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Police commission reviews two draft use-of-force policies, flags carotid restraint and reporting rules
Summary
At a June community meeting, department staff presented two draft versions of DGO 5.01. Version 1 emphasizes a 'reasonable officer' standard and retains carotid restraint as a deadly‑force option; Version 2 uses mandatory language ('shall'), 'minimal force' and would prohibit carotid restraint. Several items remain open for the June 22 vote.
The San Francisco Police Commission on June 1 hosted a community meeting to present two draft versions of Department General Order 5.01, the department's use‑of‑force policy, and to solicit public comment ahead of a scheduled June 22 vote.
Deputy Chief Garrett Thomm introduced the session and Captain Jack Hart summarized the policy development timeline, saying President Loftus directed an update on Dec. 9, 2015, three separate drafts were presented on Feb. 10, and stakeholder working groups and Department of Justice subject‑matter experts subsequently provided comments. Hart said stakeholders at the table included the Office of Citizen Complaints, the Bar Association of San Francisco, the ACLU and community representatives.
"The San Francisco Police Department's highest priority is safeguarding the sanctity of all human life," Captain Hart said when reading the opening paragraph common to both drafts. He outlined the principal differences between Version 1 and Version 2, which the commission must resolve before voting.
Version 1, Hart said, uses permissive wording such as "should" in some places and applies a "reasonable officer" objective standard drawn from Supreme Court case law. It also includes a set of additional factors that may determine the reasonableness of force—"number of officers and number of subjects, age, size and relative strength, specialized knowledge, prior contact, injury or exhaustion, proximity, access to weapons and time available to make a decision," Hart recited—and treats the carotid restraint as a deadly‑force option.
By contrast, Version 2 responds to Bar Association recommendations by replacing permissive language with mandatory terms such as "shall," defining threat timing as "immediate" rather than "imminent," and adopting "minimal force"—the least force needed to control a subject—as the community standard. Version 2 also adds the clause that "lethal force shall only be exercised when all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted or appear impracticable" and explicitly prohibits carotid restraint and choke moves.
Hart said the US Department of Justice memorandum and individual subject‑matter expert comments were posted for public review and influenced the consolidation of draft policies into the two versions now before the commission.
Several discrete items remained open for commission deliberation, Hart said: whether to include "California penal code section 8 35 a" text in the policy (it appears in both drafts), whether a list of sergeant requirements for handling subjects armed with weapons should be policy or training, whether to use the word "unreasonable" or "unnecessary," how broadly to define reportable uses of force, and whether to retain an outdated restriction on raising impact weapons.
Commissioners emphasized that the purpose of the evening was to gather public input. No final votes on the policy were taken at the meeting; commissioners said a vote is expected on June 22.
