Martin Halloran SFPOA President

Within the past couple of months, I have been honored to work with former Mayor and Chief of Police Frank Jordan and his wife Wendy Paskin-Jordan, two San Franciscans committed to the betterment of our members and their families. They have made an extremely generous donation of $150,000 to the SFPOA Scholarship Fund. This is by far the largest single contribution ever made to this worthy fund.

The duties of being a San Francisco police officer consume large portions of our lives. But even so, I hope that your 2013 had more fond memories than bad. As you reflect on the highlights of 2013, let me give you a brief run down and reflections on this past year at the POA.

We began 2013 with one of our best decisions of this or any other year. We hired retired Captain Paul Chignell to serve as our new Legal Defense Administrator. After Steve Johnson retired, we needed a qualified, dedicated, and tenacious defender of member rights. No person fits that bill better than Paul.

Once we get Halloween behind us, we are entering into the true holiday season of the year.  Most people look forward to and relish the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. Thanksgiving not only affords the longest stretch of legal holidays in conjunction with regular days off during the year, but it allows families to come together from near and far to reconnect and bond. More so than the single day off for Christmas, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend will see more grandparents, parents, children, nieces and nephews, cousins and close friends reconnecting after long absences.

First of all, I will admit that I have not always embraced new technology that was introduced by the department over the years. Back at the old Mission Station, at 1240 Valencia St, I held on to my manual typewriter and submitted my typed reports until I was ordered to knock it off. If I were needed in court for a preliminary hearing, the ADA would just send me a page with the number 9, 10, 11, or 12 so I knew what courtroom I was needed in.

As you read this, Labor Day 2013 has just recently passed. Since this is my first Labor Day as your President, and since the highlight of this past week has been the opening of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, I felt compelled to offer my thoughts surrounding this holiday and about organized labor throughout the country and in our great city.

In my short tenure as the President of the POA, I have learned some hard but valuable lessons. The hardest lesson that I have learned so far was from the sting of defeat. I speak, of course, of the rejection of the first Tentative Agreement by the membership back on June 7th. I admit it; I took that blow right on the chin. I never saw it coming. I wrestled with the reasons why the first TA failed and the one conclusion that I drew was that I had taken the vote  –and therefore the membership -- for granted. I had expected the vote to be a snoozer; an easy ratification.

As a young schoolboy learning the history of the United States of America, I often went and asked questions of my mother. Although my father had a keen knowledge of U.S history, he was born and raised in Ireland and did not experience being brought up as an American kid. My mom, on the other hand, was born and raised in San Francisco during the depression and World War II.