Petrelis Files

Public Citizens Demand 'Three Minutes!' at SF Police Hearing: Video

Having watched the SF GovTV video from last night's police commission meeting in the Tenderloin district, I am even more persuaded that this reckless commission engaged in a serious dereliction of duty in keeping the public citizens waiting for more than an hour as they put on a dog-and-pony show.

Watch for yourself just how disorganized it was as we went from an 15-minute, with a five minute hijacking by Sup. Jane Kim to shine us on with her lovely smile, presentation of blathering from Cpt. Jason Cherniss about how terrific his TL police station is, with no clear verbal guidance from SF Police Commission President Thomas Mazzucco we devolved into chaos and chanting.

This video shows how community policing plays out in San Francisco on the part of those with the power. It's gotta change, starting with assessing how the police commission disrespected the grassroots folks last night and holding those responsible for failure to conduct a meeting that lessened tensions.

Put public comment at the start of the meeting, give the citizens our three minutes, and either put the elected officials on the agenda after public comment, or make them speak during public comment and with the same time limit as everyone else.

No more special privileges for Supervisors to just parachute in, say a few warm and fuzzy remarks without a time limit, then split as we all wait to speak.

If you can watch this excerpt and say with a serious face that this was a shining moment for community policing under Mayor Ed Lee, Jane Kim, Thomas Mazzucco and Chief Greg Suhr, you're smoking pretty good weed.