hospital and died there. The names of the woman and the sergeant who shot her have not yet been released.

--Bay City News