Latest news with #BillScott
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
Rookie San Francisco cop no longer with department after alleged DUI crash
The Brief Ryan Kwong, 28, is no longer employed with the San Francisco Police Department. Kwong is charged with four counts of DUI causing injury and reckless driving stemming from a crash over the weekend. The crash happened two days after he graduated from the police academy. SAN FRANCISCO - A rookie San Francisco police officer arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and causing a crash is no longer employed by the department, officials said Tuesday. What we know The San Francisco Police Department confirmed it has severed ties with Ryan Kwong, 28, who had graduated from the 284th SFPD Police Academy just two days before the crash. Kwong has been charged by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office with four counts of driving under the influence causing injury and reckless driving. The charges stem from a crash that occurred around 2 a.m. Saturday at Sunset Boulevard and Rivera Street, according to prosecutors. Kwong, who was off duty at the time of the crash, allegedly slammed his BMW into a Toyota minivan, pushing it into a light pole. Three people in the minivan were injured, including one who suffered life-threatening injuries, police said. What's next Kwong remains in custody at San Francisco County Jail. In a statement following the arrest, Police Chief Bill Scott said, "We will do everything in our power to ensure justice is served in this case. No one is above the law, and our officers know they are expected to obey the law, as well as our strict code of conduct even while off duty." San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie echoed the sentiment in a statement posted to X. "Our police officers work hard to keep San Franciscans safe, and we expect them to follow the law on and off duty—no exceptions," he said. The Source San Francisco District Attorney, SFPD, previous reporting.
CBS News
17-05-2025
- CBS News
Off-duty San Francisco officer suspected of DUI in crash that injured several people
An off-duty San Francisco officer was arrested following a crash that injured three people early Saturday night, police said. Police identified the officer as 28-year-old Ryan Kwong and said he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. Just before 2 a.m., police went to Sunset Boulevard and Rivera Street for a crash involving two vehicles. Police said the vehicle driven by the victim had three people inside it. One of them suffered life-threatening injuries, and the other two had injuries that were not life-threatening. The vehicle driven by Kwong had two occupants, police said. Kwong and his passenger both had injuries that were not life-threatening. All the people involved in the crash were taken to the hospital. An investigation into the cause of the crash led officers to suspect Kwong of being under the influence, police said. He was then arrested on suspicion of DUI causing injuries and other charges, police said. He was booked into the San Francisco County Jail. "This incident was incredibly tragic, and my heart goes out to the injured victims," said Chief Bill Scott in a press release. "We will do everything in our power to ensure justice is served in this case. No one is above the law, and our officers know they are expected to obey the law, as well as our strict code of conduct even while off duty." Kwong recently graduated from the San Francisco Police Academy as part of its 284th Class. He was sworn in on May 15 and had just begun his field training. "My thoughts are with those injured in this incredibly upsetting incident. Our police officers work hard to keep San Franciscans safe, and we expect them to follow the law on and off duty—no exceptions. Thank you to the officers who responded immediately," Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a statement.
CBS News
14-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie issues order to increase SFPD staffing
San Francisco Mayor Lurie signs an executive order to try and entice retired police officers back to San Francisco Mayor Lurie signs an executive order to try and entice retired police officers back to San Francisco Mayor Lurie signs an executive order to try and entice retired police officers back to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie issued an executive directive on Tuesday aimed at addressing the city's public safety staffing deficit. "Rebuilding the Ranks" involves short-term strategies to immediately fill the gap, such as allowing recently retired officers to return to work, as well as long-term strategies including bolstering marketing, cutting bureaucratic red tape in the hiring process, and investigating potential abuse of overtime and sick leave. Lurie discussed the plan at a news conference Tuesday at SFPD headquarters, joined by Police Chief Bill Scott, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, and Supervisors Bilal Mahmood, Danny Sauter, Matt Dorsey, Joel Engardio, and Stephen Sherrill who came to show their support. SFPD has been facing a steady decline in the number of sworn police officers since 2020. In 2024, there were 1,475 full duty officers across the city, according to the Police Department's recent proposal for the 2026 and 2027 fiscal year budget. "Right now, San Francisco has fewer than 1,500 full-duty police officers, more than 500 below the recommended staffing level," Lurie said. "The Sheriff's Office is short nearly 200 deputies. That means fewer officers and deputies walking our neighborhoods, slower response times and a growing dependence on costly and unsustainable overtime." To compensate for the staffing shortage, SFPD has resorted to increasing overtime work. Just last week, the Board of Supervisors approved $91 million to cover overtime