Acting SF Police Chief Toney Chaplin vows “top-to-bottom” review

Acting SF Police Chief Toney Chaplin vows “top-to-bottom” review

On his first full day as San Francisco’s acting police chief, Toney Chaplin vowed to launch a “top-to-bottom” review of the department and to push forward with use-of-force reforms started by his predecessor, Greg Suhr, who resigned a day earlier after an officer shot and killed a woman.

“You know, the mission has to go on, the department has to move forward, and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said at a news conference at the Ping Yuen housing development in Chinatown.

Mayor Ed Lee named the 26-year Police Department veteran acting chief on Thursday, just hours after a police sergeant shot and killed 29-year-old Jessica Williams on Elmira Street near Interstate 280.

Officials said she was driving a suspected stolen car and crashed while trying to flee police.

The 9:45 a.m. shooting remained under investigation Friday, and Chaplin had little new information to divulge to the public.

Police have said there was no immediate indication that Williams was armed or had been driving the car toward officers when she was shot.

“It was hard because a young lady lost her life, some officers’ lives have been turned upside down as a result of that, and I watched a person who had dedicated over three decades of their life finally have to call it a career,” Chaplin said.

[...] Chaplin said he is the right person for the job, given his experience working with the minority communities where the shootings have occurred.

The acting police chief made his remarks in a small room at the Ping Yuen housing development in Chinatown, where police officers were investigating an April sexual assault on an elderly woman who lives there.