List of events in the history of the San Francisco Police Department

The following is a list of events in the history of the San Francisco Police Department.

• 1851 and 1856: The San Francisco Vigilance Movement usurped local and state authority during the post-Gold Rush period.

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• November, 1886: Police defend old Jail on Broadway in North Beach from vigilantes bent on lynching prisoners

• April 13, 1895: Theodore Durrant arrested for murdering both Minnie Williams and Blanche Lamont in Emanuel Church in Noe Valley San Francisco. Hanged in 1898.

• 1901: 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

• The 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 (bicyclists) and reckless vehicle drivers" and countries first fingerprint bureau (S.F. Examiner June 13, 1977)

• 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." (LA times March 14, 1912 pg.12)

• 1913: Three women protective officers join the force. San Francisco among first departments to hire women.

• 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 were arrested and sentenced to death under a hasty trial. They were eventually commuted by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 and pardoned by California governor Culbert Olson in 1939.

• February, 1917: The police raided and blockaded the notorious red-light district Barbary Coast and refused entry to any men without legitimate business. The police then proceeded 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. (LA Times September 1, 1917 pg. II4).

• 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 was involved in an alleged rape during his stay in San Francisco. The victim Virginia Rappe died three days after party at Arbuckle's suite in the Saint Francis Hotel. The scandal attracted media attention and destroyed Arbuckle's career.

• 1923: Police Academy was opened, first in the nation

• 1932: Jessie Scott Hughes murdered, trial of public defender Frank Egan ends in first degree murder sentence of 25 years

• 1934: The 1934 West Coast longshore strike that included Bloody Thursday July 5, 1934 over a hundred people wounded, strikers Nicholas Bordois and Howard Sperry killed.

• July 17, 1934: the California National Guard blocked both ends of Jackson Street from Drumm to Front with machine gun mounted trucks to assist vigilante raids, protected by SFPD, on the headquarters of the Marine Workers' Industrial Union and the ILA soup kitchen at 84 Embarcadero. Moving on, the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League's headquarters on Howard between Third and Fourth was raided, leading to 150 arrests and the complete destruction of the facilities. The employer's group, the Industrial Association, had agents riding with the police. Further raids were carried out at the Workers' Open Forum at 1223 Fillmore Street and the Western Worker building opposite City Hall that contained a bookstore and the main offices of the Communist Party, which was thoroughly destroyed. Attacks were also perpetrated on the 121 Haight Street Workers' School and the Mission Workers' Neighborhood House at 741 Valencia Street.

• Mid 1930s: Hiring of barrister Jake Ehrlich in mid-1930s by police officers association

• 1937: Revelation of widespread graft reported in the 1937 investigation by Matthew Brady (district attorney) hired detective Edwin Atherton[4]

• Sunday, May 2, 1937: Patrolman George Burkhard, trophied marksman, shoots his wife and two grown daughters and then commits suicide in the midst of prosecution for falsifying documents related to graft hearings

• May 29, 1937: Riot in the Polk Gulch area on the night of the Golden Gate Bridge Fiesta.

• September, 1938: Mounted police chase striking Retail Department Store Employees Union in commercial district where thirty-five department stores are affected in general strike

• October, 1943: Iron Ring police clique exposed. Certain officers are accused of participating and profiting from after hours bars, vice and gambling operations. Ostentatious displays of jewelry, cars and flashy cash decried as criminal gains (SF Chronicle October 25, 1943)

• October 23, 1943: San Francisco Chronicle reports accusations of police tip-offs in the Burns-Caldwell underground abortions case

• 1944: V-Day riots that lasted three days, mostly joined by men in uniform

• 1946: the San Francisco Police Officers Association was founded

• 1947: The Nick de John mafia murder of 1947

• 1949: The 1949 frame-up and arrest for narcotics possession of Billie Holliday

• September 30, 1955: Chief George Healey asks for disbanding of Chinatown squad, upon request of influential Chinese World newspaper, which states that squad is an "affront to Americans of Chinese descent".

