VIDEO: CA Police Union Slammed for Ad Criticizing New Policy on Shooting at Vehicles

San Francisco’s police union has intensified its attack on a proposal to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles — a top priority for reform advocates — by releasing an advertisement dramatizing what could happen if a raging motorist gunned his pickup into a crowd of street activists.

The ad, set to air on local TV stations starting Friday, drew criticism over the union’s stance as well as how it sought to make its case. The video pointed not only to the truck attack that killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day in France in July, but also a 2003 incident in San Francisco in which two officers shot and killed a driver in a chaotic encounter.

The ad falsely suggests the San Francisco driver had steered into a crowd and was “determined to run people down.” There was no crowd, and the 18-year-old appeared to be focused on trying to escape from police when he was killed, said his father, who was outraged when he learned of the ad Thursday.

Police Commission President Suzy Loftus, whose face appears at the end of the ad as the union asks for the public to contact her with complaints about the proposed policy, told the San Francisco Chronicle political message was misleading and represented “Trump-like fear-mongering.”

The ad is likely to heighten tensions between the Police Officers Association, which says it must protect officers’ safety, and those pushing for changes in the wake of several controversial police shootings in San Francisco. Critics say the union — which in the past year has lashed out aggressively against its opponents — is standing in the way of reforms.