The Facts

Derrick Lew is San Francisco’s next police chief. Mayor Lurie chose the 52-year-old, 20-year SFPD veteran—who led the city’s crackdown on illegal drug markets and survived a 2006 Bayview shootout that earned him a medal of honor—from a shortlist of three finalists out of 34 applicants provided by the Police Commission.

Lew will replace Interim Chief Paul Yep after Bill Scott’s May resignation, with Yep expected to stay briefly as an advisor during the transition.

The Context

Lew’s most recent assignment was overseeing the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center (DMACC), a multi-agency task force created to target open-air drug markets in the Tenderloin and SoMa that reported thousands of arrests and hundreds of kilos of seized narcotics in its first year.

The GrowSF Take

Hiring a new chief should have been fast and straightforward, but San Francisco has a uniquely dysfunctional process: the Mayor doesn't actually get to pick the chief directly. Instead, the Police Commission prepares a shortlist of three finalists from which the mayor must choose.

Under former Mayor London Breed, Chief Scott was largely insulated from any threats of replacement. Had Mayor Breed fired him, a defund-the-police oriented Police Commission would have given her worse options. But after voters elected a more moderate-leaning Board of Supervisors, Mayor Lurie was able to secure the removal of Commissioner Carter-Oberstone and then seated new commissioners, giving the mayor a working majority on the seven-member Police Commission. This majority presented options the mayor actually wanted, and thus we have Chief Lew. that produced the finalist slate Lew emerged from.

San Franciscans deserve streets that are safe, clean, and fair. Lew’s background in targeted drug enforcement and inter-agency coordination fits the city’s biggest public-safety challenges, but success must be measured, not assumed. We expect to see improving metrics: declining overdoses, faster 911 response times, more officers, revamped officer recruitment, and more cases solved.