Two men in their 40s were crossing Broadway at the intersection of Montgomery at 2:20 a.m. this morning when they were struck by a car and transported to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries. San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Sergeant Michael Andraychak said in a statement that police discovered the vehicle, a Dodge Charger, abandoned by its driver at the scene, but were able to track the car to Christopher Kohrs, 38, of San Francisco, according to the SF Chronicle.
Though it's customary for SFPD statements like this one to include a suspect's occupation or place of employment, that detail was conspicuously omitted. Likely that's because Kohrs is a police officer with a reputation to uphold — and it's quite the reputation.
Kohrs is known as the Hot Cop of the Castro to admirers who devoted a Facebook page to him last year. He later removed the page (because he's humble and somewhat private as was clear in his interview exclusive with SFist) but not before using his newfound fame to do a wet T-shirt contest for charity and participate in a must-watch shirtless ice-bucket challenge. [Update: The Facebook page is actually back up, and it appears Kohrs was even using it as recently as September to expound on the topic of police officers' use of deadly force.]
Though Kohrs has been arrested today, "due to pending identification matters, no booking photo will be released at this time." Translation: SFPD realized a thirsty public couldn't handle the presumably hot mugshot of the Hot Cop of the Castro. This might be for the best, everyone.
When Kohrs left what was actually a temporary Castro beat, the Hot Cop craze cooled. In retrospect, the officer was just in the District long enough to develop a following of flatterers and selfie-takers, whom he politely indulged. "That was something I had to get used to working in that neighborhood," he told SFist, noting he identified as straight but was nonetheless "flattered" by the attention.
When removing his fan page, Kohrs clarified to SFist that "The department did not ask me to take down the fan page. In fact they were very supportive of me throughout all of this. I took it down for personal reasons. Police officers are often shown in the media for less than positive things. It's not the easiest job and we do make mistakes. Throughout all this, I wanted to show police officers in a positive light. Once I felt I had sufficiently accomplished that, I couldn't find a reason to keep the fan page up."
"I love my job and enjoy my privacy, family and friends," Kohrs concluded. The hit-and-run is an ongoing investigation and anyone with information on this collision is asked to call the Anonymous Tip Line at (415) 575-4444 or Text a Tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD.
