San Francisco police chief: Here’s who insiders say are the favorites for top cop

San Francisco’s next top cop is likely on a short list of candidates the Police Commission sent to Mayor Daniel Lurie Wednesday night.

Speculation is rampant about the type of chief Lurie will choose, what it means for the San Francisco Police Department, and what the selection signals for the city’s turn toward law and order.

The mayor’s decision will end a six-month search and begin a new era for a department that has been led for most of the past decade by Chief Bill Scott, who resigned in May. Scott spent much of his time in the department laser-focused on reform, until a late-in-tenure pivot to drug enforcement was forced by public pressure on city leaders. 

The city charter gives the seven-member Police Commission the power to search for police chief candidates and choose three finalists for the mayor to select from. Lurie can name one of the finalists or ask the commission for three other options. 

The latter situation is unlikely. Lurie has solidified control of the Police Commission by removing an adversarial member and has helped usher in newcomers to the body politically in line with his administration. Since May, the commission has been working on winnowing down a list of 30-plus contenders. 

While the list of three candidates sent to the mayor is not public, at least one — Steve Ford— has openly acknowledged he applied, while other names have been floated among rank-and-file officers and police department insiders. Here’s our educated guess at who’s still in the running. 

Deputy Chief Nicole Jones, a Bay Area native, currently heads the SFPD’s administration bureau, which manages back-end logistical functions for the department like budget management, IT, and legal research.

Jones began her career as an officer with the department in 2007. As a sergeant, she worked in the Special Victims and Internal Affairs units before moving up to administration as a lieutenant.

By 2021, she had been made captain and was promoted to commander later that year.

Jones, who has an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, was previously captain of the SFPD’s Ingleside station. She headed the traffic division, reversing a historic decline in ticketing during the pandemic. 

This year, Yep promoted her to deputy chief (opens in new tab). In that role, she had oversight over the SFPD academy, where a recruit died in August during a training exercise. Following that incident, Jones gutted the training center’s staff. While some in the department supported the decision as a measure of accountability, others believed it damaged stability at a critical time for the academy. 

In public statements, Jones has said in the past she does not think police should be the one-size-fits-all solution (opens in new tab)to society’s ills. 

“When there is a problem that there’s not a clear solution for … we bear the brunt of that — and that has to change,” she said at a 2024 panel (opens in new tab) organized by the Center for Policing Equity. “We are not always the appropriate people to handle the things that we encounter.” 

Jones’ bid is strengthened by her potential to become only the department’s second female chief, her status as an internal candidate, and her extensive administrative experience.

A San Francisco native, Derrick Lew graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in 1991 and joined the SFPD in 2003, beginning his career as an officer at Taraval Station. 

In 2006, he and his partner were involved in a fatal shooting after (opens in new tab) a suspect who had just slain two people opened fire on them. Lew was nearly struck by a bullet that passed through his jacket. His partner killed the suspect in a subsequent gunfight. Both won a police medal of valor. To this day, their uniform jackets are pinned to a wall in Bayview Station along with a plaque commemorating the incident. 

As a patrol officer, he worked in the Bayview and Central stations before being assigned to the SFPD’s narcotics division from 2014 to 2017. After being promoted to lieutenant in 2017, he worked in the department’s Gun Investigations Center (opens in new tab) and with the ATF gun task force. During that assignment, he was part of Operation Cold Day, a multi-agency collaboration (opens in new tab) targeting auto theft, auto burglaries, drugs, and illegal firearms. 

When he was made captain in 2021, he was assigned to lead Ingleside Station before being sent to run the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center. As head of the city’s anti-drug-dealing enforcement operations, he admitted the effort was in some ways pushing the problem around instead of solving it. 

“People will move to where the pressure is not,” he said, according to Mission Local (opens in new tab). 

More recently, as a deputy chief, he spoke candidly about the fine line the SFPD will have to walk while handling public confrontations with federal immigration authorities. After clashes between protesters and federal immigration agents, Lew said publicly that he viewed the job of police as “peacekeepers” between both groups (opens in new tab). “It doesn’t matter what our politics are, but we kind of have to draw the line so that people don’t get hurt,” he said. 

Lew, who was acting chief while his boss, Interim Chief of Police Paul Yep, was out of town, was seen standing beside the mayor as he announced the city’s response to a surge in immigration enforcement ordered by President Donald Trump in October. The choice of acting chief is typically chosen by the chief. 

Lew’s prospects are boosted by his involvement in a past on-duty shooting. His status as a Saint Ignatius High School alumnus and his Asian heritage could also help him secure a key political bloc for Lurie.

A San Francisco native raised in the Bayview, Ford most recently ran the scandal-plagued Antioch Police Department, where he inherited issues that led to federal charges against a number of officers.

Ford, who currently works as a consultant and lecturer at San Francisco State, is still popular with many in the rank and file from his more than 30 years at SFPD.

However, there is a cloud from his time as chief of the troubled East Bay department, where he was also accused and later exonerated of having an inappropriate relationship (opens in new tab) with a subordinate. 

Ford has a doctorate in criminal justice and spent most of his career as a cop for the SFPD, where he retired in 2022 at the rank of commander. 

In San Francisco, he led the Bayview station and then served as captain of the administration bureau before being promoted by Scott to commander and later heading the department’s Community Engagement Bureau.

Ford took over the Antioch Police Department in November 2022, pledging to enact reforms similar to those undergone by SFPD, but he served less than two years in the role, resigning in August 2023.

Ford, who is popular with the rank and file, is seen as a cop’s cop with street and investigations experience. His lengthy time in SFPD leadership and as a chief in Antioch could set him apart from his opponents.