SF Gate City Insider
When Heather Fong retired as San Francisco’s police chief 5-1/2 years ago, she said, “I’m just going to take a break, breathe a little bit and rest for a while.”
Apparently she’s had enough of that.
Fong, who was San Francisco’s first female police chief and the first Asian-American woman to lead a police department in a major U.S. city, recently accepted a position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Her title: assistant secretary in the Office for State and Local Law Enforcement. She is the department’s primary liaison with nearly 18,000 state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement agencies across the country, a homeland security spokesman said. Part of her job includes terrorism prevention work and ensuring the timely coordination and distribution of intelligence between the federal department and law enforcement agencies. As chief, Fong was famously media averse, and she was quietly appointed to her federal post in November.
Fong spent 32 years in the San Francisco Police Department after starting out as a cadet in the vice unit. She served as chief for her last five years, inheriting a mess.
Fong was then-Mayor Gavin Newsom’s surprise pick in 2003 to take over a department steeped in scandal and turmoil, including the short-lived indictment of former Chief Earl Sanders and top commanders in the alleged cover-up of a street fight over fajitas involving off-duty officers.
Fong, a low-key reformer, laid the groundwork for long-term changes in the department, but she was also criticized by some police union figures as an indecisive and weak leader.
“It’s not just media shy, I’m kind of a shy person, ” Fong told The Chronicle shortly before retiring. “Everyone is different. We all come from different cultures; we all come from different upbringings. In the end, we’re all just people. … I will never be like an old-time sheriff or police chief. … That’s not who I am.”
