The Slatest

San Francisco Police Chief Resigns After Black Woman Is Killed

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr in September 2013.

Stephen Lam/Reuters

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned on Thursday just hours after a black woman was shot to death by city officers; the 27-year-old woman is the third nonwhite person to be killed by San Francisco police since last December, and officers’ justifications of both previous shootings have been challenged by witnesses and activists. Suhr’s ouster also follows the release of two different archives of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by members of the force.

The federal Department of Justice is conducting a review of the SFPD that was launched after officers killed Mario Woods in December 2015. (The review is being handled by the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and is said to be more “collaborative” than the interventions that justice’s civil-rights division has launched in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, after controversial police violence cases.)

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts was fired last July after Freddie Gray’s death in police custody.* Chicago Police Superintendent Gerry McCarthy was fired in December after revelations that the department covered up details about the shooting death of Laquan McDonald.

*Correction, May 20, 2016: This post originally misspelled Anthony Batts’ last name.