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Why not let the Patrol Specials do what they
do best
and are well trained to do–at half the cost of the 10B officer?
Dear Editor:
On June 28 your Guest Editor Judi Iranyi
pointed out how “San Francisco’s budget for social service programs,
permanent housing, and homeless shelters is already stretched to the
maximum. As the economy worsens, the budget for social services will be
further reduced and some programs even eliminated while more San
Franciscans will need those services.”
Lack of resources for social programs serving the less
powerful in our city is exacerbated because an excess of taxpayer funds
is being unnecessarily spent to fund other programs which could be
provided at much less expense. Support for those other programs is
clearly influenced by entrenched political forces including organized
labor. For example, one has only to note the practice of “pension
spiking” especially in the police and fire departments, exposed recently
by the July Grand Jury report. Allowing career civil servants to add on
excess overtime assignments and earnings to the last three years of
their salary upon which their annual pension is determined after
retirement, is just plain wrong. It burdens many generations of San
Franciscans to come, not to mention taking away resources needed for
present San Franciscans in other needed social programs.
Part of the problem is also clearly due to aggressive
marketing efforts by the SF Police Department-administered (with
taxpayer funds) off-duty police officer program known as the “10B”
program. The 10B program is supported by politicians for no apparent
reason than obtaining the endorsement of the powerful police union,
because it certainly is not supported by logic or by the necessity of
spending every penny in our severely cash-strapped city with utmost care
and wisdom.
The 10B program provides off-duty officers to citizens
who wish to pay for extra policing, but it bills up to $109 per hour.
The SF Examiner in two articles published this past April exposed the
threat of these high costs and requirement for advance payment of fees
by our city’s street festival organizers needing extra policing
services. Compare that hourly rate and upfront payment, to the extremely
cost-effective and highly desirable additional policing service provided
for 161 continuous years in San Francisco, by the Patrol Special Police,
of whom I am one satisfied residential client in the Glen Park district.
The Patrol Specials typically provide a month’s service in advance of
billing their private clients. They charge about $48 per hour, and
crime-prevention policing is their normal daily business, not high
level, costly law enforcement. They are never exhausted after first
putting in an 8-hour shift at the police district office before
beginning duty, and never tempted to shirk providing their normal
service in order to rush off to a higher-paid off-duty job. They are
motivated to do their best because they are themselves small business
owners who are contracted for by merchants, residents, and organizations
who if not pleased, can easily terminate service. Not so the civil
servant, as we all know.
In addition, the Patrol Special Police provide a far
different and more effective type of neighborhood policing service than
the SFPD officer can ever provide–or should be expected to provide. We
need our SFPD officers who for the most part are overworked and
honorable, providing law enforcement to control the development of
gangs, address drug proliferation, and pursue career criminals and the
newly developing American terrorism. We don’t need them “learning how to
do community policing” when the Patrol Specials already know how to do
it, do it from the start of their service, and are already trusted
members of our neighborhoods. We need the Patrol Special Police serving
limited geographic neighborhoods and not required to run off to answer
citizen calls or fill out paperwork or turn in statistics of how many
tickets they wrote at the end of their shift. We need the Patrol
Specials focused on early intervention in quality-of-life crimes that
only lead to more serious crimes, listening to their clients and the
community, and respecting the particular nature and culture of their
service area, as is the very nature of their service.
Why not let the Patrol Specials do what they do best
and are well trained to do–at half the cost of the 10B officer?
And come to think of it, why not demand that our
politicians immediately pursue a policy in San Francisco that
affirmatively supports the growth of and public knowledge about the
availability and effectiveness of the Patrol Specials, and encourage our
public police to work in partnership with these officers? It’s high time
in this city to move away from careless or intentional efforts to
marginalize or misrepresent what the Patrol Special Police do. Perhaps
the leadership of our new Police Chief George Gascon will pave the way
for logic to come back to the process of addressing the safety needs of
San Franciscans.
Information about the Patrol Special Police may be
obtained on their website:
http://www.sfpatrolspecpolice.com and by
contacting their professional Association President, Officer Jane Warner
at
sfpatrol@earthlink.net (415) 559-9955,
584 Castro Street, PMB 606, San Francisco, CA 94114
Sincerely,
Ann Grogan, J.D.
San Francisco
August 19, 2009
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