Feb 11, 2010

Dear Editor:

City police face a 30 million dollar cutback with inevitable layoffs of SFPD officers. So says reporter Bruce Begin in his Feb. 11 article "Newsom to Police Commission: Public safety cuts inevitable." Police Commissioner Petra DeJesus "has heard that the police union was opposed to further wage concessions," but the union head was "not immediately available for comment." Criminals are probably rolling in the aisles while they wait, while the Commissioners fiddle, and while San Francisco gets ready to burn.

Isn't it about time the police union head actually be available for comment? Isn't it about time that he become part of the solution to our city's problem, rather than part of the problem? Isn't it about time that Commissioners once and for all assertively support an existing, effective, and desired neighborhood police force, the Patrol Special Police, and get more of those officers on our streets now and available to private merchants and residents who are willing to pay for their services? It's a vetted, trained, legally armed, Commission-supervised, and citizen-desired private police force that can quickly increase police on the streets, with a little help from their friends--but where are those friends? Why are the Patrol Special Police being ignored as the true asset that they are and can be, by the Police Chief and Commissioners, especially when there are brave, professional officers like Patrol Special Police Officer Robert Burns who prevented true mayhem Sunday night Feb.7 by taking out two gunmen who were shooting outside of his private client, the Suede bar, in Fishermans Wharf ? (see: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Police-ID-nightclub-shooting-suspect-83912247.html)

Does everyone realize that San Francisco police already earn far more in average civil service salaries than officers in the following cities: New York City, Chicago, Boson, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Reno - and eight other major urban cities? Does everyone realize that in 2007 the actual salary figures (adding in those juicy overtime assignments and lucrative off-duty contracts by overly tired SFPD officers probably not motivated to provide good policing in their 9 to 5 jobs) show that 1784 employees of the SFPD earned over $100,000, and 396 made more than $150,00 per year? Professor Edward P. Stringham of San Jose State University found this out in a current study he's conducting of the Patrol Specials, by consulting http://sfgate.com/webdb/sfpay and http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard.

We don't need more expensive SFPD officers with expensive civil service salaries, not to mention extraordinarily expensive future pensions (how many SFPD officers are now set to retire?). We don't need an off-duty "10b" police program competing with the Patrol Specials and monopolizing extra privately-paid security needs--at three or more times the cost of what the Patrol Specials charge.We need less of the above, so maybe the coming SFPD cutbacks are in order. But we do need more alternatives to public police such as the Patrol Specials, such as citizen walking patrols like the respected patrol in the Castro, such as more home and business watches such as SAFE helps us set up. And we all need to do a better job in not becoming victims so that we call upon all police for less service -- because less service is apparently just what we are going to get in the very near future.

Ann Grogan, J.D.
Management Consultant
30 yr. resident in Glen Park
2912 Diamond St., Ste. 239
San Francisco, CA 94131