We run on people power.
Abolish policing in healthcare.
Listen to DPH Must Divest members Norman Archer and Ana Delgado talk about the work of our coalition and the importance of abolition in healthcare.
Story by Norman Archer for Beyond Do No Harm's Storytelling Media Project / Transcript of Video / Illustrated by Hoai An Pham, if you are a healthcare worker who has worked to interrupt criminalization submit your story using the following form
Story by Ana Delgado for Beyond Do No Harm's Storytelling Media Project / Image Descriptions / Illustrated by rommy torrico, if you are a healthcare worker who has worked to interrupt criminalization submit your story using the following form
FOLLOWING CALLS FROM ADVOCATES, SF DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO ANNOUNCE REDUCTION OF SHERIFFS AND INVESTMENT IN COMMUNITY SAFETY ALTERNATIVES!
PRESS RELEASE, May 3, 2021
FOLLOWING CALLS FROM ADVOCATES, SF DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO ANNOUNCE REDUCTION OF SHERIFFS AND INVESTMENT IN COMMUNITY SAFETY ALTERNATIVES:
San Francisco, CA - After a year spent re-evaluating security staffing, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) Director of Security Basil Price will be submitting a new Healthcare Security Staffing Proposal that calls for a reduction in sheriff’s presence at healthcare facilities and an investment in community safety alternatives. The proposed changes come in response to evidence that sheriff’s deputies and cadets disproportionately engage in excessive use of force against Black patients seeking care at DPH facilities, and to a year of actions and conversations organized by DPH Must Divest, a coalition of community members and healthcare workers calling for replacement of sheriffs with community-based alternatives. The new proposal will be presented at the San Francisco Health Commission meeting on Tuesday May 4, 2021 at 4PM PST, and members from the DPH Must Divest coalition will be joining to add public comment.
The Healthcare Security Staffing Proposal will include significant changes to the existing security structure and create the opportunity for alternatives to policing in healthcare facilities:
A work order reduction of 22.3 full-time equivalent (FTE) Deputy Sheriff Positions across SFHN sites
An increase in 44.1 FTE in other positions including the Behavioral Emergency Response Team (Licensed Psych Techs and Registered Nurses), Care Experience Navigators and Community Healthcare Security Workers
Contracting a community-based organization to provide safety services at SFDPH clinics
Overall, DPH Must Divest applauds this significant investment by SFDPH in patient and healthcare worker safety. Norman Archer, a UCSF medical student and member of the coalition, says, “We are excited to see that the administration has taken up many of the alternatives that DPH Must Divest has proposed - this is an opportunity for the city to move from a security model rooted in policing to a safety model grounded in care.”
In solidarity with labor partners, DPH Must Divest remains critical of staffing details around the Contracted Safety Services for SFDPH clinics, believing that these positions can and should be public union jobs. As Martha Baer, a nurse at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) and member of SEIU 1021, reflects, “Contracted employees cannot be held accountable to the same standards as a DPH employee. Union representation ensures that community safety teams are well-compensated and have workplace protections. Our patients need continuity. Our safety teams will build relationships with them. The high turnover rate of non-union jobs doesn’t allow that.”
Organizers at DPH Must Divest remain committed to their ultimate goal of replacing sheriff’s deputies and cadets across SFDPH sites with non-law enforcement alternatives. Dr. Erinma Ukoha, an OB/GYN physician at SFGH, shares, “While we are critical of the expansion of cadets, we are excited to see the investment in community safety teams with the hopes that these systems will outgrow and replace the Sheriffs next year. SFDPH has the opportunity to become a leader in ending the public health crisis of law enforcement violence against our Black and Brown patients and community members. Another way is possible.”
What: DPH Must Divest Responds to Announcement of SFDPH Healthcare Security Staffing Proposal
When: Tuesday May 4, 2021 4-7pm
Where to view:
https://sfgovtv.org/DPHLiveStream https://sfdph.webex.com/sfdph/onstage/g.php?MTID=e914586062f3c4d3a6dc0927a0d57080e
About us
DPH Must Divest is a coalition that seeks to remove San Francisco Sheriff’s Department from the city’s Department of Public Health (DPH) clinics and San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). We aim to reinvest the divested funds in our community and systems committed to trauma informed care, de-escalation, and community accountability.
The sheriffs’ presence at DPH clinics and SFGH manipulates the concept of safety to police our communities and our patient’s bodies. This system perpetuates systemic racism without accountability. We must prioritize the well-being of our Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) patients and providers.
DPH Must Divest.
Our demands
MOU
Vow to not renew the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Sheriff’s Department and City of San Francisco.
Defund & reinvest
Immediately defund the Sheriff’s budget. Take concrete steps to remove their presence. Invest in alternatives formulated from community and staff feedback.
