Petrelis Files

SF Police Launch Gifts' Disclosure Web Page

(Chief Greg Suhr deploys his troops at a photo-op for his friend and tech mogul Ron Conway's advocacy organization SF.citi. Courtesy photo: SF.citi.)

Since 2000, thanks to a successful ballot proposition, City agencies including the San Francisco Police Department have been legally required to do the following:

Sec. 67.29-6: Sources Of Outside Funding. No official or employee or agent of the city shall accept, allow to be collected, or direct or influence the spending of, any money, or any goods or services worth more than one hundred dollars in aggregate, for the purpose of carrying out or assisting any City function unless the amount and source of all such funds is disclosed as a public record and made available on the website for the department to which the funds are directed.

Thanks to my public service of advocating directly to the SFPD last month to post the details about the gifts they receive, related coverage here and here and here and here, the department has created a hard-to-find disclosure page with the basic info regarding who gave, how much and the purpose listed. The SFPD must still disclose if any donors have financial interests with The City, as the Mayor's Office does here.

The disclosure page after each donation lists a Calender date but does not inform visitors of whose calendar. If the reference is to the date of when the SFPD brass presented gift info to the Police Commission, the web page should say so, or wherever the info is coming from within the department.

Disclosures are made only back to 2010, and I sure wish mainstream and alternative media would ask and report on why the SFPD has not until now complied with City law, why records on the page stretch back only four years, and why aren't things like Hewlett Packard's gift of 60 laptop computers and Ron Conway's donation of $100,000 to a third-party tech firm to create special apps.

To follow some of the money at the police department, click here.