A death threat made on Twitter against Acting SFPD Chief Toney Chaplin is being investigated by authorities. "We are still gathering evidence and conducting interviews in preparation of presenting the case to the District Attorney's Office," officer Carlos Manfredi wrote in an email shared with news media. Amidst heightened tensions and present horrors — shootings of police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas and shootings by police of black and brown men and women all over the nation — the threats are all the more frightening.
Chaplin took over leadership of the department when Chief Suhr was forced to resign from his position after the fatal police shooting of Jessica Williams in May. A 26-year veteran of the Department, Chaplin has said he's "in the unenviable position of being an African American and being a cop," while also calling for an end to "unproductive and disruptive" community meetings on police shootings.
The Chronicle writes that a tweet posted Saturday placed Chaplin near an image of a guillotine and suggested killing him. The account, which appears to be San Francisco-based, has tweeted out white supremacist images in the past, such as lynchings and Nazi iconography. "Let us behead this black man," KTVU quotes from the tweet.
