SF DA’s office to take lead in investigating police shootings

The San Francisco district attorney’s office is a step closer to becoming the lead investigator in all shootings involving city police officers, a move designed to ease concerns about cops policing themselves.

Mayor Ed Lee has approved a final round of funding for a new unit in the district attorney’s office that will take the lead in the shootings, officials said Wednesday.

The idea is not only to promote independent probes, officials said, but to help the district attorney’s office clear a backlog of 10 fatal shooting cases dating as far back as 2014 that remain open.

[...] some law enforcement experts worry that giving prosecutors rather than homicide detectives the lead role could degrade the quality of investigations.

The funding of the new unit, which still must be staffed up, comes amid a growing call for expanded police accountability from civil rights activists and others in the Bay Area and across the nation.

The fight over handling these cases has been intense in San Francisco, where officer-involved shootings in the past two years — in particular, the video-recorded killing of Mario Woods in the Bayview neighborhood — prompted a pending U.S. Department of Justice review of the police force.

Currently, the district attorney’s office conducts an independent investigation into police shootings in the city before deciding whether to file charges against officers.

[...] the Police Department plays the lead role in critical components of the investigation, including interviewing witnesses and handling physical evidence.

“When a San Francisco police officer is involved in a shooting, SFPD is currently the lead agency investigating the case,” said district attorney’s office spokesman Max Szabo.

The new unit will be in charge of conducting investigations of officer-involved shootings as well as other potential instances of law-enforcement abuse.

Officials said a “memorandum of understanding” is in the works that should spell out what, exactly, it will look like to have the district attorney’s office running the show during police shooting investigations — and what role San Francisco police will play moving forward.

“To restore faith in law enforcement and ensure there is accountability for misconduct, these investigations must be objective and independent,” Gascón said.

The planned shift follows a rash of controversial police shootings in San Francisco, which prompted widespread protests, the Department of Justice review of police practices and the resignation in May of Chief Greg Suhr.

While San Francisco police officials did not return requests for comment Wednesday, Sgt. John Crudo of the internal affairs division told The Chronicle in May that the Police Department is the only agency in the city with the expertise to investigate complicated police shootings.

The district attorney’s office has struggled to promptly complete its investigations into police shootings, taking an average of 15 months to decide whether or not to file charges.

Lee’s deputy chief of staff, said the mayor’s efforts to improve policing in the face of criticism cannot succeed without gaining community trust.

Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Kamala Harris, said Wednesday that Harris “has advocated to the governor, the speaker of the Assembly, and the Senate president pro tem for the necessary resources to create new teams within the attorney general’s office to conduct criminal investigations of officer-involved shootings, including working with San Francisco.”