Feb. 01--REPORTING FROM SAN FRANCISCO -- Responding to calls for help from San Francisco's mayor and Board of Supervisors, the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a review of the city's Police Department, which has been under fire for the shooting of a young black man in December.
The two-year review will be conducted by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, officials said Monday.
"The findings will allow the Police Department to implement best practices in law enforcement and empower the community to hold the department to those standards," Ronald Davis, director of the office, said in a statement.
A wave of protests has roiled the city since a cellphone video of the Dec. 2 fatal shooting of 26-year-old Mario Woods went public.
The images show several officers confronting Woods, who had been reported as a suspect in an earlier assault and was allegedly armed with a knife, as he stood against a wall. As he appeared to walk away, officers opened fire.
John Burris, the lawyer for Woods' family, has said he asked the Justice Department to investigate the five officers who shot Woods. He said they acted like a "firing squad."
"This is a golden opportunity for everyone to take a look at the San Francisco Police Department," Burris said at a news conference last month.
In the latest protest Saturday, hundreds of people marched in the streets demanding Police Chief Greg Suhr's dismissal.
Mayor Ed Lee, whose second-term inauguration last month was disrupted by chants of "Fire Chief Suhr," sought the review in a Jan. 21 letter to Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch offering to "throw our doors open, inviting transparency and accountability."
In the wake of the Woods shooting, Lee said, he had proposed comprehensive police reforms but still sought "further guidance and counsel on what we can do as a city to prevent these incidents whenever possible in the future."
On Jan. 26, the 11-member Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution requesting a federal investigation.
Saying video of the shooting had "shocked the community," the board added, "Police Department policies and practices should not just meet constitutional standards but exceed them."
Even before the formal requests for a federal review, reaction to the shooting had stirred virulent objections from the police officers' union.
In January its president, Marty Halloran, posted a statement on the union's website accusing public officials of "blindly following the path of political expedience."
He said critics should have withheld their comments until local reviews are completed. The shooting is being investigated by the San Francisco district attorney's office, the department's Office of Citizens Complaints and the department's Internal Affairs Division.
"To judge an incident based on eight seconds of video and publicly denounce the officers ... is blatantly unfair and grossly irresponsible," the statement said.
Halloran did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Unrest over the Woods shooting was aggravated later in December when a judge ruled that officers who exchanged racist and homophobic text messages would be allowed to keep their jobs because the Police Department had waited too long to address the misconduct.
The 2012 texts were disclosed in a 2014 court filing that prosecutors made in a police corruption case.
That decision raised objections, and officials said they will appeal.
"The fact that San Francisco is forced to retain police officers that demonstrated explicit racism will have ramifications for the reputation of the department, the fair administration of justice, and the trust of the community SFPD serves," Dist. Atty. George Gascon said after the ruling.
A Department of Justice review of the Los Angeles Police Department prompted by the Rampart scandals in the 1990s led to a 2001 consent decree on the troubled department.
The decree spelled out dozens of major reforms the police agency had to implement and frequent audits as well as monitoring from the federal court.
The decree was lifted in 2009.
King reported from San Francisco, Smith from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Soumya Karlamangla, in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.
Twitter: @peterhking, @LATdoug
