Here's a fun experiment: try telling your boss you haven't had a performance review in nearly ten years and see how that goes. For the rest of us, annual reviews are an unavoidable ritual — sometimes awkward, sometimes validating, always happening. But if you're the SFPD chief or the head of San Francisco's police watchdog agency, apparently the rules are more like... suggestions.

Despite explicit requirements that these positions receive annual job performance reviews, the city simply hasn't done them. For close to a decade. Let that marinate.

Now, the city is finally getting around to conducting what are being called "rare" annual reviews for both roles — which is a generous way of describing something that's supposed to be routine but has been ignored for the better part of a mayoral administration (or two).

This isn't just a bureaucratic oversight. These are two of the most consequential public safety positions in San Francisco. The SFPD chief oversees a department with a $750 million-plus budget in a city where residents consistently rank crime and safety among their top concerns. The head of the police watchdog exists specifically to ensure accountability within that department. And nobody has been formally evaluating whether either of them is actually doing a good job?

The whole point of accountability structures is that they function — not that they exist on paper while everyone politely looks the other way. You can't credibly demand accountability from rank-and-file officers when the people at the top aren't being held to basic employment standards themselves.

To be clear, this isn't necessarily an indictment of either official's performance. Maybe they're both crushing it. Maybe they're not. That's literally what reviews are for. The fact that San Francisco has been flying blind on this for years tells you everything you need to know about how seriously City Hall takes oversight when the cameras aren't rolling.

Better late than never, we suppose — but let's not pretend this is anything other than embarrassing.