History of the San Francisco Police Department


The San Francisco Police Department began operations on August 13, 1849, during the California Gold Rush in San Francisco, California, under the command of Captain Malachi Fallon.
The police department was created –along the Chilean consulate in San Francisco– following the attack of The Hounds gang on the Little Chile neighbourhood.

History

At the time of founding on August 13, 1849, Chief Malachi Fallon had a force of one deputy captain, three sergeants, and thirty officers.
In 1851, Albert Bernard de Russailh wrote about the nascent San Francisco police force:
As for the police, I have only one thing to say. The police force is largely made up of ex-bandits, and naturally the members are interested above all in saving their old friends from punishment. Policemen here are quite as much to be feared as the robbers; if they know you have money, they will be the first to knock you on the head. You pay them well to watch over your house, and they set it on fire. In short, I think that all the people concerned with justice or the police are in league with the criminals. The city is in a hopeless chaos, and many years must pass before order can be established. In a country where so many races are mingled, a severe and inflexible justice is desirable, which would govern with an iron hand.

On October 28, 1853, the Board of Aldermen passed Ordinance No. 466, which provided for the reorganization of the police department. Sections one and two provided as follows:
In July 1856, the "Consolidation Act" went into effect. This act abolished the office of City Marshal and created in its stead the office of Chief of Police. The first Chief of Police elected in 1856 was James F. Curtis a former member of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance.
In early August 1975, the SFPD went on strike over a pay dispute, violating a California law prohibiting police from striking. The city quickly obtained a court order declaring the strike illegal and enjoining the SFPD back to work. The court messenger delivering the order was met with violence and the SFPD continued to strike. Only managers and African-American officers remained on duty, with 45 officers and three fire trucks responsible for a city population of 700,000. Supervisor Dianne Feinstein pleaded Mayor Joseph Alioto to ask Governor Jerry Brown to call out the National Guard to patrol the streets, but Alioto refused. When enraged civilians confronted SFPD officers at the picket lines, the officers arrested them. The strike was joined by the city's firefighters. The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn. On August 21, Mayor Alioto advised the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that they should concede to the strikers' demands. The Supervisors unanimously refused. Mayor Alioto immediately then declared a state of emergency, assumed legislative powers, and granted the strikers' demands. City Supervisors and taxpayers sued but the court found that a contract obtained through an illegal strike is still legally enforceable.
In 1997, the San Francisco International Airport Police merged with SFPD, becoming the SFPD Airport Bureau.
On September 8, 2011, ground was broken for San Francisco's new Public Safety Building in Mission Bay. A replacement facility for the San Francisco Police Department Headquarters and Southern District Police Station located at 850 Bryant, the PSB also contained a fire station to serve the burgeoning neighborhood. The building was completed in 2015.
The first African American police officer on SFPD in the 19th-century was Edward Dennis, the son of George Washington Dennis. In 2014, the San Francisco Police academy graduated its first publicly reported transgender police officer, Mikayla Connell.

List of key events in the history of the SFPD

1850–1875

  • 1851 and 1856: The San Francisco Vigilance Movement usurped local and state authority during the post-Gold Rush period.
  • 1861: Confederate privateer, the schooner J. M. Chapman captured in San Francisco bay by federal agents and San Francisco Police
  • January 1866: Author Mark Twain blasts the SFPD and Chief Martin Burke for corruption in a series of letters to the editor, including one to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, now lost but parts of which were reprinted elsewhere, published January 23, 1866.

    1875–1900

  • From 1875 to 1888: Hunt for Charles Bolles, known as "Black Bart", a notorious stagecoach robber at the time. He was eventually caught by a Wells Fargo detective James B. Hume. He disappeared shortly after he was released from prison in 1888.
  • April 26, 1877: Substitute Officer Charles J. Coots killed by gunfire.
  • 1877: The "July Days" rioting of 1877 that broke out as an indirect result of an earlier demonstration in solidarity with striking miners in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where at least forty strikers had been killed by state militia. City fathers established a committee of safety to supplement the police force, handing out axe handles that gave the group the moniker, the "pick-handle" brigade.
  • Early 1880s: Chinatown Squad established.
  • February 16, 1884, Officer John Nicholson killed by stabbing.
  • 1886: C. W. Armanger requested a seven-point star for police badges, to represent the seven seals in the Book of Revelation of the new testament for virtue, divinity, prudence, fortitude, honor, glory, and praise of God. The first SF policeman to wear the star was Isaiah W. Lees. It was worn on the left breast.
  • November 1886: Police defend old Jail on Broadway in North Beach from vigilantes bent on lynching prisoners.
  • December 17, 1886: Officer Edwin J. Osgood killed by stabbing.
  • September 11, 1891: Officer Alexander G. Grant killed by gunfire.
  • April 13, 1895: Theodore Durrant was arrested for murdering both Minnie Williams and Blanche Lamont in Emanuel Church in Noe Valley San Francisco. Hanged in 1898.
  • September 15, 1895: Detective Daniel Coffee commits suicide by gun at home.
  • November 9, 1895, a troop of twenty officers from the southern district, under the command of Captain John Spillane, march down sixth street late at night, burn the shanties at Dumpville, evict the scavengers from the site which is quickly filled to be used as part of the huge southern Pacific railroad yards along Channel Street.
  • March 23, 1896, Lieutenant William L. Burke killed by gunfire.

