Supervisors to Ed Lee: Back off stop-and-frisk idea

http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2012/07/10/supervisors-to-ed-lee-back-off-stop-and-frisk-idea/

A Board of Supervisors’ majority has asked Mayor Ed Lee to stop pursuing any notion of implementing a local version of New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

The program allows police to stop and search people they consider suspicious in an attempt to seize illegal weapons. The vast majority of those stopped by the NYPD have been black and Latino.

Lee, concerned about gun violence in San Francisco, said that after he spoke to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month about the Big Apple’s experience with stop and frisk he decided to explore the feasibility of putting a similar program in place in San Francisco.

Lee’s hand-picked police chief, Greg Suhr, voiced strong reservations about the idea. A coalition of civil rights and community groups, including the American Civil Liberities Union, La Raza Centro Legal and the Asian Law Caucus, sent Lee a strongly worded letter Tuesday “to express our alarm and deep dismay” that he is considering such an approach.

That was followed by the non-binding resolution introduced by Supervisor Malia Cohen and co-sponsored by Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Eric Mar and Christina Olague.

“While I appreciate the mayor’s commitment to raising awareness for the public-safety challenges that we have in the city, in particular the issue surrounding gun violence in our southeastern neighborhoods, I don’t believe that a policy similar to stop and frisk is something worth exploring,” Cohen said.