costs for both the police and sheriff's departments. "We have been living on overtime, and that is not sustainable," Scott said at the news conference. "We're fortunate that we have the overtime and that the Board and the mayor has granted us that funding to fill in the gaps, but we know that's not a sustainable model." One aspect of the executive directive includes investigating employment practices related to overtime and sick leave in the next six months after a recent audit from the city's Budget and Legislative Analyst's Office found "violations of overtime limits and excessive use of overtime" since 2019. It revealed that 12% of officers who worked overtime accounted for nearly one-third of the department's overtime spending during the 2022-2023 fiscal year. It also found potential abuse of sick leave, with some officers calling in sick but then instead working private security shifts. Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who voted against approving the $91 million in overtime support, said she will stay on top of Lurie's promises with the investigation into SFPD employment practices. "I will be following up to ensure the report leads to real action to serve San Franciscans, who are the ones who shoulder this burden the most," Fielder said in a social media post Tuesday. Part of Lurie's directive will allow recently retired police officers to work patrol and investigative roles, especially special events like parades and large gatherings. Recently retired sheriff's deputies will have the opportunity to return to full-time work. Both officers and deputies who return to work will be able to receive a regular salary without losing their retirement pensions. "All retirees, hear me clearly," Scott said. "You won't have to give up your pensions. You can come and work, help the safety in this city and still make a little money on the side and help our deployment situation." Using technology to streamline and shorten the hiring process, expanding recruitment outreach, and investing in performance-based marketing strategies are some of the reforms Lurie will employ to attract new officers. On Monday, 55 new recruits began police academy training. Scott also swore in five lateral officers to the department on Monday. "It's a really exciting time," Scott said. "We have really good momentum in this department, and we plan to continue this." The executive directive comes one week after the police chief announced his departure from SFPD after serving eight years. Paul Yep, a former SFPD commander who Lurie named as his chief of public safety earlier this year, will serve as interim police chief. The transition of city leaders and Lurie's reforms, Scott said, makes it a perfect time to join SFPD. "This city, with this mayor's leadership, has a special opportunity to transition in ways that most cities can't," Scott said. "It's a great environment right now for policing in San Francisco." Miyamoto praised the executive directive, expressing optimism that Lurie's reforms will bring much needed improvements to public safety staffing. "This executive order is not just important, it's critical. It's going to help us reduce overtime, the exhaustion, the burnout and the backlog on the streets, in the jails, and in the courts," Miyamoto said. "It's going to help ensure that justice is served, that people are safe, and San Francisco is a better community."
San Francisco Chronicle
10-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
The complicated legacy of S.F. Police Chief Bill Scott
Since 2017, San Francisco has cycled through two sheriffs, four district attorneys and four mayors. Some moved on, others were ousted by voters, and one died. Through it all, Bill Scott endured. His eight turbulent years leading the San Francisco Police Department make him the city's longest-serving chief since 1970. He persisted through a shifting political landscape, as the pendulum swung back and forth from protests against police killings, including that of George Floyd in 2020, to calls for aggressive crackdowns on theft, drug use and homelessness. For every moment, Scott seemed to find a ready response. When progressive activists called for his department to defund the police, he said he was 'open' to their demands. When residents became fed up with property crime, he expanded police surveillance. His even temperament and measured stances kept him in power, though these qualities never seemed to elicit full-throated support from anyone. While he struggled to address the street conditions that contributed to San Francisco's famed post-pandemic woes, he often resembled an antidote to the city's ugly politics and the chaos engulfing police forces across the bay in Vallejo, Antioch and Oakland. Scott's feat of political durability came into sharp focus Wednesday, when he announced he will be leaving for a new job building a transit police agency in Los Angeles. The news followed months of speculation about his tenure under a new mayor who never quelled rumors that he wanted Scott out. But instead of being fired, Scott got an honorable sendoff from Mayor Daniel Lurie, surrounded by family, amid a historic citywide drop in crime. It was a fitting bookend to a complicated legacy that stands out for, among other things, his sheer survival. 'It was a political environment that was completely unprecedented,' said Matt Dorsey, a city supervisor who worked as a police spokesperson under Scott from 2020 to 2022. 