SFPD Chief Scott, Thank You But it is Time to Retire

Blackout of attempted cop killing by The Chronicle and SFPD Media unit is unconscionable

Attempted homicide of an SFPD officer (Case# 230 037 578)

At 4:22am, on Tuesday morning January 17, 2023, a citizen called SFPD dispatch to report that a catalytic converter was being stolen at California and 9th Avenues.  After the Richmond Station five-car broadcast the direction of a suspected Audi, Officer Roman saw the car on Fulton Street and lit it up with his overhead lights.   The Audi fled.  And of course, SFPD is not allowed to pursue vehicles for “property crimes.”

Driving the Richmond four-car, Officer Kryovoruka picked up the Audi driving blacked-out[i] on Fulton Street.  Kryovoruka followed the car to 125 Stanyan where the three thieves bailed from the Audi and took off running.  Kryovoruka and his partner, Officer Villanueva gave chase.

It should be noted that the Department of Police Accountability (DPA), the oversight board over SFPD, is proposing to monitor SFPD’s foot chases because they are concerned SFPD officers might get injured, especially in a foot chase like this over a measly property crime.  Yeah, you can’t make the stuff up about the progressive’s de-policing efforts.

Kryovoruka ran down the middle of Stanyan Street in pursuit when the suspect turned and fired approximately four to five shots at him.  Kryovoruka raised his gun- but didn’t fire.  Just Kryovoruka’s raising of his firearm in self-defense of his life is considered a use of force and will have to be evaluated and reported to the DPA.  In theory, DPA would have preferred Kryovoruka didn’t chase this property thief, which would have guaranteed he could continue terrorizing the public. 

During the pursuit, the suspect dumped his gun in the street, raced to 3575 Geary Boulevard (The UCSF Center for Geriatric Care), broke a window, and ghosted SFPD.

Pretty heavy stuff.  However, my sources claim that SFPD’s command staff treated this attempted homicide of an officers so routinely, that they did not even activate the Major Incident Response Team. Additionally, this incident has not even been worthy of an SFPD media release.

Letter to Chief William Scott

Dear Chief Scott:

You were my last chief, and I respect you as a person.  I respect you as a family man. I respect your rank.  You are, as all my sources claim, a good, quiet, hardworking, and an honest man.  Despite these personal attributes, numerous SFPD officers have approached me to articulate the belief that you have:

1)    failed to support your officers and challenge the San Francisco Police Commission’s stealth de-policing of your department, and

2)    neither the San Francisco Police Department nor the safety of San Franciscans has improved under your leadership,

Many feel that the final straw was your prioritization of critical incidents at your January 18th presentation to the San Francisco Police Commission.

In your presentation, at 17:35 minutes, the first concern you expressed was a “person who was sprayed with a water hose.”  Your second item at 18:48 minutes, was your discussion that officers had been shot at, and that the officers should be “commended for their restraint and professionalism.”   At 20:35 minutes, you discussed your third concern, the 17 cars that were boosted on January 15, 2023- a negative SFPD story the Chronicle drooled over.

Chief Scott, really?  Don’t you think your portrayed hierarchy of significant events affected your officers’ morale?

1)    While I am not going to condone nor defend that citizens are resorting to vigilantism by using a hose to spray an unhoused person, how is shooting water at someone a greater critical incident and worthy of your first mention, than your officers ducking bullets?

2)    You voiced it was an accomplishment that after someone tried to take Officer Kryovoruka’s life he didn’t shoot back?  That’s it?  No mention of the heroic effort your officers are demonstrating to address the lawlessness that has permeated our city?

3)    SFPD’s media unit made a January 19th press release on the water incident, but the unit made no press release on the attempted murder of Officer Kryovoruka by bullets.  Why?

4)    When the shooting occurred, were you in San Francisco or your home in Southern California?

5)    The Chronicle follows the San Francisco police officers’ union’s Twitter account.  On January 17th, the union posted this attempted murder on Twitter, so the Chronicle was aware of this incident.  Yet the Chronicle elected to demonize SFPD with their implied ineffectiveness that 17 car break-ins occurred, while censoring from the public your officers’ heroic efforts to abate auto tampering that same day.   Why are you not outraged and marketing to the Chronicle the sacrifices and risks your officers are taking to make San Francisco a safer place?  My God Chief, demand the Chronicle accept your editorial piece! 

6)    Per the Chronicle’s article, Supervisor Catherine Stefani said, “Residents are understandably furious” about the 17-car break-in’s and she called a community meeting.  At Stefani’s community meeting, which you attended, did you even mention that your officers were being shot at a mere 12 hours earlier in the same day while trying to protect San Franciscan citizens’ cars from these hoodlums that commuted from Oakland? 