Oversight
Establish an oversight committee which includes BIPOC members of hospital and Community Leadership Board.
A note to our community
We appreciate the concerns around staff safety that have been raised in response to the DPH Must Divest campaign. We agree that ensuring safety and security for all patients, staff, and visitors at DPH sites is essential. These concerns bring up an important opportunity for dialogue about the best way to ensure all of our safety and the most appropriate resources to do so.
We are also working with specific departments to address the unique needs that arise in different patient care areas across the hospital and health system. Finally, we would like to offer our original letter again, and ask that you read it with the understanding that the sole intention of our campaign is to create a DPH that is truly safe for all.
Support Asmara
Asmara’s strike
Asmara Gebre, San Francisco General Hospital faculty midwife, has made the courageous decision to strike until the threat of policing Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) at the hospital has been adequately addressed. She and other BIPOC providers and patients have experienced racial harm at SFGH due to onsite presence of the San Francisco Sheriff Department. Asmara is the only Black identifying midwife providing continuity prenatal care to Black families. Every shift she is absent is causing additional harm.
Stories from our hospital
TW: Racism, violence
“I have seen first-hand how the presence of the deputy sheriffs can create a hostile and unsafe environment for our patients, including an incident in which a sheriff and team of armed offices entered the clinic without staff permission, verbally abused, and pointed a taser at a patient peacefully interacting with their care team.
As a nurse, I am a first and foremost an advocate for the safety and wellbeing of the patients I care for. Therefore, I feel it is an extension of my job to advocate for divestment from a police force as our first line of security and call for investment in trauma-informed security personnel who are specifically trained to protect staff AND uphold a safe space for patients.”
— UCSF Nurse
“One morning while working as the family medicine intern on the pediatric inpatient service, I arrived onto the ward to discover that the overnight staff called the sheriff on a 5-year-old black boy for misbehaving. The staff complained that the child was refusing to listen to instructions and that he was acting out. They felt that an “authority figure” such as a sheriff could calm the boy. The details of the interaction between the sheriff and boy are unknown to me, but I recall that the boy was alone that night, no mother in sight, she was working the graveyard shift.
Acts of anti-black racism such as this occur all too often at our hospital, further perpetuated by the presence of sheriffs on campus. Their presence impacts the mental and physical health of our most vulnerable patients, and the path to pursuing alternative forms of community “policing” for all patients. We cannot continue traumatizing our patients and perpetuating these systems of oppression. I stand with my colleagues in our call to end the San Francisco General Hospital’s relationship to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. It has never been clearer than in this moment that the sheriff and police have no place in our communities, and especially not in the pediatric ward.”
— UCSF Provider
“I have unfortunately seen patients at the hospital I am employed for being targeted, followed, and even stopped for identification, when others are not. These are people whose conditions are so dire during a pandemic they still need to come to a hospital for care. These are people who are at their most vulnerable seeking medical care, and still being harassed by police officers who target based on race, substance abuse and/or homeless status. This is a form of racial oppression when a patient cannot have equal basic needs meet, and their health can be dependent on it. Healthcare should not be made anymore intimating then it is especially during a world-wide crisis. This fear is due to [SFSD] and other police departments officers bias’s and racial targeting. I don’t feel personally safe when officers are at a hospital and have been triggered by their presence in a negative way. I am a healthcare employee, so it pains me to think how patients feel.”
— Community Member
“SFSD came to ‘deescalate’ a Black mother who was having paranoid delusions and had yelled at a staff member, who then called the sheriff. When SFSD arrived, she became understandably more upset and they confronted her about her behavior, yelling at her to ‘calm down’. They didn't deescalate. Even though she was having a mental health crisis, no one tried to help her. They only criminalized her…they just told her to leave…SFSD made everything worse. We need a team that actually cares about people and tries to help, not criminalize them.”
— UCSF Provider
“On surgery rotation, a teenage gunshot wound victim post-op w/ delayed abdominal incision closure (i.e. the whole stomach was still open) was HANDCUFFED to his bed with 2 cops sitting outside his room. He was crying when I talked to him one day. As I held his hand, he sobbingly asked if we can get the cops to uncuff him. Our team asked those cops outside but was met with resistance and found him cuffed again the next day. Absolutely dehumanizing and unnecessary.”
— UCSF Medical Student
Talk to us.
Tell us why you think San Francisco Sheriff’s Department should not be present in SFGH and DPH Clinics. If you are including a personal story, please do not include any personal protected health information. Please indicate if you want your story to be anonymous or private.
Tell us about other examples of how the health system polices people.
Share other comments or questions with us.
You can email us at dphmustdivest@gmail.com with requests.