• 1957: The 1957 arrest of City Lights Bookstore publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti on obscenity charges for publication of the Allen Ginsberg poem Howl

• September 1, 1958: Chief Frances J. Ahern died of a heart attack at a baseball game in Seal Stadium (New York Times: September 2, 1958. p. 25)

• May 13, 1960: A large group of students and citizens fire-hosed down the marble steps inside City Hall rotunda by the SFPD for protesting their exclusion from HUAC hearings, 52 arrests.

• 1961: The 1961 arrest of comedian Lenny Bruce for obscenity

• March 7, 1964: Police arrest 167 of nearly 1000 demonstrators who sat-in at the Sheraton Palace hotel in protest of the hotels failure to hire blacks.

• April 14, 1964: Police arrest 180 civil rights demonstrators, motivated by the San Francisco NAACP, on Van Ness Avenue's "Auto Row", including actor Sterling Hayden and six clergymembers, who continue sit-ins at major auto showrooms such as the Wessman Lincoln-Mercury and nearby Cadillac dealership, protesting discriminatory hiring practices and demanding integration of work sales force.

• New Year's Eve party at California Hall raided and 600 attendee's lined up and photographed as homosexuals. The cases went to trial with support from the ACLU. All are acquitted.

• August, 1966: Compton's Cafeteria riot.

• Hunters Point riot September 27, 1966: A three day riot breaks out when a white police officer shot and killed a sixteen-year-old fleeing the scene of a stolen car. National guard cover city for two days

• Police seize copies of Lenore Kandel's book of poems, the love book, leading to another long obscenity trial.

• 1966 to 1967: Hippies enact walk-ins in Haight Street intersections precipitating repeated military-style police marches down the street.

• 1967: Police arrest dancers Rudolph Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn on the roof of a house near the panhandle for being in the vicinity of pot smoking

• December, 1968 through January, 1969: Police repeatedly called on student protesters by Chancellor S. I. Hayakawa.

• May 1, 1969: Arrest of seven young Latinos Los Siete De La Raza for the May 1, 1969 murder of an undercover officer Joe Brodnik and wounding of partner Paul McGoran

• 1960s: Targeting of SFPD officers for assassination by militants alleged to be connected to the Black Panther Party.

• 1960s to 1970s: The Zodiac serial killer case which rocked the Bay Area during the 1960s and '70s

• February 16, 1970: A homemade bomb exploded outside the police station on Waller St. Sgt. Brian McDonnell (44) died 2 days later and 8 other officers were injured. Black Panthers or the Weather Underground were suspects

• 1970s: The racially-motivated 1970s Zebra murders by a violent offshoot of Nation of Islam. offshoot.

• In the late 1960s, New Age philosopher Alan Watts suggested police cars be painted baby blue and white instead of black and white. This proposal was implemented in San Francisco by Chief Charles Gain in the late 1970s. Along with the new color scheme, Gain substituted the City's seal (which appeared on almost all other municipal vehicles owned by San Francisco), with "Police Services" for the department's traditional seven-pointed, blue star logo. Watts suggested the police wear baby blue uniforms, but this was never implemented. Later, in the late 1990s, the police cars were repainted their former black and white colors, but the blue star remains.

• 1975: The Symbionese Liberation Army crime spree and the 1975 arrest of Patty Hearst, William and Emily Harris and Wendy Yoshimura in a house on Bernal Heights.

• August 18, 1975: Over 90% of 1,935 police walk out in pay dispute.

• September 22, 1975: President Gerald R. Ford dodged a second assassination in less than three weeks. Sara Jane Moore, an FBI informer and self-proclaimed revolutionary, attempted to shoot President Ford outside a San Francisco hotel, but missed.

• August 4, 1977: Over 400 riot-equipped police (some on horseback), and sheriff's deputies take the International Hotel, known as the I-Hotel, from 2,000 protesters.

• August 25, 1977: Police commission approves an equal opportunity plan that includes recruitment of homosexuals.

• September, 1977: Golden Dragon massacre.

• November 27, 1978 Former SFPD officer, firefighter and Supervisor Dan White is arrested for the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

• May 21, 1979 The White Night Riots which followed Dan White's acquittal of first degree murder charges and conviction on lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter when hundreds march to city hall and riot, break windows and torch police cars. These spontaneous actions led to an unprovoked police raid on a Castro Street gay bar called the Elephant Walk, two miles away and hours after the City Hall disturbance.

