 SFPD boss Greg Suhr resigns just hours after officers fatally shot a 27-year-old black woman and as the police department faces a bigotry scandal 
 
 San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr resigned on Thursday, at the request of mayor Ed Lee and just hours after police officers shot and killed a black woman in the city’s Bayview neighborhood. Lee had stood by the chief he appointed in 2011 through two controversial police shootings within the past six months and revelations that a number of officers had exchanged racist and homophobic text messages. But at a late-afternoon news conference at City Hall, the mayor said that after Thursday’s shooting, he had “arrived at a different conclusion to the question of how best to move forward.” 
 
 “The progress we have made has been meaningful, but it hasn’t been fast enough, not for me and not for Greg, and that’s why I have asked Chief Suhr for his resignation,” Lee said in remarks that lasted five minutes. The 26-year veteran of the force had been acting as deputy chief of professional standards and principled policing, in charge of carrying out reforms. But Suhr lost Lee's backing Thursday, after a patrol car prowling an industrial neighborhood for stolen vehicles came across a 27-year-old black woman sitting behind the wheel of a parked car. Earlier Thursday, Suhr told reporters that the woman had driven away when approached by police, then quickly crashed the car. The officers jumped out of the patrol car and raced to the wreckage, where the woman was revving the car in an effort to disengage the auto from the truck. The community is grieving, and I join them in that grief.” 
 
 Lee added, “In this solemn moment, we must put aside politics and begin to heal the city.” 
 
 For the mayor, the shooting happened under the worst circumstances at the worst possible time — what appeared to be an unarmed woman who was black, shot by a sergeant who apparently used none of the de-escalation tactics that Suhr and Lee had been pushing for months. Lee appointed Suhr, 57, in April 2011 when George Gascón became district attorney. Two shootings in particular had resulted in calls for Suhr to resign — the December killing of 26-year-old Mario Woods, a stabbing suspect who appeared to be stumbling along a Bayview sidewalk with a knife in his hand when officers shot him more than 20 times, and the April killing in the Mission District of Luis Gongora, 45, a homeless man holding a knife who was shot by an officer less than 30 seconds into a sidewalk confrontation. Suhr initially defended the officers involved in the Woods shooting, but backtracked as videos circulated that called into question whether Woods had posed an immediate threat. The U.S. Justice Department division in charge of police-community relations is conducting a top-to-bottom review of San Francisco police, and the Police Commission is wrestling with a series of proposals for changing the department’s use-of-force rules. Four members of the city’s 11-member board of supervisors called for Suhr’s resignation on 11 May 2015, and he was the subject of frequent protest, including a 17-day hunger strike by a group of five local activists. Amos Brown, the president of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP. Now we might have to fire the mayor.” 
 
 Outside the Hall of Justice, most rank-and-file officers declined to comment on Suhr’s departure. But at the time, the chief still enjoyed the backing of the mayor and other community leaders, who said they wanted to give Suhr time to implement the reforms he promised.
– The fatal police shooting of an unarmed black woman Thursday was the final straw for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who asked for and received the resignation of police Chief Greg Suhr within hours. Lee, who appointed Suhr in 2011, had stood by the chief through previous controversies, including other police shootings and a recent scandal involving racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by officers, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. In brief remarks at City Hall Thursday afternoon, the mayor said he wants to "heal the city" and that the "progress we have made has been meaningful, but it hasn't been fast enough." Last week, four members of the 11-member city board of supervisors called for the chief's resignation, the Guardian reports. "The past several months have shaken and divided our city, and tensions between law enforcement and communities of color that have simmered for too many years have come into full view," Lee said. In Thursday's incident, the unarmed 27-year-old woman was shot dead as officers tried to pull her out of a stolen car she had crashed into a truck, the AP reports. Authorities have not identified the woman or the sergeant who fired the fatal round. Toney Chaplin, a 26-year veteran of the force, has been named as acting police chief. Chaplin, who is black, had been tasked with carrying out reforms as deputy chief of professional standards and principled policing.