'During an incredibly difficult time for law enforcement in America, I watched Bill Scott meet the moment every time with equanimity and class, and I learned a lot from him.' Agent of change A scandal brought Scott to San Francisco. His predecessor, Greg Suhr, resigned in 2016 just hours after an officer fatally shot an unarmed Black woman. It was the latest in a string of questionable killings and other police controversies, and then-Mayor Ed Lee — who died in 2017 while in office — was under pressure to select a change agent. Scott, a former LAPD deputy chief, thus arrived in the city tasked with completing a 272-point list of reforms recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice, even as he faced criticism over the city's open-air drug markets and car break-in epidemic and maintained an office short-staffed by hundreds of officers. The job was even more complicated than that. Scott had to appease bitterly opposing forces: a progressive flank that demanded change over police abuse, a department full of rank-and-file cops who saw him as an outsider who didn't have their backs, and city residents and business leaders worried about crime and visitors' vivid perception of it. While Suhr was a charismatic insider, Scott was a quiet diplomat who tried to meet everyone in the middle, according to those who worked closely with him. Often, this managed to please no one, except perhaps the mayors he served. John Hamasaki, who often sparred with Scott as a progressive member of the San Francisco Police Commission, described the outgoing chief as a 'smart political player' who successfully navigated a jagged landscape. 'It wasn't just like two sides, there were six sides,' said Hamasaki, a civil rights attorney who left the commission in 2022. 'His decisions would upset everybody just enough, but not too much.' To many officers, however, Scott never shed his status as an outsider. 'He was a yes man,' said Tony Montoya, a former president of the police union and longtime critic of Scott. 'He always got permission from his handlers, whether that was the mayor or other politicians, before he ever did anything. He never once stood up for the rank and file.' One of the most tumultuous moments in Scott's tenure reflected this internal tension. In 2019, officers armed with a sledgehammer searched the home of a freelance journalist, Bryan Carmody, seeking to identify a confidential source who'd leaked Carmody a report on the death of Public Defender Jeff Adachi. After the raid prompted a national outcry from First Amendment advocates, Scott apologized, called for an independent probe and admitted that the officers who executed the search violated department policy and probably the law. 'I'm sorry to the people of San Francisco,' he said, in a move that calmed some of the outrage. But the union called on him to resign, saying Scott blamed his officers for the probe despite being privy to it the whole time. 'He denied all culpability and was too quick to throw everyone else under the bus for his own political survival,' Montoya said. Reforms and retail thefts In 2020, as the pandemic shut down San Francisco, the political climate lurched again after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd, prompting civil unrest around the nation, including in San Francisco. That June, Scott addressed the movement to defund the police. 'We're at a time in policing in this country where the whole world is speaking to us, and we need to hear what's being said,' Scott said during a forum. 'And what's being said is we have to change the way we do policing in this country. And I think, for me, I'm open to that.' But by December 2021, after the pandemic made homelessness more visible on the streets and drove a 56% spike in burglaries, calls for reform had mostly subsided. A wave of smash-and-grabs hit luxury stores in Union Square. Scott joined then-Mayor London Breed at a news conference calling for more police and more police surveillance, with the mayor saying she was tired of the 'bulls—' on the streets. Scott's political limberness was perhaps most striking during the term of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The former public defender took office pledging to reduce incarceration and charged a string of San Francisco officers over deadly shootings and other uses of force he deemed excessive — though these killings were far less controversial than the ones that happened under Suhr. Boudin was despised by the officers union and quick to dish out his own attacks on police. The tension was so omnipresent that Dorsey, then the police spokesperson, hung a whiteboard in his office to track the number of days since Boudin 'publicly blamed the San Francisco Police Department for something.' Nonetheless, Scott and Boudin often made a point of showcasing their collaboration, in stark contrast to past city police chiefs and DAs. In a 2021 public service announcement, the two leaders stood stiffly, shoulder to shoulder, denouncing violence in the community. 'Together,' they said in unison, 'we will make San Francisco safe.' So it was arresting when, in early 2022, that show of civility took a sharp turn. The blowup between Scott and Boudin stemmed from an agreement that gave the DA's office the lead role in investigating police shootings and in-custody deaths, as well as in deciding whether to prosecute them. Under the deal, Boudin's administration both investigated and prosecuted Officer Terrance Stangel after a baton beating. But in the lead-up to the trial, one of the case's investigators testified that her superiors had instructed her to withhold evidence from a report that may have been beneficial to Stangel. Scott then accused Boudin's office of violating the terms of the agreement. Though Boudin denied wrongdoing, Scott felt he needed to take a stand for his officers. He threatened to pull out of the agreement. The testimony 'went through our police department like a firestorm,' he said then. 'There was a crisis of trust.' But Scott backed off his threat after facing opposition at the police commission. While he didn't endorse what would become a successful recall of Boudin, his fracturing relationship with him didn't help the DA's chances of staying in office. 