Internal SFPD investigation clarifies alleged offensive language

A San Francisco police sergeant faces possible termination for comments he made. A San Francisco police sergeant faces possible termination for comments he made. Photo: File Photo Photo: File Photo Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Internal SFPD investigation clarifies alleged offensive language 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

A San Francisco police sergeant who faces discipline and possible termination after two Bayview Station colleagues reported he had used offensive language allegedly said he had to “chase Negro boys around,” according to a source familiar with the internal affairs investigation.

In a separate incident, after a female officer asked the sergeant why he wasn’t carrying his gun, he purportedly made a sexual reference, saying, “I got a big gun for you,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the internal investigation are not public.

Police Chief Greg Suhr confirmed that he suspended the officer last month and that the officer had been removed from street duty when the investigation began in February. Suhr said he could not identify the officer, but sources identified him as Sgt. Lawrence Kempinski, a 17-year department veteran. Efforts to reach him have been unsuccessful.

In a written statement, department officials said that the officer had used inappropriate language with “racial and sexual undertones” in the “presence of two other employees” and that his case had been forwarded to the city Police Commission “with a recommendation for discipline up to and including termination.”

Setting the record straight

Suhr said a media report that circulated this week asserting that the officer had made a violent statement that included the racial epithet “n—” was wrong. The report prompted civil rights attorney John Burris to hold a news conference Wednesday calling for state Attorney General Kamala Harris to conduct an investigation of the San Francisco force.

“We have no allegation from either of the eyewitness officers that reported this allegation that he said that sentence or that he said the ‘n-word,’” Suhr said.

A statement released by the department Wednesday said, “We want to be perfectly clear that the phrase reported by the journalist was never alleged. ... What the member did say was sufficient for Police Chief Greg Suhr to suspend the member and forward the matter to the Police Commission with a recommendation for discipline up to and including termination. Chief Suhr has been clear that the SFPD will not tolerate any form of biased behavior or speech by its members.”

Group issues demand

Officers for Justice, an organization representing African American and other nonwhite city officers, sent a letter to the Police Commission demanding Kempinski’s firing if the allegations were found to be true.

“It is alarming that these incidents continue to occur,” wrote Montgomery Singleton, the vice president of Officers for Justice.

“It is apparent that incidents of bigotry are still endemic within the Police Department.”

The suspension was revealed last week, just before a blue-ribbon panel of judges assembled by District Attorney George Gascón released preliminary findings that the Police Department lacks accountability and engages in “stop and frisk” tactics on the street that have drawn accusations of racial profiling around the country.

Authorities are also reviewing more than 200 criminal cases that may be tainted because they were investigated by officers implicated in exchanging text messages since 2014 that included racial slurs and stereotypes about black, Latino, Indian, transgender and gay people.

An earlier group of officers who exchanged racist and homophobic texts in 2012 are still employed by the department after winning a court ruling in December permitting them to keep their jobs and avoid discipline because police officials waited too long to act on misconduct allegations.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s community policing division is in the midst of a collaborative review of the San Francisco force that was begun after the December killing by officers of Mario Woods, a stabbing suspect, in the Bayview neighborhood.

News conference

At Wednesday’s news conference, Burris said Suhr and the Police Department had not done enough to “weed out this mind-set and culture” exposed by officers’ racist statements.

“The chief must go because all of the negative statements, all of the racist epithets and all the various killings have occurred on his watch,” Burris said. “It defies logic and common sense for us to accept the notion that he is the one that should lead the charge on the reform efforts.”

City Public Defender Jeff Adachi has also asked Harris to open an independent investigation. Harris released a statement Wednesday noting that the U.S. Justice Department is already engaged in San Francisco.

“If investigators face resistance and the implementation of reforms falls short,” Harris said, “I intend to launch a civil pattern and practice investigation” that could force changes in San Francisco.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo