As San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a $15.9 billion budget Thursday, two attorneys tasked with investigating and reporting police misconduct still don’t know whether they will keep their jobs.
Cutting these positions raises concerns that the city is initiating a material reduction in police oversight while simultaneously increasing the San Francisco Police Department’s budget.
The two attorneys, one with the Police Department and the other with the Department of Police Accountability, were informed weeks ago that they were facing termination over budget cuts.
Even though the Board of Supervisors restored the funding during budget deliberations in June, Matt Finnegan, an attorney for Teamsters Local 856, said the union has been met with a confusing lack of clarity from city officials over the fate of the positions.
Finnegan said he reviewed a document posted on a city website that appeared to restore funding for both attorney positions after early budget deliberations. But after he raised it with city staff, the document was removed.
“That’s very — I guess, ‘suspicious’ would be the word I would use,” he said. “The whole confusion the union has is, who proposed laying off these particular positions? You don’t get a straight answer.”
Supervisors on the Budget and Appropriations Committee on June 26 unanimously approved an amended city budget for 2025-2027 that included funding to restore all proposed layoffs. But that doesn’t guarantee terminations will be reversed — and sources said the affected attorneys have not heard otherwise.
“It is the Board’s intent for all layoff positions to be restored,” Supervisor Connie Chan posted on Instagram on June 26. “While we can appropriate the funding, personnel decisions and spending authority lay with the Mayor.”
The Police Department is slated to receive a $22 million boost to its budget, yet a department proposal would dismiss an attorney on staff who is dedicated to reviewing cases of police misconduct and disclosing findings to prosecutors. The Department of Police Accountability, which investigates police misconduct, is also facing the elimination of an attorney along with an investigator and a clerk.
Finnegan described the job cuts as potentially improper, risky for the city’s criminal justice system and “cagey.”
He pointed to interim Police Chief Paul Yep’s repeated refusal to answer Commissioner Cindy Elias’ questions about potential civilian layoffs at a July 16 Police Commission meeting.
“I do not think it’s appropriate to talk about budget cuts before the budget’s been finalized,” Yep told Elias.
In an emailed response to a request for details about the potential layoffs, the Police Department wrote, “There are no responsive records for your request.”
Yoel Haile, director of the criminal law and immigration project at the ACLU of Northern California, said he believed the cuts served a political agenda that deprioritized oversight — a charge that Finnegan did not dispute.
“Absolutely, could be. It could be,” Finnegan said. “And that’s all speculation, right?”
If the layoffs were to proceed, Finnegan added, the union might consider filing a formal unfair labor practice charge with the California Public Employment Relations Board. The complaint would be based on the perception that particular individuals were targeted for dismissal. That’s because layoffs of unionized employees are typically conducted by seniority, so that displaced workers with the longest tenure could be reassigned to other roles. But according to the employment structure for city and county attorneys, if a position is eliminated, the employee is terminated — not offered another job — regardless of seniority over colleagues.
“We’ve actually been fighting with the city for almost two years now about this,” Finnegan said. “I don’t know that these aren’t targeted at these people. We don’t have any mechanism to keep that from happening.”
That could open the Police Department or city to a civil suit over questionable motives, he said.
“In the past, somebody was targeted for layoff or elimination from the Police Department and later had a civil suit settlement about this being more of a politically motivated or some kind of improper termination,” he said.
One such case involved Mohammad Habib, a probationary police officer who received a $455,000 settlement in 2023 after claiming he was harassed for his race and religion, and wrongfully fired after speaking up.
Finnegan said the terminations could also jeopardize criminal cases because police misconduct disclosures are crucial for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to meet its constitutional obligations.
Under the constitutionally mandated Brady Rule, prosecutors must provide defendants with any evidence that may help them, such as information showing that an officer involved with their case had a history of misconduct or dishonesty. If required evidence isn’t disclosed in a timely fashion, the district attorney’s office could be exposed to an array of legal consequences — from dismissal of charges and overturned convictions to judicial sanctions and wrongful conviction lawsuits.
“These aren’t just routine budget decisions,” Finnegan said. “These are positions with critical legal responsibilities.”
In an emailed response to the Public Press, the district attorney’s office wrote that it received its Brady information from both the Police Department and Department of Police Accountability, and it was committed to meeting disclosure obligations.
“If the proposed cuts are implemented, SFPD would need to figure out how to get the work done; it is not optional and must be done,” the DA’s office wrote.
Asked for comment, Lurie’s office directed the Public Press to a statement the mayor issued June 26 after supervisors voted to advance an amended budget.
“This budget takes major strides to lay the foundation for our long-term growth — bringing spending closer in line with revenues so we don’t spend money we don’t have, while focusing our resources on providing safe and clean streets, addressing the fentanyl crisis, and advancing our economic recovery,” Lurie stated. “Passing this budget also required painful decisions that were, unfortunately, necessary to set up our entire city for success.”
