SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 12.3.2025
The local media has bowed down and stopped critical reporting of police abuse in San Francisco.
Instead the print and broadcast media have become enthusiastic cheerleaders and hopped on Mayor Lurie’s law and order bandwagon.
Meet the new Chief Derrick Lew. Same as the outgoing (temporary) Chief Paul Yep.
It should be obvious to anyone paying attention to San Francisco politics that Mayor Daniel Lurie had two major goals in the selection of a new Chief of Police
- Keep the focus on fighting pervasive drug crime by selecting a Chief at the forefront of the battle;
- Maintain a solid relationship with the powerful and increasingly outspoken Chinese community.
One critical voice in all the cheerleading has been former Supervisor Rev. Amos Brown. In late November The San Francisco Chronicle published a long piece about Derrick Lew’s involvement in an incident during which Lew was shot at and ended in the shooting death of former Mayor London Breed’s cousin by SFPD.
Rev. Brown wrote a letter to the editor decrying the sensationalism of the piece. And maintaining it exacerbated tensions between the Black and Chinese communities.
Excerpted from Mission Local 12.3.2025
Deputy Chief Derrick Lew has today been named chief of the San Francisco Police Department by Mayor Daniel Lurie, succeeding interim chief Paul Yep and former longtime chief Bill Scott.
Lew is a 22-year veteran of the department. He joined the SFPD in 2003 and served at Taraval Station covering the Westside. In 2006 he was nearly killed by a cousin of Mayor London Breed in Silver Terrace; Lew’s partner then shot and killed Charles Breed, who had earlier allegedly shot and killed two people.
Lew received a medal of valor for the incident.
He is a 52-year-old city native and, like fire chief Dean Crispen, is a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep — meaning both the police and fire chief are St. Ignatius grads.
Lew has had a rocket-like trajectory after being promoted to commander in July 2024. Police sources said he was the right leader to reflect the department’s current priorities, which have shifted away from street patrols and toward larger, more coordinated investigations: “He is more about quality rather than quantity.”
Top photo: The new Chief carves up the Thanksgiving turkey – photo SF Examiner
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