Perhaps the officer in question could have parked his bike a bit better, such as on the wide sidewalk of market street. So that in the event of an emergency the motorcycle is just as accessible and not endangering cyclists.

No, cyclists are not pulled over more so than cars. Marcos your objectivity is skewed and you dont know what you're talking about. Go on a ridealong with the busier station of SFPD and see for yourself. Randomly spewing out opinions on a blog behind the comfort of your apartment does not make you an authority on SF CVC/TC enforcement.

As such, the department has to triage enforcement and prioritize which laws it is going to enforce. I would bet that the aggregate ratio of CVC violations, auto to bicycle is 5000:1, yet enforcement does not seem to match.

One definition of politics is that process which society does when it has to solve a large number of problems with a scarce amount of resources.

If you want to live in a world where we have a police department which is funded to the extent that it enforces each and every infraction of the law, no matter how minor, then you're asking to live in East Germany. The SFPD budget now is a bit south of $500m annually. I'd imagine for about four times that, we'd see the kind of Stasi coverage that you appear to covet.

I'd prefer that we see the SFPD take its current budget, figure out where it is most effective and dedicate its resources there.

We live in an ostensible democracy. We can amend the administrative code to change local law that prohibits city dollars from being spent by the SFPD to enforce laws that we deem not worthy. When law enforcement ignores these laws they are acting illegally. This happens with cannabis.

We can also change the Departmental General Orders to change the work rules for the cops so that their resources are directed to solving problems where they can be maximally effective, away from problems where they are merely annoyances to residents.

The fact is that the commuter cops at the SFPD are inclined to make it home alive in order to be one day closer to collecting those 90% pensions. This means that they will always pick the low hanging, safer fruit, and bring their suburban values to bear when an enforcement decision is made. They will bust a homeless person before a drug dealer. They will bust a cyclist before a motorist.

We need to take out the subjectivity from the SFPD's enforcement choices, as they've proven themselves overtly hostile to the political posture of San Franciscans, and impose objective standards on the SFPD which channels their enforcement priorities to where our political leaders and voters want it rather than whatever some commuter cop from Novato feels like doing today.

-marc

We need to work with the DPH to ascertain the most dangerous infractions on the part of cyclists and motorists AND the frequency of injury, and program the SFPD enforcement response narrowly to keep us safe. Police enforcement priorities on the CVC should be measured every year to set enforcement priorities to reflect changing realities as measured by public health outcomes.

The SFPD has proven themselves too prejudiced as an institution to call the shots on CVC enforcement. Hopefully Greg Corrales is preparing to skedaddle and collect his six figure retirement so that someone who gives more of a sh!t about us than he can get on the job.

-marc

As a person who's been riding her bike in the city only for the last year, I'd like to thank all the bicyclists before me who, by riding and advocating, have made it possible for me to ride in conditions that, while not as good as they could and need to be, are a heck of a lot better than they were.

Like DC neo-cons, SF bike-haters defend official misconduct reflexively, spitting out unproven and unprovable claims about the world, baseless personal attacks on the whistleblower and his community, and a near-pathological fixation on diverting attention away from the issue at hand: illegal and unjustifiable behavior by SFPD officers that recklessly endangers cyclists' safety.

You need to switch off your English parser module and switch on your CopEse language parser module, and it makes perfect sense. Here's the parsing:

"We're cops, we have the mayor on our side and intimidate the rest because we hate you, so we're going to whatever we feel like. Sh!t happens, get a car like a normal person."

@SFResident: "erode public support for law enforcement."

Aren't the SFPD the least supported and respected of "public safety" [sic] operations in San Francisco? Why would SF residents support an overpaid commuter paramilitary operation that does not keep us safe and hates us for who we are?

I mean, if we could beat the POA and Feinstein on police reform when they outspent us $400K:$75K, with DiFi's mug on TV commercials, then the SFPD and POA are inherently vulnerable, veritable paper tigers.

-marc

There is plenty of space in that bike lane for a bicycle to safely pass the motorcycle and remain within the lane.

The police need to park their vehicles in close proximity to where they are so that can respond quickly to any emergency that occurrs. They can have have their meal interrupted at any time and may need to get on that bike fast! In addition, the officer likely wants to park it where he can keep an eye on itm from vandals.

Stop your petty whining. get a job.

Who cares if the bicyclist doesn't obey traffic laws, forgets to give his mother a birthday card, or even enjoys kicking puppies. It's totally irrelevant to the issue at hand - which is that police officers ought not park illegally when not rendering emergency services. Not only are actions like this dangerous, but they also erode public support for law enforcement.

I saw a cop on a bike making his way west on 18th street this morning and it made me happy. Maybe if more people (including police officers) rode bikes now and again they'd realize just how heinous an act parking in a bike lane is.

You dismiss the issue of illegal police activity altogether because you just magically decided the whistle-blower broke some traffic law at some point?

I see how it is--and, by the same token, since both of you have broken at least one law in your lives, your ideas have no merit. I mean, who wants to read self-righteous and hypocritical comments from a couple of criminals like you two?

But I'm sure the cyclist would have an equally invalid defense for the litany of traffic laws they violate on a daily basis. Point being if cyclists want to be treated like 1st class vehicles they should expect to be required to follow the law like one.

The bicyclist isn't being paid $$$ by the public to enforce (and obey) traffic rules. The cop is.