Deep dive on the SFPD mandatory staffing minimum (2020)

Note: This Deep Dive is from 2020. Later that year, Prop E passed and repealed the provision discussed here from the City Charter.

There will be a new proposition in February–March 2024, Proposition B, which proposes to put in a new staffing minimum. If you’re looking for info on that, check out our 2024 Deep Dive on Proposition B.

Executive summary

The City Charter currently (as of July 2020) requires SFPD to employ 1,971 full-duty sworn officers.

1,971 is a number of uncertain provenance; what we do know is that it was first applied in a 1979 consent decree, and that it’s an arbitrary hard floor that costs the City millions of dollars per year and hamstrings the City from undertaking any serious reform or police budget cuts, much less even considering any movement toward abolition.

There’s a measure in the works that may be placed by the Board of Supervisors on the November ballot that would repeal the mandatory minimum, replacing it with a process for the Chief and the Police Commission to advise the Board of Supervisors on what they think staffing levels should be.

[Edit December 2023: That measure, Proposition E, passed in the general election 2020.]

What’s the status quo as of July 2020?

The San Francisco City Charter contains the following passage, under Section 4.127, the section that creates the San Francisco Police Department:

POLICE STAFFING. The police force of the City and County shall at all times consist of not fewer than 1,971 full duty sworn officers. The staffing level of the Police Department shall be maintained with a minimum of 1,971 full duty sworn officers thereafter. That figure may be adjusted pursuant to Section 16.123.
All officers and employees of the City and County are directed to take all acts necessary to implement the provisions of this section. The Board of Supervisors is empowered to adopt ordinances necessary to effectuate the purpose of this section including but not limited to ordinances regulating the scheduling of police training classes.
Further, the Commission shall initiate an annual review to civilianize as many positions as possible to maximize police presence in the communities and submit that report to the Board of Supervisors annually for review and approval.
The number of full duty sworn officers in the Police Department dedicated to neighborhood policing and patrol for fiscal year 1993-1994 shall not be reduced in future years, and all new full duty sworn officers authorized for the Police Department shall also be dedicated to neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations.

The Charter also contains an entire section, 16.123, on “civilian positions within the Police Department:”

SEC. 16.123. CIVILIAN POSITIONS WITHIN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT.
(a) The Controller shall review sworn and civilian staffing needs in the San Francisco Police Department. As part of that review, the Controller shall review police staffing levels and patterns in comparable jurisdictions, and best practices regarding police staffing.
The Controller and the Chief of Police shall also audit all positions in the Police Department and identify those positions that must be filled by sworn officers and those that could be filled by civilian personnel or that, under best practices in other jurisdictions, typically are filled by civilian personnel.
In conducting these studies, the Controller and the Chief of Police shall consult with the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Analyst, the Director of the Department of Human Resources, and a representative of the bargaining unit representing sworn members of the Police Department.
Upon the completion of these studies, the Controller and the Chief of Police shall forward to the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors a list of positions in the Police Department currently filled by sworn officers that could be filled by civilian personnel.
Upon submission of the list of positions to the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors, the provisions of subsection (a) shall expire and the City Attorney shall cause them to be deleted from future publications of the Charter, and shall cause the remaining provisions to be relettered accordingly.
(b) Positions may only be converted from sworn to civilian as they become vacant. No sworn officer shall be laid off in order to convert a position to civilian personnel.
If the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors convert positions from sworn officers to civilian personnel through the budget process, the minimum staffing level set in Section 4.127 shall be reduced by the same number of positions if the Controller and the Chief of Police shall jointly certify that the reduction will not decrease the number of police officers dedicated to neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations and will not substantially interfere with the delivery of police services or the ability of the Police Department to protect the public in the event of an emergency.

It’s unclear whether we’re currently above the mandatory minimum; the best answer we can come up with is “probably.”

SFPD’s presentation to the Police Commission on June 10, 2020 puts the current budgeted number of full-time equivalent (FTE) sworn positions at 2,685. Not all of those positions are necessarily filled, and of those that are, not all of those officers are necessarily on full duty.

At the same Commission meeting, the Chief presented a staffing report commissioned from Matrix Consulting Group. That report estimated the number of sworn FTEs (over a period of time starting from February 2019) at 1,911, but didn’t include the Airport Bureau. There, too, not all of those officers are necessarily on full duty.

What’s the history of this Charter provision?

