CJCJ in the news: How Mario Woods Stands in for Vanishing Black San Francisco

How Mario Woods Stands in for Vanishing Black San Francisco

The National Journal highlights a CJCJ report on San Francisco’s disproportionate arrest rates of African-American women. 

“The killing of Mario Woods led the may­or, Ed Lee, to ex­claim that San Fran­cisco is ​‘not this kind of city,’ mean­ing that the kinds of ter­rible acts of leth­al force against non­threat­en­ing black cit­izens that have scarred cit­ies across the na­tion in re­cent years just don’t hap­pen in my hometown.

For dec­ades in San Fran­cisco the evid­ence has been mount­ing that neg­ates Lee’s suggestion. 

• Based on a re­view of 2013 crim­in­al-justice data, a study by W. Hay­wood Burns In­sti­tute, a non­par­tis­an ju­ven­ile justice or­gan­iz­a­tion, found that blacks in San Fran­cisco were 7.1 times as likely as whites to be ar­res­ted, and that blacks ac­coun­ted for 40 per­cent of ar­restees in the city.

• Between 2005 and 2015, 24 San Fran­cisco res­id­ents were shot by SFPD po­lice of­ficers; 33 per­cent of those killed by of­ficers were Afric­an-Amer­ic­an, though blacks com­prise less than 6 per­cent of the city’s total pop­u­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to Open Justice Portal, an on­line crim­in­al justice site pub­lished in 2015 by Cali­for­nia At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Kamala Harris.

• The Cen­ter on Ju­ven­ile and Crim­in­al Justice mean­while found in a 2015 re­port that black wo­men in San Fran­cisco are 13.4 times as likely to be ar­res­ted as white wo­men. While blacks are less than 6 per­cent of the city and county pop­u­la­tion, blacks com­pose 56 per­cent of the in­mates at the city and county’s jails system.”

Read the full report ​“San Francisco’s Disproportionate Arrest of African American Women Persists” here »