You are failing to read the voters’ minds.  While many conservatives would have understood if officer Kryovoruka fired in self-defense, the progressives also dearly wanted Kryovoruka to shoot the catalytic converter thief.  Then the progressives could have added disarming SFPD to the no-foot-chases portion of their de-policing agenda.  And Police Commissioner President Cindy Elias (former public defender) would have been especially happy as she would again be positioned to leak confidential SFPD information to her husband in another of his civil suits against SFPD-- like her conflict of interest when her husband initiated a civil suit against SFPD on behalf of Sean Moore’s family that resulted in a $3.25 million settlement.  

The problem is that your police commission presentation was not an isolated incident.  You have an established pattern of appeasing the de-policing progressives. 

·      On March 31, 2020, DA Chesa Boudin bullied you into removing a Tenderloin Station post on Twitter that criticized him about immediately releasing a just-arrested shooter back into the public.  Boudin ordered you “I need this tweet taken down now” (see below) and then he straight-up lied in his public records request response that he ever texted you.  However, you still appeased him by making Tenderloin Station issue a follow-up text about working together with his office.

·      With SFPD’s force already dwindling, you ordered officers that had recently contracted Covid to nevertheless immediately get a Covid shot despite the officers’ naturally inherited immunities.  This illogicalness was developed by the whacky scientists at the SF Department of Public Health.  How many officers did you drive out of SFPD to accepting police departments in normal San Mateo County, in the same way San Francisco residents had to go to normal San Mateo County to swim in chlorinated pools because our whacky scientists deemed chlorinated pools a Covid risk?  I just don’t see a trace of you employing critical thinking or stalling the terminations of these officers during SF’s Covid hysteria.

·      Last year, Boudin accused SFPD of using a rape victim’s DNA to later arrest her for an unrelated crime- a national story.  My sources told me Boudin’s office was involved in and had culpability on this issue.  Yet my public records request to your department for the email exchange between the SFPD inspector and the DA’s office discussing the rape kit has sat dormant for over 11 months.[ii]  Why would your administration withhold public information that might have deflected criticism to the district attorney whose goal was to destroy your department?

·      Two weeks ago, you emailed SFPD personnel that due to the extreme shortage of officers, criminal investigators were going to have to start working uniformed patrol.   An SFPD officer hit “reply all” and voiced his dissatisfaction with your leadership.  I am not condoning the officer’s email.  However, rather than using this as an opportunity to engage with the officers that serve you, your administration had that email- a government public record- deleted out of every officers’ email inbox by I.T.  Talk about a head-in-the-sands approach.

Chief Scott, to a much lesser degree than you, I also recognize that SFPD cannot completely eliminate crime by arresting everyone and arrests are not the only measure of an officer’s experiences.  But it hasn’t been lost on your officers, that your command staff is composed of personnel with little experience on the streets.  For context, every officer that I partnered with from 2002 through my retirement had more career arrests-individually-than the arrest total of the majority of your entire command staff— combined! And let’s not forget the civilian on your command staff who was hired as the chief financial officer based on her college degree in music history.  (That music history major earned $270,000 last year.)  How do you expect your officers to respect your command staff?  

All of this is evidence that besides you not defending your troops to the public media, you seem to show little concern that your administration is being guided by personnel with subpar backgrounds.  Instead of focusing on the effectiveness of your personnel, you have been “managing-up”- managing the mayor’s, police commission’s, and Boudin’s perceptions.  You should have been challenging and educating their misconceptions and concentrating more on how your leadership will affect your legacy.   

Chief, DA Brooke Jenkins’ approval rating has soared because she is viewed as an independent-minded, common-sense pragmatist.  While at the same time your leadership style lacks independence, critical thinking, and engagement with your officers.   I’m sorry to say your department’s rock bottom morale has created a mass exodus, and it appears to me that SFPD is destined to fade into history by attrition. The impact to San Franciscans safety and our property values balances precariously. 

You need to make a goal line stand now, or quietly step aside.  You are not a bad person, just someone who lacks confidence in your own intuition.

This was very difficult for me to write, as I think you are an exceptionally nice guy.

Lou Barberini

Retired SFPD

Ps. Chief, please see my tweet on my on-viewed 852 from yesterday.  Missing plates, occupants all masked up with the exception of their eyes, coincidentally driving right by the Stanyan Street (same street and a few blocks from the shooting) exit of Park Station exit. I called this in at 1643 hrs, but the entire Park district was covered by only 3 radio cars.

Yesterday, another auto tampering crew, coincidentally on Stanyan Street

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[i] “Blacked out” is cop slang for driving without illuminated headlights.  Whenever officers are heading to a critical incident, it is beneficial to look for cars fleeing “blacked out.”

[ii] February 16, 2022, public records request SFPD portal P 062773-021622