Section 4.127 was added to the Charter (under a different number and heading) by Proposition D in 1994’s primary election (Prop D). The text added by Prop D is as follows:

3.531-1 MINIMUM POLICE STAFFING LEVEL
(a) Not later than June 30, 1995, the police force of the City and County shall at all times consist of not fewer than 1,971 full duty sworn officers. The staffing level of the San Francisco Police Department shall be maintained with a minimum of 1,971 full duty sworn officers thereafter.
(b) All officers and employees of the City and County of San Francisco are directed to take all acts necessary to implement the provisions of this section. The board of supervisors is empowered to adopt ordinances necessary to effectuate the purpose of this section including but not limited to ordinances regulating the scheduling of police training classes.
(c) Further the San Francisco Police Commission shall initiate an annual review to civilianize as many positions as possible to maximize police presence in the communities and submit that report to the Board of Supervisors annually for review and approval.
(d) The number of full duty sworn officers in the Police department dedicated to neighborhood policing and patrol for fiscal year 1993–1994 shall not be reduced in future years, and all new full duty sworn officers authorized for the Police Department beginning with fiscal year 1994–1995 shall also be dedicated to neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations.

Prop D was passed by the voters in that election.

What does “civilianize” mean?

An employee of the police department can be either a civilian employee or a sworn officer. Sworn officers are those we typically think of as “police officers” or “peace officers,” and are more expensive than civilian staff. The Charter, due to Prop D, also requires sworn officers to be “dedicated to neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations.”

Civilianizing a position means reassigning work to a civilian employee. It can mean either shrinking the sworn force (transferring duties to civilians and closing out those sworn positions) or growing the civilian force (hiring new civilians) while maintaining the sworn force.

The Charter requires that “No sworn officer shall be laid off in order to convert a position to civilian personnel,” so shrinking the sworn force can’t be done by firing sworn officers—it can only be done as opportunities arise through sworn-officer attrition. And, of course, the sworn force can’t legally be shrunk below the mandatory minimum of 1,971 full-duty sworn officers.

The Charter also, due to Prop D, requires the City to “civilianize as many positions as possible” to ensure all sworn officers remain “dedicated to neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations.” Since the sworn force can’t legally shrink below Prop D’s mandatory minimum, the City can’t civilianize much except by growing the civilian workforce.

In practice, as far back as 1998, the Board of Supervisors had documented “a process of ‘reverse civilianization,’ in which an increasing number of sworn personnel are performing clerical, administrative and other functions that do not require peace officer status.”

What does “full duty” mean?

Full duty is the opposite of “modified duty,” also known as “light duty.” That’s defined by Department General Order 11.12, “Temporary Modified Duty/Reasonable Accommodation.”

For the purposes of the Prop D requirement, it means that the department will generally be required to employ more than 1,971 sworn officers. If an officer is injured and needs to go on modified duty, or retires or dies, that could bring the department below the mandatory minimum number of full-duty officers, in violation of the Charter.

Where does the 1,971 number come from?

In 1979, the City entered a consent decree following a 1973 lawsuit by Officers for Justice, joined by SFPOA, over gender and race discrimination within the department, including (among other complaints) a lack of upward mobility within the department, as well as hiring discrimination.

The consent decree “established the long term goal of increasing substantially the minority and female composition of the Police Department so that it more nearly reflects the racial, ethnic and sexual composition of the labor force of the City and County of San Francisco.”

Specifically, the 1979 consent decree stipulates:

(1) The City agrees that it shall by August 1, 1981, increase the number of sworn officers in the San Francisco Police Department to the full budgeted strength of 1971 persons, and shall maintain at least that level of staffing until at least August 1, 1984.

The consent decree lasted longer than that and went through various evolutions over the years, including a “banding” structure adopted in March of 1992.

It’s not clear how the parties to the suit arrived at the 1,971 figure, though we do know that it was the City that proposed it. The reference to “the full budgeted strength” may imply that it was simply how many sworn positions were allocated in SFPD’s budget circa 1979.

How does this mandatory staffing minimum affect San Francisco?

The March 1998 Phase II report says:

As a result, the Police Department is incurring as much as $2.24 million per year in excess personnel costs by using sworn personnel to perform administrative, technical support and/or other non-police functions. This practice can also have a demoralizing effect on existing civilian employees who are being paid less for performing similar functions. Additionally, hiring civilian employees with greater expertise in functions currently being performed by sworn personnel would improve productivity.

Fully implementing the provisions of Proposition D, through civilianization of non-police functions now performed by sworn personnel, could result in additional costs to the City of as much as $8.7 million annually because offsetting reductions in sworn staffing would be prohibited, despite the fact that such reductions would not affect the current level of sworn staffing actually performing police duties.

The Board of Supervisors should consider, as a policy matter, submitting a ballot measure to the electorate to amend Charter Section 4.127 (Proposition D) in order to facilitate the civilianization of sworn positions in the Police Department. Civilianization would enable the Police Department either to (a) realize savings of up to $2,242,618 per year without reducing the current level of police services; or (b) use this savings to hire an additional 46 Police Officers dedicated to community policing, patrol and investigations.

The SFPD has responsibility for policing at the airport partly in order to meet its staffing minimum. This was expressly part of the point back in 1996, and the Phase II report says that SFPD gained 153 sworn positions when airport policing was moved to SFPD in 1997.

