San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Thursday announced a police reform plan that includes removal of officers from calls for non-criminal activities.
On such calls, Breed wants police replaced by trained and non-armed professionals who she said would be better equipped to handle situations like neighbor disputes, school discipline interventions or behavioral health crises.
She also outlined her vision to fundamentally change the nature of policing in San Francisco, issuing a set of priorities to help address structural inequities in the department and the city itself.
The mayor proposed four priorities to achieve her vision:
- ending the use of police in response to non-criminal activity
- addressing police bias and strengthening accountability
- demilitarizing the police
- promoting economic justice
Breed said as part of the plan, she’s already directed the police department to establish policy to explicitly ban the use of military-grade weapons like tear gas, tanks and bayonets, against unarmed people.
She has also called for a strategy on taking away such weapons from the department by 2021 and to create “safeguards” against federal grants that fund them.