    1900–1925

  • May 3, 1901: The San Francisco Call reports; Chief William P. Sullivan issues order against officers dyeing hair and whiskers, claiming the effort detracts from the officer's duties.
  • 1901: Carman's strikes. Employers' Association hired toughs and Mayor James D. Phelan's police attack strikers. City police ride with scabs. Police beat strikers but make no arrests. Police behavior during this strike is a major factor in the fall Mayoral election which brought Eugene Schmitz, his patron Abe Ruef, and the Union Labor Party to power. 5 dead, 300 injured.
  • January 21, 1902, Officer Eugene C. Robinson killed by gunfire.
  • April 18, 1906, Officer Max Fenner killed by natural disaster.
  • April 16, 1906; The first Hall of Justice on Kearney Street opposite Portsmouth Square was damaged in the earthquake and fire.
  • 1906:Hall of Justice, opposite Portsmouth Square on Kearney Street, rebuilt after earthquake.
  • September 6, 1906, Officer James S. Cook killed by gunfire.
  • November 16, 1906, Officer George P. O'Connell killed by gunfire.
  • September 3, 1907, Officer Edward T. McCartney killed by gunfire.
  • 1907: First police car inaugurated. Among the first police departments to use fingerprints as a means of identification.
  • 1907: San Francisco Streetcar Strike: Disagreements between the union and the management of United Railroads Company from 1902 to 1907 contribute greatly to this strike. Strike ends in failure as workers abandoned the strike.
  • December 1, 1908: San Francisco Chief of Police William J. Biggy went overboard from a police launch during a nighttime crossing of San Francisco Bay after a visit with judge in Tiburon, California. Biggy had been accused of failing to stop the killing, or suicide in jail, of ex-convict and alleged Ruef bagman Morris Haas, shooter of special prosecutor Francis J. Heney. Biggy's body was found two weeks later. The Coroner's Jury returned a verdict of accidental death although some people believed his death was suicide. The case remains unsolved.
  • 1909: Establishment of SFPD motorcycle squad for "stopping scorchers and reckless vehicle drivers" and countries first fingerprint bureau.
  • 1912: Warned by Chinese Consul General Li Yung Yow that "efforts to bring a truce among warring highbinder factions" had been futile, police chief David A. White issues orders that the regular Chinatown squad be expanded... and all officers be instructed to "shoot to kill" at the first indication of trouble."
  • 1913: Three women protective officers join the force. San Francisco among first departments to hire women.
  • May 4, 1913: Officer Byron C. Wood killed by gunfire.
  • WW1: Daisy Simpson, later known as the "Lady Hooch Hunter," joins the SFPD morals squad.
  • March 10, 1914: Officer Harry L. Sauer killed by gunfire.
  • April 19, 1915: Officer Edward Maloney killed by gunfire.
  • November 24, 1915: Corporal Frederick Holmes Cook killed by gunfire.
  • January 8, 1916: Officer Thomas Deasy killed by gunfire.
  • May 12, 1916: Officer Peter Hammond killed by gunfire.
  • May 26, 1916: Sergeant John Joseph Moriarty killed by gunfire.
  • July 22, 1916: The bombing on the Preparedness Day parade killed 10 people and wounded 40 others. Two known radical labor leaders – Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings arrested and sentenced to death under a hasty trial. They are eventually commuted by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 and pardoned by California governor Culbert Olson in 1939.
  • December 14, 1916: Officer Martin Judge struck and killed by streetcar
  • February 1917: The police raid and blockade the notorious red-light district Barbary Coast and refuse entry to any men without legitimate business. The police then proceed to evict over 1073 prostitutes, giving them a few hours to collect their belongings, thereby effectively shutting down 83 dives and brothels after nearly three quarters of a century as the west coast's premiere vice district.
  • August 1917: After three weeks of strikes on the United Railways, police are accused of refusing to search all "platform men" still on the job, causing president Koster of the San Francisco Law and Order Committee to notify the mayor that "unless he instructs the police to do their duty... state and Federal government will be asked to interfere", in the United Railroad worker's strike.
  • November 15, 1919: Police order all IWW members out of town.
  • 1921: Appointment by Chief Dan O'Brien of Jack Manion to the Chinatown Squad.
  • September 3, 1921: Famous silent film actor Roscoe Arbuckle aka Fatty Arbuckle involved in an alleged rape during his stay in San Francisco. The victim Virginia Rappe dies three days after party at Arbuckle's suite in the Saint Francis Hotel. The scandal attracts media attention and destroyed Arbuckle's career.
  • 1923: Police Academy opens, first in the nation.