Patrol Special Officer Sues City, Claiming Mistreatment Because She Is Lesbian

By Peter Jamison Wed., Dec. 30 2009 at 8:00 AM

Categories: Breaking News, Crime, Law & Order, Local News

One of the public faces of San Francisco's quasi-public community policing agency, the Patrol Special Police, is suing the city under state anti-discrimination laws, asserting she was subject to unfair treatment because she is a woman and a lesbian.

The gloves come off

In a complaint filed this month in San Francisco Superior Court, Patrol Special Officer Jane Warner claims that she has been subject to poor treatment by the San Francisco Police Department and more harshly disciplined than her male counterparts by the city's Police Commission, which exercises authority over the specials. Warner is president of the Patrol Special Police Officer Association.

"Originally, I thought that it was just ongoing issues with the San Francisco Patrol Special Police and the city," Warner tells SF Weekly. "And then I started noticing disparities in the way I was treated and the way my counterparts in the Patrol Special Police were treated." Among the examples of disparate treatment cited in Warner's lawsuit are the SFPD refusing to allow her to check vehicle plates of suspects with police dispatchers and charging her unfairly to program a radio at the department's in-house repair shop.

Warner, who says she is the only woman and only lesbian among the patrol specials, also argues that she was unfairly singled out for her association with Willie Adams, who police say was inappropriately permitted to work as a patrol special officer. Police alleged that they uncovered methamphetamine and Marijuana during a raid of Adams' home in 2007.

Warner's lawsuit is an interesting new twist in the feud between the SFPD and the patrol specials, who have battled each other for years over the extent of the specials' policing rights. The specials were formed to help merchants keep the streets orderly during the chaotic days of the Gold Rush and are recognized in the City Charter, but have come into conflict with the SFPD in recent years, in part because of the department's efforts to expand its 10-B overtime program, which competes with the specials for neighborhood security details.

You can read the full complaint in Warner's lawsuit here.

Photo | moyerphotos

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Jane Warner, Patrol Specials, SFPD

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It appears that some elements of the SFPD are trying to put the Patrol Specials out of business by any means necessary, because they don't want the competition. Their numbers have been decimated as a result. We the residents of San Francisco should speak out to the Police Commission and demand they reverse the changes they adopted in 1994 and restore the right of the Patrol Special Police Officers to issue citations and make their own arrests, and take their licensing out of the SFPD's hands as a conflict of interest. Be sure and read the SF Weekly's excellent cover story of June 2008 to get the background on this issue: http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-06-04/news/to-serve-collect/
It is ridiculous that city officials, the SFPD, POA, and the Police Commission are repeatedly throwing the SFPSP under the bus when they are a well-received neighborhood policing force that has protected this city alongside SFPD officers for more than a century, especially during these difficult economic times. SFPSP officers are an economical solution to the SFPD�s 10B and foot patrol programs that won�t leave the city paying millions of pension dollars for decades down the road. It is a shame that Patrol Special Police Officer Jane Warner, who continues to passionately serve the Castro, Noe Valley, and Mission neighborhoods as well as the president of the SFPSP Association in spite of tremendous obstacles � professional and personal � that have been placed before her for many years, is forced once again to battle the city to hold them accountable. San Francisco can do better and must do better by stopping this ridiculous self-serving politicing as Ann Grogan pointed out and tap into this more than a century and a half local public-private policing organization that is a historic institution in this city.
As a woman working many years in the legal and business world, I can attest to the fact that differentiating treatment does exist, and often amounts to discrimination, especially in male-dominated professions. I'm sorry to see that Officer Warner has been so singled out. Sadly, a declining economy has sent the public police into the marketplace aggressively and inappropriately seeking private policing assignments (with some abuse of overtime noted recently by our Police Chief) under the so-called 10b off-duty public police program. Public police already command huge civil service salaries and wrack up future taxpayer obligations for hundreds of thousands of dollars of pensions (witness police dept. pension spiking reported by the summer Grand Jury). We don't need them wracking up huge hourly rates off-duty, rates that quadruple and more what the Patrol Specials charge, Patrol Special officers who aren't working on overtime off-duty, tired, and with possibly limited efficiency! Most neighborhoods deserve and need policing that is alert and much more sensitively and effectively handled early on for the community by Patrol Specials, whose organizational culture and long experience makes them responsive in early-intervention, cost-effecting neighborhood policing. Like the person who commented above, in 30 yrs of living in Glen park, until the new Police Capt arrived last April and reorganized to put cell phones on all officers and give us a name to call, I never knew one local public police officer! In all 30 years until two months ago, not one public police officer ever initiated a greeting to me or smiled, yet every time I saw them in our Village, I thanked them for their presence. Today our Patrol Special Officer, like Officer Warner, is exceedingly welcomed, friendly, observant, rapid to respond, and protective of our welfare. I rarely see an SFPD foot patrol officer around -- except for him. In any case, San Franciscans need an immediate end to this senseless 'competition' and self-interested politics, and much more collaboration of public with private police and citizen safety programs, together working in service to our overall safety needs!
Holy smokes Batman! Nice connecting of the dots there on the 10B program. The Specials are also competition for the CBD security work ('Community Business Districts). As Guido said to Sonny in the Godmutha (or something like that): "It's not personal. It's just business.". h.
Jane has been a fixture in the Castro for decades. She has handled more situations and just plain "shown up" in ways that SFPD never would (they tend to race from scene to scene in multiple car swarms but do little in terms of walking a beat). I don't know enough about the situation she is in right now to comment aside from saying this: Jane Warner is the only officer of any classification in this city who we know by name/face and visa versa. After 23 years, that says something both about Jane and about SFPD.

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