The San Francisco Police Department is opaque in its discipline, arbitrary in its hiring and biased in its policing of communities of color.

Such were the blistering preliminary findings of a year-long inquiry into The City’s troubled police department that was launched by District Attorney George Gascon and released to the San Francisco Examiner Monday....

The initial findings of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Law Enforcement note that there are a number of serious issues in the department related to everything from discipline, hiring and oversight to lack of transparency and biased policing of minority communities.

Perhaps the most damning findings were that the department engages in controversial “stop and frisk” practices and that no internal review of systematic bias was conducted following the release of racist texts sent by officers in 2015.