An implicit bias trainer who was leaving the San Francisco Police Department told the force about itself. On his way out he sent a farewell email and called out the force for its deep culture of anti-Blackness! Now there’s some troubling questions for these officers.
Then-Department of Human Resources manager Dante King wrote that “the degree of anti-black sentiment throughout SFPD is extreme,” and pointed out that police on the force admit to targeting Black people. This isn’t the only time they’ve been called out either.
A Black SFPD captain sued San Francisco for millions of dollars in 2019 for racism and harassment, saying the force was “rife with overt racism and racial biases.” She said she was told to “pick blue over Black,” among other things that directly threatened her integrity as a Black person.
The ACLU has described San Francisco as “a hotbed of illegal race-based policing” thanks to how it’s “consistently singled out Black people.” In 2015 SFPD officers referred to Black people as “animals,” “savages,” and even said “All n*ggers must fucking hang.”
The Department Of Justice has mandated reforms because it found SFPD guilty of racist policing at traffic stops and of using deadly force. It's clear that's not enough. While they’ve been completing the reforms, the racism is still there, and Black people know this all too well.