• January 27, 1979 Police department settles racial discrimination suit filed by Black Police Officer's Association.

• 1981: The 1981 arrest of David Carpenter, the "Trailside Killer."

• May, 1984: Notorious sex party at California Halls Rathskeller bar, celebrating the graduation of new San Francisco Police Department cadets.

• September, 1984: Police siege Lord Jim's bar looking for drugs. Hold 60 patrons for more than an hour, prompting lawsuits that cost many thousands of dollars

• 1984: The still-unsolved 1984 disappearance of Kevin Collins

• 1984: Democratic National Convention

• 1980s: The case against serial killers Leonard Lake and Charles Ng

• 1980s: The case against Richard Ramirez, the night stalker
• August 15, 1988: Captan Richard Holder leads arrest of first nine Food Not Bombs volunteers at Golden Gate Park.
• August 22, 1988: Police arrest 29 Food Not Bombs Volunteers for Making a Political Statement at Golden Gate Park.
• September 5, 1988: 54 Food Not Bombs volunteers arrested sharing vegan food at Golden Gate Park.
• 1988: S.F. Police officer breaks two ribs and ruptures spleen of UFW leader Dolores Huerta at a demonstration in Union Square against George Bush 1, leading to the dismissal of officers with excessive force complaints and a settlement with the city for $825,000

• October 6, 1989: In response to a small, peaceful protest by the AIDS activist group ACT UP San Francisco, more than 200 SFPD officers descend on the Castro, the city's main gay neighborhood, on a busy Friday evening. Declaring the entire commercial district to be an unlawful-assembly zone, officers sweep all pedestrians from the streets and sidewalks over a seven-block area and prevent patrons from exiting businesses and residents from leaving their homes for an hour or more. More than 50 individuals are arrested, and a number of protesters and passersby are clubbed and injured by police officers. Following the event, the Office of Citizen Complaints, the city's independent police review board, determines that the crackdown had been ordered by Deputy Chief Frank Reed and that half of all officers on duty had taken part. The San Francisco Police Commission ultimately disciplines several officers, and the city pays $250,000 to settle two civil suits brought by victims of the police misconduct. The police action comes to be known as the Castro Sweep Police Riot.

• October 17, 1989: Loma Prieta earthquake occurred

• 1992: Police Chief Richard Hongisto is fired for allegedly prompting three officers to seize more than 2,000 copies of the San Francisco Bay Times, a weekly gay and lesbian newspaper. One of those three officers, Gary Delagnes, is current president of the Police Officers Association

• 1993: The 1993 massacre at 101 California Street

• 1993: The Anti-Defamation League Spy Scandal of 1993 involving ADL researcher Roy Bullock and officer Tom Gerard

• New Year's Day, 1995: Four officers charged with using unnecessary force and making homophobic comments to partygoers at an AIDS fund-raiser at 938 Harrison St.

• June 4, 1995: Aaron Williams, an African-American man suspected of a pet-store burglary dies in police custody. According to witnesses and police sources, a team of police led by Officer Marc Andaya repeatedly kicked Williams in the head and emptied three canisters of pepper spray into his face. Despite the fact that Williams was having difficulty breathing, the police hog-tied, gagged and left him unattended in the back of a police van, where he died.

• April 6, 1996: Mark Garcia, a 15 year teamster, killed by San Francisco police. Mark Garcia was robbed and partially stripped of his clothing. SFPD called. Instead of helping Mark, the police beat him, pepper sprayed him, handcuffed him, stood on his back for more than 5 minutes, hog-tied him, and then threw him into the back of a police van. Although they took him to the hospital, Garcia died.

• April 16, 1996 A Municipal Court judge signs order dismissing 39,020 citations and warrants police handed out relating to the controversial Matrix Program in a move that District Attorney Terence Hallinan describes as a shift to a "kinder, more effective" approach to homelessness.

