SFPD Faces Potential Labor Shortage as Older Officers Retire

By Tom Pendergast

Boomers are retiring, so the top brass at the SF Police Department (SFPD) and other departments throughout the state are perspiring as their agencies have to actively recruit more officers.
In the next four years, roughly a third of the Police Department will start collecting pensions, which no doubt troubles at least some at police headquarters since the city charter says they have to provide a minimum level of police officers.
In 1994, San Francisco voters placed a mandate in the charter requiring the police department to provide a minimum of 1,971 “full-duty sworn officers,” yet the SFPD is now understaffed by at least 150 officers.
“That’s absolutely a violation of the charter,” said Inspector Gary Delagnes, president of the SF Police Officer’s Association (POA).
The number 1,971 goes back to former Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who collaborated with the SFPD to arrive at an amount that the City could afford in 1979. The number was decided before the full effects of Proposition 13, which limited the amount of property tax a homeowner had to pay.
The office of the city controller says the understaffing is a temporary situation because graduates of current cadet classes at the police academy should put it above the required minimum within the year.
But Delagnes says the City is way behind in its hiring program.
In 2004, voters passed Proposition C, which directed the department to replace officers at desk jobs and to fill them with civilians for less money. The plan was to put those officers on patrol assignments.
The recently-passed city budget – at $6.06 billion the largest in city history – has pushed the “civilianized” positions since Prop. C passed up to 97, driving the total number of required full-duty sworn officers on duty down to 1,874.
Although on paper it appears the SFPD is funded to employ more than 2,100 officers, the city controller’s office says 421 positions are not “full-duty” because they are either investigators and assistants, administration and modified duty employees, temporarily disabled or on leave of absence.

Boomers Retiring
As the police department struggles to comply with the city charter, looming on the horizon is the expected retirement of about a third of the force during the next few years.
“They’re expecting 600 to 650 retirements over the next four years. So we’ve got quite a challenge before us,” said Dr. Bruce Topp, assistant deputy director at the SF Department of Human Resources (SFDHR).
“That’s retirements only, so that doesn’t count other separations like disability, death and people leaving for other departments ... so the next few years are going to be extremely busy with hiring.”
Delagnes has his own estimate, which includes those uncounted “separations.” He projected that in the next “five or six years” the SFPD might lose anywhere from 800 to 1,100 officers. With an attrition rate of 30 to 40 percent, Delagnes said the academy can only be expected to produce an average of 160 to 170 officers per year, assuming the funding for five classes each year continues.
Another assumption is that there will be enough qualified candidates available. Across the nation the labor pool for police officers is shrinking as more agencies than ever are dipping their buckets into it.
“There are a couple of different currents coming together right now,” said Jeremy Wilson, associate director of the Rand Center for Quality Policing. “It’s a complicated situation because there are a number of factors and issues involved.”
Aside from the fact that many departments are top-heavy with soon-to-be-retiring boomers, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq “siphons people off,” Wilson explained. Agencies like Homeland Security, FBI and CIA, are trying to beef up their numbers.
“Historically, police departments like to recruit people from the military. But a lot of people being called up creates a drain. There’s also increased competition between private security companies and law enforcement,” Wilson said.

Pay Raise for SF Officers
The new city budget included an across-the-board pay increase of 25 percent, at about six percent a year over the next four years, for all SF police officers. Before the pay raise, Micki Callahan, employee relations director at the SFDHR, compared SFPD salaries to surrounding Bay Area cities and found the department’s maximum base pay was less than Berkeley, Santa Clara, San Jose and Vallejo.
“The raises that we agreed to only begin to close the gap,” said Callahan, observing that San Jose is expected to increase pay for their officers in January. “Recruitment and retention is absolutely an issue.”
Statewide, the competition is intense. San Diego police personnel just got an across-the-board raise and are looking to fill about 200 positions.
San Jose, which has one of the lowest per-capita staff of officers in the state, will be looking to hire 60 more in January, said Lt. Dale Morgan of that department. He also mentioned he had seen recruiting advertisements on buses in that city for both the San Francisco and Oakland police departments.

Not Everyone Agrees
In July, the SF Police Department agreed to increase community policing by adding beat officers in some police districts, including the Tenderloin, Southern, Central and Mission stations.
“(Hiring more officers) becomes a vicious cycle. It doesn’t get at the root causes of crime,” said Karl Kramer, campaign co-director for the SF Living Wage Coalition. Kramer urges after-school programs, counseling and job training for at-risk youth as crime prevention measures.
“The city is putting the priority on a police response to violence rather than preventing violence. It’s about locking these young people up and forgetting the consequences of what these young people’s lives are going to be like after they’re released,” Kramer said.

Journalist Tom Pendergast wrote this story for members of the SF Neighborhood Newspaper Association.

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