San Francisco Task Force Recommends Axing Sheriff Oversight Board

Updated 10:13 a.m. Thursday

San Francisco could be saying goodbye to civilian oversight of the city’s Sheriff’s Department, as an efficiency task force considers wiping out a voter-approved watchdog.

Voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition D in 2020, creating the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board to field complaints and recommend policy changes for the Sheriff’s Department.

Proposition D followed years of reports that San Francisco County jails were understaffed, overcrowded and in poor conditions.

The Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board also appoints an inspector general, tasked with overseeing investigations into misconduct within the sheriff’s office.

That board now faces possible permanent elimination by the city’s Commission Streamlining Task Force, a group approved after voters approved Proposition E in November 2024, to make recommendations on where the city should consolidate or dismantle government agencies.

The task force last week released a memo listing recommendations for “borderline inactive bodies” that have either met fewer than four times in the last calendar year or have a vacancy rate greater than 25%.

The Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board was on that list, with its vacancy rate exceeding 25%.

The recommendations land in the midst of the city’s historic, nearly $800 million deficit. Mayor Daniel Lurie’s budget of $15.9 million, recently approved by the board of supervisors after months of contentious negotiations, will see cuts of around 1,400 city jobs and $100 million in grants.

One vacancy was created last year when inaugural member Jayson Wechter resigned, citing frustrations with the board’s inefficient hiring process. Wechter said it took a year to find an inspector general, and he accused the board of hostility and failure to adhere to ethical conduct recommendations.

Ahead of the Wednesday meeting where the commission recommended the board’s elimination, San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton, who sponsored Proposition D, told KQED that “we can’t just override the voters.”

He referred to the City Charter, which maintains that any initiatives or amendments “shall not be subject to veto, or to amendment or repeal except by the voters, unless such initiative or declaration of policy shall otherwise provide.”

“This is something that the voters voted on and voters supported,” Walton said. “So you can’t just eliminate a charter commission without the voter approval.”

Lurie’s task force also recommended that if the board is eliminated, the Department of Police Accountability, a separate entity, could absorb its responsibilities. Walton called that a “poor recommendation.”

“The Department of Police Accountability doesn’t even have the capacity right now to adequately provide oversight for the police department,” he said. “Let alone adding the additional services of the Sheriff’s Oversight Board.”

At the Wednesday meeting, Wechter appeared alongside other citizens to push back against the task force’s elimination.

“If the SDOB is eliminated, we will be going against national trends,” Wechter said. “We will be moving backwards and setting a very bad example.”

Yoel Haile, the ACLU of Northern California’s director of the criminal law and immigration project, said that he has received multiple reports in recent years of assault and negligence by jail staff. He said the board’s elimination would only exacerbate incarcerated populations’ vulnerability.

Haile called the potential elimination “a naked power grab and consolidation of power at the mayor’s hands, masquerading as streamlining our efficiency.”

The commission tabled the issue of recommending the Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board for later discussion. Streamlining task force chair Ed Harrington reminded concerned citizens that the group can not roundly “make it go away.”

“It will go back to the voters,” Harrington said. “It’s only a recommendation.”

Aug. 21: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed the establishment of the San Francisco Commission Streamlining Task Force to Mayor Daniel Lurie. It was created by voters with the passage of Proposition E in 2024.