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Washington Post Rightfully Bashes SFPD's Mad Skillz
The San Francisco Police Department gets trashed (again), this time care of Karl Vick's Washington Post post article on the foibles of our very own Keystone Cops. In it, basically, he reveals that our police force, in a word, sucks.
A few stellar examples are cited. Take, for example, the "Cadaver Van Case" where the fuzz waited eight days before checking out a van, "even though their cadaver dogs signaled it might contain something dead." The cops, though, were meh on the entire case; a San Diego citizen ended up catching the killers in Mexico with little more than border crossing knowhow, pluck, and some Kinko copies.
Oh, and the Hugues de la Plaza case? In Hayes Valley? Where SFPD "first surmised that de la Plaza ... stabbed himself three times in the chest, then washed and hid the knife somewhere in his San Francisco apartment." The case is still not listed as a homicide, and French authorities are now trying to get involved to solve the thing. (de la Plaza was a French citizen.)
The San Francisco Police Department responds, as usual, like a stubborn, mildly-retarded, rejected American Idol contestant:
"If you were talking to someone in our department, they wouldn't say we screwed up. Someone else would say we did screw up. That's all a matter of opinion," Sgt. Wilfred Williams said. "Are these cases an indication of some larger problem? Again, that's a matter of opinion. We wouldn't say we necessarily have a problem."
Stunning.
And the article goes on (much of it being painful yet necessary to read). But unlike tone-deaf American Idol contestants, the SFPD gets rewarded for their efforts. Last year Mayor Newsom gave the force a 25 percent pay raise.