'We have our differences,' Scott told the Chronicle at the time. 'I don't get into the recall thing because I think that's not appropriate for the chief of police. … I need to make the best of the working relationship with the district attorney and his office so we can try to keep the city safe.' Scott and Boudin's successor, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, have temporarily extended the agreement 21 times, as recently as this month. Crime on a roller coaster As the Stangel case was heading toward trial — where the officer would be acquitted — Scott was fighting a perception that some of his officers were mailing it in, disillusioned by local and national movements that said police were too violent. In one case, in late 2021, officers responding to a 911 call about a burglary at a marijuana business watched as a person exited, hopped in a car, executed a three-point turn in front of police vehicles and drove away. Compounding the problem, San Francisco police — like their counterparts in other cities — had little success shutting down open-air drug markets amid record overdose numbers fueled by fentanyl. The department needed outside help. Starting in 2023, the CHP and California National Guard joined in a wave of coordinated busts. Reported crime fell during Scott's tenure, then surged back at levels that angered residents, then dropped again more dramatically. Overall crime reports, from car break-ins to assaults and rapes, decreased 42% from 2017 to 2024, and are down an additional 28% this year, according to department data. Homicides plunged to the lowest level in six decades. While cities across the country also saw big drops, San Francisco outpaced those of its same size, a Chronicle analysis found. 'He's leaving on a high note,' said Mark Dietrich, a Richmond District resident who is active in community anti-crime measures and who credits much of the progress to the department's embrace of technologies including cameras, drones and license plate readers. Another milestone for Scott came early this year, when the state Department of Justice announced it would step away from its role monitoring the SFPD's post-scandal reforms. State officials said the force had achieved substantial progress by checking off 97% of the recommended goals. The DOJ's report noted that long-running racial disparities remained in how the department's officers used force. But it also lauded a reduction in police shootings and overall uses of force, along with new policies intended to root out bias. In 2015 and 2016, the two years before Scott's arrival, city police shot and killed nine people, compared with an average of roughly two a year from 2017 to 2024, according to a nationwide Washington Post database. Perhaps the biggest change Scott encountered in his eight years was the city's drift toward moderate Democratic politics, cemented by the recall of Boudin, the subsequent election of Jenkins and other centrist candidates, and voters' passage last year of a slate of police-friendly policies. Scott had a freer hand. But by the end of his term, Scott faced near-constant speculation that he was on borrowed time. A leading contender in last year's mayor's race, Mark Farrell, said he would fire Scott on Day 1 if elected. And yet there Scott stood at City Hall on Wednesday, having survived long enough to go out on his own terms. He spoke of how he'd always wanted to live in San Francisco. At one point, he fought back tears. And he expressed gratitude toward people he said had helped him along the way. He even thanked Farrell.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
SFPD Chief Bill Scott tapped as head of LA Metro police force
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways LOS ANGELES - After announcing his resignation in San Francisco on Wednesday, Police Chief Bill Scott is set to become the inaugural chief of the in-house police department at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the city's public transit system. Bill Scott served over eight years as police chief in San Francisco, appointed in 2017 by then-mayor Ed Lee. Prior to San Francisco, Scott spent 27 years with the Los Angeles Police Department. LA Metro officials made the announcement Wednesday afternoon, just hours after Scott spoke at San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday alongside Mayor Daniel Lurie. Scott "will be responsible for building the department from the ground up and will play a key role in safety planning for major upcoming global events," LA Metro said. Los Angeles is slated to host the Summer Olympics in 2028 and the World Cup in 2026. In 2024, the Los Angeles Metro board voted to create an independent police force, the decision coming after a string of violent crimes on buses and trains. FOX LA reported last summer that the agency contracts with law enforcement at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Los Angeles Police Department and the Long Beach Police Department. During the San Francisco news conference Wednesday morning, Lurie and Scott touted that crime is down almost 30% from last year and the homicide rate in 2024 was the city's lowest in more than 60 years. Scott said he never in his wildest dreams thought he'd ever be police chief in San Francisco. "Let me start by saying that serving as the chief of police of this great city for the past eight years has been truly an honor," he said. Scott highlighted the fact that under his leadership, the California Attorney General released the San Francisco Police Department in January from state oversight, which it has been under since 2018. "Facing a significant officer shortage, he has led the way in leveraging modern technology effectively and responsibly to prevent crime and catch criminals." Lurie said, calling Scott a friend and noting that the chief would help him over the next six weeks for a "smooth transition."
