The Rules Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has recommended the appointment of Pratibha Tekkey, a Tenderloin-based community organizer, to a seat on the city’s Police Commission over neighborhood activist Marjan Philhour. The 2–1 vote, with District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill dissenting, took place at a regular meeting of the committee on Monday after almost three hours of discussion and public comment. The recommendation will be considered by the full board next Tuesday. Five other applicants also applied for the seat.
“From early on, if we’re being honest, I was inclined to support [Tekkey], and that is not a knock on any of the other folks who have applied for this position,” Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman commented during discussion. He emphasized that “it was really important that we select someone who is unambiguously and clearly pro-safety.” He noted Tekkey’s activism in support of ameliorating the proliferation of encampments, open-air drug use, and other quality-of-life issues in the Tenderloin.
Tekkey is currently the director of community organizing at the Central City SRO Collaborative and was previously an organizer and director of organizing at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.
At both positions, she advocated for better quality of life in the Tenderloin, including lobbying against new shelters at sites such as 418 Turk Street. She also helped bring attention to misconduct by Mission Neighborhood Centers, which had been contracted to operate public bathrooms in the neighborhood but let their employees deal drugs and commit other crimes. She also lobbied for support of a recently enacted curfew on liquor stores in the neighborhood. Previously, Tekkey was also a labor organizer for a major healthcare workers’ union.
Addressing the committee, Tekkey said, “I continue to work closely with SRO residents, immigrant communities, families, seniors, and small business owners, not just for tenants’ rights issues, but also public safety in the Tenderloin .… I’ve seen that when community members and law enforcement work hand in hand, safety improves and trust begins to grow. In my view, public safety is successful when community members are treated as partners, not passive recipients of enforcement. That means listening to people who live and work in the communities.”
Her supporters, who spoke during an extended public comment period at the hearing, emphasized her record and that her appointment would represent the first time the Tenderloin, long the city’s nexus of problems related to drug abuse, petty crime, and homelessness, would be represented on the commission.
“When I started at UCL, then Hastings, eight years ago, Pratibha was the first person from the community to reach out to me,” Rhiannon Bailard, chief operating officer of the University of California Law School San Francisco, told the committee. “She knows the rank and file officers, she knows the leadership, she knows what works and what doesn’t work, and will come on day one, ready to be able to solve problems and bring all of the different perspectives to bear.”
Other stakeholders who spoke in support of Tekkey included San Francisco Labor Council President Mike Casey, Code Tenderloin founder Del Seymour, and her former boss, Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.
Shaw implied that Philhour and her supporters, who outnumbered other public comment speakers, were playing politics by seeking appointment to the commission, notwithstanding the heavy-hitters such as Casey and, indeed, himself, who showed up for Tekkey.
“We’ve never had anyone give a voice for the Tenderloin on this police commission,” Shaw told committee members. “But here we have the head of the Democratic Party doing more lobbying than anybody. That seems to me to be politicizing, which should not be a political process. We can’t say that open-air drug dealing is our biggest problem, and then pass on the person who’s done literally more than anybody else in this city day in and day out to stop it.”
Phihour’s colleague on the Democratic County Central Committee, Chair Nancy Tung, also addressed the political dimensions of the appointment.
Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, implied that Philhour and her supporters were playing politics by seeking appointment to the commission.
“I want to pull back the curtain a little bit,” Tung told committee members. “People want to think that these decisions by this committee are apolitical, but as the actions of the board and these committees often show, they are not. In 2020, I was nominated for a mayoral appointment, not in competition with anyone else, for this very commission. I was voted down by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, including Board President Mandelman. Do I take offense at that? No. Because this is not a decision that happens in a vacuum. It is a political decision.”
“Randy Shaw has a voice,” said community organizer Angelique Mahan, speaking on behalf of Philhour. “And when I didn’t have a voice, it wasn’t Randy Shaw coming to my neighborhood to make sure things were O.K. It was Marjan Philhour. She doesn’t just do the work, she’s about the work.”
District 7 resident Naomi Laguana told the supervisors that Philhour “has been a tireless supporter of San Francisco .… She has the institutional knowledge to serve on a commission, and the police commission right now is at a pivotal time … that institutional knowledge is more than valuable, it is vital that we have that on the commission.”
Philhour has run for District 1 Supervisor three times, including two campaigns against the incumbent, Connie Chan. She lost all three races by slim margins, with the last one forcing the San Francisco Labor Council to spend nearly $1 million campaigning against her. She has been a strong, longtime advocate for boosting police staffing and presence in the outer neighborhoods, and she was endorsed by the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association in her last race.
“I’m a mom in the Richmond district,” Philhour told supervisors. “I have actually lived there for the past 20 years. I was born in the neighborhood, and many people have heard about my personal and professional story. I’m applying for a police commission because public safety touches every part of our lives. The bottom line is that if we do not have a well-functioning police commission, a fully staffed police department, and communities that feel connected to that process, our kids won’t feel safe on the bus. Merchants won’t feel safe if we don’t have enough police officers on the streets .… I think it’s incumbent upon us as civic leaders, civic volunteers, elected officials, to ensure that this process is more than just performative.”
The seat on the Police Commission for which Tekkey and Philhour are vying is one of three that is both nominated and confirmed by the Board of Supervisors, and is traditionally considered the “community” seat. The previous occupant, Jesus Yañez, a juvenile justice advocate, was married to a deputy public defender. The couple was implicated in a bizarre affair of harassment and power abuse against a neighbor in a condominium dispute late last year, which included an episode where the couple allegedly shielded from police another neighbor who assaulted another person with a blowtorch. His term expired this year, and he was reportedly not asked to apply for reappointment.
Over the last few years, the commission, which oversees Police Department policies and officer discipline, has been viewed as a policy battleground between supporters of a freer hand for police and an alliance of criminal justice nonprofits and the criminal defense bar that supports more restrictions on police. Recent appointments by mayors London Breed and Daniel Lurie, along with the removal of controversial member Max-Carter Oberstone, have sought to shift the body more towards the center.
That said, Board President Mandelman’s comments at the end of Monday’s hearing did not allay concerns that the issues of the Tenderloin outweighed those of outer neighborhoods and Asian American residents distressed about continuing post-COVID hate attacks, and the perception that they are seen as easy pickings for street crime.
“Every decision we make, I suppose, has some element of politics to it,” he told colleagues. “I have very much enjoyed the period we have been in through the since the beginning of this year, where the sometimes bitter divisions that I’d seen on the board and in City Hall previously had somewhat been mitigated, [even if] for not every issue,” Mandelman told colleagues. “I hope [Tekkey] is someone who can garner support on this board from people for whom she wouldn’t be their first choice, that she can bring this board and the commission together.”
The recommendation will be considered by the full board next week. Five other applicants also applied for the seat. Another opportunity for appointment is likely when the terms of Commissioners Kevin Benedicto, Larry Yee, and Mattie Scott expire in April 2026.
