San Francisco Police to Investigate Officer Who Blamed ‘Progressive’ Policies for Burglaries

 San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said on Friday that the department has taken steps to investigate an officer who allegedly told a burglary victim that the city’s crime policies were “too progressive.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Saturday:

Chief Bill Scott began the oversight process after The Chronicle asked questions about the experience of one burglary victim. Jenna Smith said a perpetrator broke into her garage nine times in two days while she was out of town for her grandmother’s funeral.

Smith watched the burglaries unfold in real-time through a phone app that linked to her home security cameras. She recalled stinging remarks from an officer who responded to the ninth burglary, whose name she did not remember.

“The officer said, ‘This is happening to you guys because San Francisco is too progressive,’” Smith said.

Those words could be the focus of a probe by the city’s Department of Police Accountability, an independent oversight body that investigates complaints about officers, reviews shootings involving officers, evaluates police practices and recommends new policies to the city’s Police Commission.

Chief Scott said that officers are not allowed to make “political commentary” on the job.

The city has been the focus on nationwide attention due to a spate of shoplifting that has forced the departure of dozens of retailers, including pharmacies like Walgreens. 

On Friday night, looters in the city’s iconic Union Square ransacked a Louis Vuitton shop and other stores. On Saturday, looters continued into the suburbs, raiding a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek with a convoy of dozens of vehicles.

San Francisco was among the many cities to consider “defunding” the police, and District Attorney Chesa Boudin — son of an imprisoned Weather Underground radical — has adopted lenient law enforcement policies. He now faces a recall election from angry residents.