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 Out of the 60s came social unrest of varying kinds that would test the department to the utmost: the hippie movement, marches for social justice, race riots, university demonstrations over Vietnam. Chief Cahill, during his long administration (from 1958 to 1970), was singularly able to deal with a changing society. Hiss was a direct, no nonsense, approach combined with an understanding of where people were coming from, a compassion for their frustrations and predicaments.
Shortly after the bombing of Birmingham, Alabama church, in 1964, in which four girls were killed, 23,000 persons marched up Market Street for a planned demonstration at Civic Center, the first of its kind in San Francisco, and Cahill was on the podium to address the crowd. He knew they didn't care much for the police, so he made sure his officers maintained a low-key presence on the periphery of the crowd. His words to them were simple - "We'll all get along well here" - and his positive gesture, dropping some money into a container marked for the victims of the bombing, had a tremendous effect on everyone. When the crowd dispersed after the last speaker, there was absolute order.
Cahill led the Department through civil disorders, like the riot that took place after an officer shot and killed a teenage car theft suspect in Hunter's Point (he made sure that the 2,000 National Guardsmen Governor Pat Brown ordered into the city maintained the lowest possible profile); the demonstrations over Vietnam at San Francisco State ("Leave peacefully or get locked up"); and the 60s hippie movement, where enforcement of laws was combined with Cahill's compassion for parents of those kids who had left home to achieve flower power (in one case, he located the daughter of parents who had personally sought his help; through sheer intelligence work, he located the girl in Seattle).
In a terrible shift of events, the end of the 60s and the early 70s was a violent time for officers. In one year alone, 1970, four officers were killed in separate incidents, the victims of hatred and resentment taken to the level of assassination.
If crime had once manifested itself as tong wars, bootlegging, and organized crime, the 70s saw a new type of crime involving the serial killer. The Zodiac, who claimed a number of victims (but only one in San
 Francisco), has never been found and the case is still officially open. The Zebra killers randomly shot to death 12 persons during 1973-74. A dragnet ordered by Mayor Joseph Alioto and intensive police work resulted in the arrest of four suspects, convicted with life sentences. The 70s was highly politicized era characterized by radical activity, as exemplified by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) whose most famous representative, Patty Hearst, was finally arrested in San Francisco for her involvement in an organization that used deadly force to publicize its convictions. The decade closed with one of the most shocking events in San Francisco History: Supervisor Dan White's double killing of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 22, 1978. The manslaughter verdict and the relatively light sentence resulted in the siege of City Hall during the "White Night" riots. As police cars burned in the street, their sirens wailing from the shorting of melted wires, officers ringed City Hall to protect it.
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