San Francisco police officers, who were required in the aftermath of a disputed shooting in the Bayview neighborhood to document every time they point their guns, reported doing so 3,130 times in the first 15 months, or about seven times a day, records show.

In nearly half of those cases, the person at whom the officer pointed a gun was African American, though black people make up less than 6 percent of the city’s population.

The gun-pointings made up nearly 70 percent of all incidents of force between January 2016 and the end of March, dwarfing such actions as restraining or punching a suspect or using a baton. They are stirring debate in a city where the police force is in the midst of reforms and under pressure to explain racial disparities in enforcement.

Police officials say officers are following California law and department policy, which states they may point a firearm when they “believe it may be necessary for the safety of others or for (their) own safety.” Police say the racial breakdown for uses of force has been consistent with arrest rates in the city.

Critics and some law enforcement experts, though, are raising alarm at the initial numbers — even as they praise the new form of transparency, which has set San Francisco apart from most police agencies around the country.

“The statistics show that police go for their guns, and that’s a big problem, and it’s a problem that results in the loss of life,” said San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Chesa Boudin. “This is not just one officer going rogue. These statistics show that their first instinct is to grab their gun, when that should be the last resort.”

Back to Gallery SF police too quick to go for their guns, critics say 4 1 of 4 Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2 of 4 Photo: Jeff Chiu, Associated Press 3 of 4 Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle 4 of 4 Photo: Framegrab, Courtesy San Francisco Police Department







If the statistics are revealing, they are difficult to assess, as there are no historic data to compare them to. While many police departments consider the pointing of a firearm to be a reportable use of force, few release the figures publicly.

Chuck Canterbury, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, a national organization, said officers aren’t drawing their weapons lightly, but tactically.

“We are trained from day one that if you clear your holster, it is perhaps the most serious thing you do,” he said. “From an officer’s perspective, being ready and being prepared is much better than being administered CPR.”

Scrutiny of gun-pointing by officers is beginning to generate debate in many cities, including New Orleans and Washington. In some places, including San Francisco, police unions have objected to the requirement that it be documented as a use of force.

The issue came to the fore in Oakland in 2011, when a court-appointed monitor said police were often too quick to draw their guns, especially when confronting black suspects. “Officers frequently presumed — often, with no basis — that whomever they were contacting was armed,” the monitor said.

In San Francisco, officers began documenting the pointing of guns soon after the December 2015 death of Mario Woods, a stabbing suspect who was shot by several officers as he shuffled along a Bayview sidewalk. Woods had a knife, police say, but video footage suggested that he wasn’t directly threatening the officers when they fired.

Police officials said the reporting requirement was prompted by court decisions, not the Woods shooting, which remains under investigation.

Last year, records show, city officers used force 3,738 times in about 1,400 total incidents. A gun was pointed at a person 2,599 times. In the first quarter of this year, though, gun-pointing decreased to 531 cases — a 19 percent drop compared with the same period in 2016.

Police Chief Bill Scott, who took command in January, said the department’s “efforts to train our officers on tactics such as de-escalation” are paying off. Others noted that the decrease came after officers started wearing body cameras — and after they began documenting their pointing of firearms.

The department’s figures show that 45 percent of the gun-pointing incidents from January through March involved black subjects and 24 percent involved Latinos. The figures were similar in 2016. According to the U.S. census, African Americans made up 5.7 percent of the city’s population in 2015, while Latino residents made up 15.3 percent.

Records show that San Francisco officers pointed guns after responding to a variety of calls, including reports of violent crimes and thefts, reports of people with guns or knives, and reports of people acting suspiciously. Other calls that frequently prompted the action included the serving of warrants and the recovery of stolen vehicles.

“My instinct is that it sounds like a lot,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and a former New York police officer, when shown San Francisco’s numbers. “You shouldn’t be pointing a gun unless there’s a reasonable chance you’re going to use it.”

Tony Ribera, a former San Francisco police chief who teaches law enforcement leadership at the University of San Francisco, said he recalls pointing a gun four or five times over his 28-year police career.

“The reality is, when you pull out your gun, the immediate alternative is to use that deadly force,” he said. “It is a very, very serious thing.”

Sgt. Steven Pomatto, who teaches use-of-force policy at the city’s police academy, advised caution when viewing the statistics. He said there are “a thousand different scenarios you can put an officer in where they will feel like their lives are in jeopardy.”

“It could be as simple as I come upon a (suspect in a crime) who is standing on a sidewalk who has their hands behind their back,” he said. “At the highest level of threat, he could have a firearm in his hand. At the lowest level, he could have nothing. You don’t react with the lowest level, you react with the highest level. It would not be uncommon for me to unholster my firearm, point it at the subject and tell him to show me his hands.”

One factor contributing to San Francisco’s numbers, Pomatto said, is that under state standards, officers are trained to treat felony stops of vehicles with utmost caution. There are countless places in a vehicle where a firearm could be hidden, and it’s not uncommon for several officers to approach with guns at the ready if a person in a car — or the car itself — is linked to a felony.

During a felony stop of a vehicle, “you might get five, maybe six officers that are pointing a firearm at a subject,” Pomatto said. “That is six uses of force, even though it’s only one incident. During the course of a day in San Francisco, five, maybe six felony stops for occupied stolen vehicles could result in 30 uses of force.”

Attorneys in the public defender’s office, though, say such an approach can heighten the risk of a shooting and traumatize members of the public.

Boudin, the deputy public defender, described a 2015 case in the San Mateo County community of Broadmoor, where police pulled over his client and his pregnant girlfriend and trained guns on them — not because the man had a warrant out for his arrest, Boudin said, but because the car’s license plate had been linked to an illegal “sideshow” car rally.

The client, who was cleared in the case and asked not to be identified, told The Chronicle that to this day, the mother of his child shakes with anxiety when they pass a police car.

Pomatto said some analysis of the gun-pointing cases has already begun, along with retraining — with felony stops a particular point of emphasis. Instead of having all officers approaching a car with firearms drawn, Pomatto said, the department is looking to set up responses in which two officers have guns out and another carries a less-lethal weapon that shoots beanbags, all while a sergeant on scene provides tactical commands.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said it is probably too early to draw conclusions about the numbers in San Francisco, but that all departments should be studying the factors behind why officers point guns in some situations and not others.

“Race is one factor,” he said, “but age, location in the city, the kind of stops, the information that the officer is perceiving — what is it about the officer perceiving that is making them fearful and, consequentially, aiming their gun?”

Police policy and training, he said, are “undergoing a revolution in this country, and what was accepted even six months ago is being questioned today.”

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