Supporters of a new ballot measure say the San Francisco Police Department is 500 officers short of what’s needed to “keep San Francisco safe.” They’re asking voters to fill the gap.
Proposition F would establish a deferred retirement program for cops, keeping veterans of the force around longer and potentially easing the need to recruit fresh faces. Since 2020, SFPD staff levels have dropped by more than 23 percent.
Prop F backers say retirement is a driving factor and getting more dire, with nearly 450 officers becoming eligible for retirement by 2030, which proponents say would widen the shortage to almost 40 percent below the required minimum. Nationwide, it’s been difficult to recruit cops for years, with only a recent uptick in 2023.
While some opponents agree there’s a staff shortage, they also criticize Prop F as a resurrection of a failed attempt to do something similar more than a decade ago.
It is indeed a resurrection: the new delayed retirement program has the same acronym, DROP, as the old one. But Sup. Matt Dorsey, the former SFPD spokesperson who spearheaded the measure, says the update fixes old flaws.
Arguments for and against Prop F are set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s halting pandemic recovery, as well as the use of public safety as a political issue. It’s been a particularly contentious debate in an election year with a mayoral race.
Despite the decades-long drop in violent crime rates in SF, property crimes became a flashpoint during the pandemic. In some neighborhoods, open-air drug dealing and fencing of stolen goods has beleaguered community members and flummoxed officials.
After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Mayor London Breed promised to move $120 million of the SFPD budget into a fund to help the city’s Black community. (That initiative is now under scrutiny for fiscal mismanagement.)
Facing a tough re-election, Breed has run on a law-and-order message, whether it’s arresting drug users and dealers, sweeping homeless encampments, or shutting down fencing operations. Meanwhile, the SFPD budget has continued to climb, with the backing of almost all supervisors. Only Dean Preston has consistently voted against the city budget to protest police funding.
Recruitment vs. retirement
Prop F is not a new idea. In 2008, the city wanted to keep experienced officers around, so it put in place the Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP). It abandoned that program in 2011 due to cost concerns. The city controller estimated it would be cheaper to hire and train new officers than retain old ones.
Proponents say this time is different. Re-establishing DROP would be a “cost-effective and time-limited plan to postpone officer retirements,” as stated in their official argument. As an incentive to delay retirement up to five years, the measure is offering pension payments that gain 4 percent interest.
“That would buy us some time and make the biggest difference the soonest,” Dorsey tells The Frisc. “Asking people to stay an extra five years means that nobody has to go to a police academy. We can start building up.”
Dorsey also says deferred retirement will ease the need to pay overtime, which will save money and reduce officer burnout. Prop F supporters say overtime has accounted for as much as 20 percent of SFPD salaries in recent years.
To correct flaws of the previous version of DROP, Prop F makes higher ranking officers – from lieutenant up to chief – ineligible for delayed retirement. “You don’t want people at the brass level to postpone their retirement, you want them out of here,” Dorsey said. “The ambitious cops who want those jobs, that’s their promotion opportunity.”
Given current police staffing levels and hiring rates, DROP will likely not reduce SFPD’s cost of hiring in the short term.
City Controller Greg Wagner
Eligible members must be at least 50 years old, have served on the force for 25 years or more, and be in the rank of officer, sergeant, or inspector. They must remain actively working, and agree to do neighborhood patrol work or conduct investigations.
The measure would also make three big changes to reporting and transparency. First, it would amend the city charter to redefine “full-duty sworn officer” to mean a full-time officer, with some exclusions. While the police chief is currently required to report the number of full-duty sworn officers every two years to the Police Commission, that would shift to every three years. Prop F would also require a commission report on staffing goals every year to the Board of Supervisors.
‘A problem that doesn’t exist‘
Prop F opponents aren’t swayed by promises of a better DROP and call it “wasteful, ineffective and unfair.”
District 9 Sup. Hillary Ronen tells The Frisc that in March 2023 the board, including Ronen, approved $166 million in raises and retention bonuses for officers at different career stages. It was “the biggest retention plan in the city’s history,” according to the opposition argument, bumping senior officer salaries up to 20 percent by 2026.
Ronen says Prop F would add more incentives, boosting some salaries to nearly $500,000 a year “before even allowing the [2023] incentive to work.”
Ronen was so incensed at her colleague Aaron Peskin’s maneuvers to put Prop F on the ballot this summer that she stepped down as a committee chair in protest.
“Given current police staffing levels and hiring rates, DROP will likely not reduce SFPD’s cost of hiring in the short term,” according to City Controller Greg Wagner.
The controller’s office again flagged the program for its price tag: between $600,000 and $3 million in the first year. In subsequent years, the impact could range from saving about $300,000 to costing as much as $3 million annually by the fifth year. Estimates from the San Francisco Employees Retirement System found similar costs.
If San Francisco needs more police, paying a few million dollars more per year doesn’t seem like a shocking outlay. But opponents cast doubt on Prop F’s ability to help restaff the force. Costs will ultimately depend on retirement decisions of individual police officers, a figure that is currently unknown — shedding light on another of Ronen’s concerns with the measure.
“It’s unclear it’ll even help the problem,” says Ronen, who notes there’s no data yet on whether the 2023 pay raise has boosted retention. “We’re potentially solving a problem that doesn’t exist and paying a bunch of money for it, where that’s not even the place where we’re losing most officers.”
Department of Human Resources officials noted at a recent hearing that the largest loss of officers is among those on the job for only six or seven years — not 25.
Ronen was also skeptical that Prop F would reduce overtime. “It’s true, we spend way too much on overtime, but … this doesn’t add any officers,” she said. “So if we’re not adding officers, we’re going to spend the same amount on overtime.” (Dorsey argues that SFPD, while deferring retirement, can also “aggressively recruit” and add more officers.)
Coming out of the pandemic, even stalwart progressives like Ronen and board president Aaron Peskin (a main Prop F supporter and candidate for mayor) agree that SF needs more cops. The only supervisors not backing F are Ronen, Preston, and Shamann Walton.
SF also needs more nurses, 911 operators, and mental health workers. Despite warnings, the supervisors and mayors crafted a record $15.9 billion budget over the summer even as tax revenues continue to fall. San Francisco’s budget crisis hasn’t fully kicked in, but with Prop F and other pension-related measures this year, voters are being asked to make budget choices right now.