San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a CNN town hall on race on Sunday that she is “pushing” to make sure police are not responding to calls that don’t involve violence.
“One of the things that I am pushing for now is to make sure that police are not responding to those calls that don’t involve violence. Why is it that if someone’s painting in front of their home or doing some sort of chalk drawing that all of a sudden, the police need to be involved? And in many cases when it’s an African American, things can escalate,” Breed said.
Breed discussed challenges African Americans have faced “disproportionately” in the US.
“We see even in liberal San Francisco, in many cases we see African Americans who oftentimes are somehow the ones who are pulled over mostly by police officers here,” she said.
“We have to hold our departments accountable,” she added. “We have to make sure that people who are racist that people have who have problems when working with black people in some capacity or may have never been around a black person in their entire life, they should not be working in communities where they may engage with African Americans, which could lead to some of the situations that we’re seeing all over our country.”
The Mayor also discussed reducing funding in the Police Department.