• July, 1997: The Critical Mass bike ride that led to over a hundred arrests and charges of police overreaction

• Investigation launched into cashier's checks specifically made out to the Vice Crimes Division and handed directly to a vice squad sergeant. The money was collected from massage parlor workers arrested by the Vice Squad.

• May 13, 1998: Sheila Patricia Detoy, sitting in the front seat of a Ford Mustang, shot once in the head by plainclothes police officers as the car barreled out of the driveway of the Oakwood Apartments. Mother of slain girl files wrongful death claim

• February, 2002: Off-duty officer Steve Lee in fistfight with Gregory Hooper, a street vendor. Eyewitnesses report that after the fight ended, Lee shot the unarmed Hooper four times in the chest at point- blank range.

• March, 2002: Five officers opened fire on a mentally disabled man named Richard Tims wielding a knife, killing him. Barrage of bullets destroy a bus shelter, spray the block and hit onlooker Vilda Curry, a 39-year-old mother, causing her irreparable reproductive harm, and the loss of use of her leg.

• June 12, 2001: Idriss Stelley shot more than 20 times and killed by eight San Francisco Police Officers at the Sony Metreon. (www.justice4idriss.org).

• 2001: The case against Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller for the death-by-dog of Diane Whipple.

• November 20, 2002: A scandal known as "Fajitagate" occurred when three off-duty police officers—Matthew Tonsing, David Lee, and Alex Fagan Jr.—assaulted two San Francisco residents, Adam Snyder and Jade Santoro, over a bag of fajitas. Alex Fagan Jr. is the son of SFPD Assistant Chief Alex Fagan, who later became Chief. Nine officers and Chief Earl Sanders were involved in a cover up regarding the fight. This incident has led to a grand jury indictment of the parties involved. However, unable to prove that a cover up ever existed, the district attorney dropped the charges against former Chief Earl Sanders. Acting Chief Alex Fagan also resigned. In 2006, a civil jury found former officers Fagan and Tonsing liable for damages suffered in the beating, awarding plaintiffs Snyder and Santoro $41,000 in compensation.

• February 19, 2003: Michael Moll killed. Officers fire eight shots, striking Moll five times.

• murder conviction overturned involving police officers Earl Sanders and partner Napoleon Hendrix withholding evidence. In 2003, John Tennison and Antoine Goff were released after a federal court found Sanders and Hendrix had withheld evidence. In 2009, The City paid a $7.5 million settlement for the wrongful convictions.

• December 2005: A staged videotape of officers engaged in racist and sexist parodies was leaked. As a result, twenty officers were suspended.

• July 8, 2005: At an Anti-G8 protest, officerPeter Sheilds' skull is fractured, San Francisco police collaborate with Federal Homeland Security department and FBI in investigation of new media journalist Josh Wolf. Wolf is later called to testify at the grand jury and jailed for refusing to speak for 226 days.

• December 2006 to February 2007: The 'San Francisco Chronicle' published a special report titled, The Use Of Force: When SFPD Officers Resort to Violence, detailing incidents and providing context on San Francisco police officer use of excessive force against suspects and citizens, and the consequences.

• January, 2007: Eight former Black Panthers arrested for their alleged involvement in the 1971 murder of Sgt. John V. Young at Ingleside station and other serious thirty year old crimes. Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones arrested in California. Francisco Torres arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor arrested in Florida. Two of the men charged have been in prison for over 30 years Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim. Bail amounts running between three and five million dollars each. Supporters now call these men the San Francisco 8.
• May, 2008: City pays $235,000 in largest settlement in an excessive force case not involving a weapon. Lawsuit claimed San Francisco police officer Christopher Damonte used excessive force on schoolteacher Kelly Medora.

• March 2009 U.S. Justice Department reps and Police Chief Heather Fong muzzle Police Officers Association's leadership after they sign a letter accusing onetime Weather Underground member's Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, of being behind the nearly 1970 bombing at Park Police Station that killed a sergeant Brian McDonnell.

• December 20, 2008 Chief Heather Fong retires

• 2009 New Chief George Gascón hired,

• March 9, 2010: Police Chief George Gascón closes the drug testing unit of the SFPD crime lab after technician Deborah Madden admits to skimming cocaine. Hundreds of criminal cases are dismissed or discharged.