One of the San Francisco Police Department’s most prolific writers of traffic tickets is dead by suicide after acknowledging he systematically misrepresented the race of people he stopped. His actions sparked an investigation into whether he tainted data collected to address racial profiling. That investigation is ongoing despite his death.
From 2018 to 2021, Sgt. Rene Vig Nielsen reported that all but six of the 1,139 people he stopped were white, according to an analysis by The Standard.
The officer told city investigators that he could not determine a person’s race based solely on their appearance and “will not be forced to determine someone’s race … even if it’s a direct order.” That was why he recorded the same race for every person he stopped, he said.
The officer “did irreparable harm to the integrity of SFPD’s [Racial and Identity Profiling Act] reporting,” police accountability investigators concluded in a June 2024 report, referring to state-mandated data collection showing the race of drivers in traffic stops. While the report does not name Nielsen, The Standard confirmed that he was the officer referenced in the document. The investigators concluded that Nielsen violated department policy, made false statements, and acted insubordinately.
“What he was doing, it’s tantamount to lying. Untruthful is untruthful, whatever you call it,” said former San Francisco Police Officers Association president Tony Montoya. “It speaks to the character of the police officer. If you’re not being truthful in what’s really low-hanging fruit, what aren’t you willing to lie about?”
Nielsen’s actions were fireable offenses, said a source with knowledge of the case. But even if he’d kept his job, any officer found to have lied can no longer testify in court cases, as their testimony can easily be impeached.
Though Nielsen killed himself in September, the city is continuing its investigation into the allegations of inaccurate race reporting. Meanwhile, the department says it is near completion of a years-long reform effort to reduce racial disparity in policing around everything from ticketing to use of force.
These revelations come ahead of a long-anticipated audit by San Francisco’s Department of Police Accountability looking at SFPD’s reporting on the race of the people it stops. The agency launched its audit last year after The Standard reported that an SFPD officer had misrepresented the race of the people he stopped dozens of times, and that four other officers’ race reporting data raised red flags. After that story’s publication, DPA head Paul Henderson said his agency had already uncovered examples of officers inaccurately recording race data.
Nielsen filed these inaccurate entries in a data system used by police officers across California, all of whom are required to record the race of every person they stop under the 2015 Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA). In many cases, Nielsen also failed to make contact with dispatch when he made a stop and to create a record of the stop — required protocols that investigators could have used to verify his actions, according to the DPA’s investigation.
‘If you’re not being truthful in what’s really low-hanging fruit, what aren’t you willing to lie about?’
Tony Montoya
Ken Barone, who manages Connecticut’s equivalent of the RIPA program, said it’s incumbent upon the state RIPA board to investigate whether Nielsen’s case is indicative of a more widespread problem.
“We need the public to fundamentally trust law enforcement,” Barone said.
“There is a fraught history … of interactions between police and the public, particularly through traffic enforcement, where people, particularly in our Black and Hispanic communities, didn’t feel it was fair,” he said.
The San Francisco Police Commission in February enacted a policy barring officers from stopping drivers using minor “pretextual” stops meant to catch people for more serious offenses. The policy is meant to reduce the number of police stops of people of color, who are disproportionately pulled over by SFPD. (Statewide statistics show that Black and Latino drivers are more likely to be pulled over than white or Asian drivers.)
Law enforcement across the country has stumbled while trying to cut back on racial profiling. In Connecticut, a state trooper falsely listed more than 1,000 drivers as Native American. An audit in Los Angeles found that sheriff’s deputies appeared to undercount more than 33,000 Latino people they stopped in a one-year period. And multiple law enforcement agencies in Louisiana systemically labeled Latino people they stopped as white, making it impossible to identify possible racial profiling, according to a ProPublica report.
Nielsen’s wife, Jeanne, didn’t comment on the investigation into her husband but said that after his death it doesn’t matter.
She described her husband as a “protector” who “loved being a police officer. He was an excellent sergeant. Everybody felt safer when he was around.”
Nielsen, who was a power lifter for decades, owned a gym with his wife.
The SFPD did not respond to a request for comment.
Montoya, who was Nielsen’s field training officer, offered a theory as to why Nielsen obscured records: He may have been trying to cut down on the amount of time he had to spend on paperwork.
“I don’t think he was intentionally trying to hide anything. I think he was just being lazy,” Montoya said.
Barone said he’s seen officers tempted to obscure race tracking out of concern that it could be held against them.
“Some [officers] feel like if they just report everybody as white, they’ll never end up on a list as showing up as having any disparities [in their stops],” he said.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Or go here for more resources.