San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr announced today changes to the department’s command staff that he said will save the city more than $1 million in costs.
In a ceremony at City Hall this afternoon, Mayor Ed Lee swore in 10 people to new positions on the Police Department’s command staff.
Lee, who swore in Suhr just weeks ago as the department’s new top cop, said the new chief “knows what he needs to get done.”
Suhr replaced Jeff Godown as chief following a shakeup that started in November when Mayor Gavin Newsom and District Attorney Kamala Harris were elected the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general, respectively.
Before he left the mayor’s office in January, Newsom selected then-police Chief George Gascon to take over as district attorney, and Gascon’s second-in-command, Godown, served as the interim chief until Lee, the new mayor, picked a permanent replacement in Suhr late last month.
Godown is remaining in the department but will not be on the command staff. His title will be manager of criminal information services, and he will oversee the department’s CompStat program, Suhr said.
Among the cost-saving moves Suhr is enacting are the elimination of all assistant chief positions and one deputy chief position. He also reduced positions for non-sworn officers and merged other positions.
Suhr said the changes make this “the most diverse command staff in regards to women and people of color in the history of the San Francisco Police Department.”
Police Commission President Thomas Mazzucco said the new makeup of the command staff “really does represent San Francisco.”
Suhr still has to find other ways to cut costs after Lee asked all city departments to cut their budgets by 10 percent to help bridge the city’s $306 million budget deficit.
“This million dollar savings is a start, but we have a ways to go to close our budget gap,” Suhr said.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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