Capt. John Sanford

Capt. John Sanford is leaving the Taraval police district’s top spot after six months at the post. His replacement will be Curtis Lum, a department veteran who previously served as a community-policing lieutenant at Bayview Station and program administrator for Patrol Specials.

Sanford, who was named captain of Taraval Station in July 2010, announced the move on the station’s website:

Dear Taraval Community,

It was with great honor I had the opportunity to serve as your district Captain. My stay here at the Taraval was short, but extremely pleasing. Captain Curtis Lum will be my successor and I can only hope that you accept him with open arms as you did with me.

I will always cherish my time and memories here in the Taraval district because this community was so engaging. I had the privilege of meeting so many great community members, merchants, and neighborhood groups, but apologies to the associations that we had scheduled to meet with in the upcoming months. I hope that all of you will continue to partner with SF SAFE and build those neighborhood associations and neighborhood watch groups.

Lastly, I will truly miss all of our regular members who attended the monthly community meetings every month. There were many special community members that showed up 30 minutes prior to the start of the meeting and made sure that I was ready to go at 7:00 p.m. sharp and I thank them for being my time-keeper.

The Taraval Station has an extremely talented Community Police Advisory Board (CPAB) that I would like to respectfully thank for their time, patience and dedication to the Taraval District. I hope that each CPAB member will hang in there through yet another transition and help the new captain so the flow that we all strived for could continue without further delay to this great flourishing group.

My heart and prayers will be with the great residents and merchants of the Taraval District, may God bless you all.

Respectfully.
John Sanford, Jr.