Shooting Death Presents Test for a New Police Chief

From the Bay Citizen,

As a police captain in San Francisco’s violent Bayview neighborhood, Greg Suhr operated from the streets. The stocky veteran schmoozed small-business owners and community leaders and prided himself on a culture of transparency. By the time he left this year, homicides in the Bayview had dropped by 50 percent.

Mr. Suhr, who is now police chief, applied the same strategy last week after a 19-year-old man died on July 16 while engaged in a shootout with officers in the Bayview. As anger grew over the incident, Chief Suhr held news conferences, staged a town-hall-style meeting and issued a flurry of statements to provide evidence that officers had shot the man, Kenneth Harding, in self-defense.

“My response to this shooting, if you look at the other shootings, has been consistent,” Chief Suhr told The Bay Citizen last week. “I get information, I put it out, I promise to have a meeting in the area where a shooting occurs, and that has happened.”

Read more at the Bay Citizen