More recently, callers at July 8 and July 9, 2020 Board of Supervisors committee meetings have attested to numerous incidents of swarms of cop cars arriving on scenes where nowhere near that many officers were needed, if any at all.

There’s also the broader issue of policing as substitute for social programs that prevent crime and promote public safety. We’ve divested from housing, education, healthcare including mental healthcare, and addiction treatment, and shoveled the money into policing. Then, when people are unhoused, can’t get a job, and are suffering, we criminalize them.

The Phase II report says the SFPD budget was $228.5 million in FY 1997–1998. Adjusted from 1998 to 2020 dollars, that’s roughly $359 million. The interim budget passed on June 30, 2020 allocated $736 million to SFPD—more than double its inflation-adjusted 1998 budget.

As hundreds of callers into the July 8 and 9 hearings, Defund SFPD Now’s talking points, and our own July 8 call script have all noted, there are plenty of other uses for that money.

What’s the proposed Charter amendment?

As of July 13, 2020, the proposed amendment would replace the arbitrary number with a requirement that every two years, “the Chief of Police shall transmit to the Police Commission a report describing the department’s current number of full-duty sworn officers and recommending staffing levels of full-duty sworn officers in the subsequent two fiscal years.” The Chief can also submit such reports in the years in between, at the Chief’s discretion.

Furthermore, “The Police Commission shall hold a public hearing regarding the Chief of Police’s staffing report by December 31 in every odd-numbered calendar year. The Police Commission shall consider the most recent report in its consideration and approval of the Police Department’s proposed budget every fiscal year, but the Commission shall not be required to accept or adopt any of the recommendations in the report.”

Most of what’s left remains intact, so the remainder of the work still falls to the Board of Supervisors. Instead of upholding an arbitrary minimum, they’d be fulfilling the recommendations of the Chief and the Police Commission, or rejecting those recommendations and doing something different.

The proposed measure would also delete this passage from the end of the section:

The number of full duty sworn officers in the Police Department dedicated to neighborhood policing and patrol for fiscal year 1993-1994 shall not be reduced in future years, and all new full duty sworn officers authorized for the Police Department shall also be dedicated to neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations.

The proposed measure would also delete a swath of language under Section 16.123 pertaining to civilianization. That language seems to have required the Controller, the Chief, the Budget Analyst, the Director of the Department of Human Resources, the POA, the Mayor, and the Board of Supervisors to prepare a list of sworn positions to be civilianized, and then automatically delete the same swath of language from the Charter. The fact that the language is still there to be deleted by the proposed measure suggests that the mandated review of sworn positions never happened or was never completed.

An amendment made at the July 9 hearing amended the measure to add a deletion within this passage:

Further, the Police Commission shall initiate an annual review to civilianize as many positions as possible to maximize police presence in the communities and submit that report to the Board of Supervisors annually for review and approval.

This deletion was demanded by an overwhelming majority of the public commenters in that hearing.

How does this relate to police reform and/or abolition?

The number of sworn officers can’t (legally) be reduced below the Charter-mandated minimum until the relevant provision is repealed. Police compensation is presumably determined by the POA contract, and is heavily influenced by the cost of living in the Bay Area and the desire to avoid a sequel to 1975’s SFPD strike, so the total cost of employing all those officers can’t be significantly reduced, either. And they can’t be reassigned to any other duties than “neighborhood community policing, patrol and investigations.”

If you want a smaller police department with less waste, less overpolicing, and more civilianization, you should support repealing the mandatory minimum.

If you want police staffing to be determined according to the City’s needs by the Board of Supervisors on advice from the Chief and the Police Commission, rather than by an arbitrary number set in stone more than four decades ago, you should support repealing the mandatory minimum.

If you want to slash SFPD’s budget in half, back to the inflation-adjusted equivalent of 1998 levels, and reinvest the $350 million+ savings in housing, mental healthcare, and other services that would prevent crime and save lives, you should support repealing the mandatory minimum.

If you want to abolish the SFPD and reinvest the $736 million savings in housing, mental healthcare, schools, and other services that would prevent crime and save lives, you should support repealing the mandatory minimum.

(The department could be abolished at a stroke by a different Charter amendment that repealed the entire section of the Charter that creates the department, but that would not be a careful dismantlement. Leaping directly from our current accumulated disinvestment in society and all the societal ills resulting therefrom into a world without police carries serious hazards. Police/prison abolitionists have always advocated building a world that doesn’t need police. Abolishing the police department alone does not do that complementary work.)

Ending the mandatory minimum does not, by itself, accomplish any of these things. It is a step in any of those directions, away from the status quo of a cemented armed force that cannot be legally reduced by any means except the very one being proposed: by putting this measure on the ballot and convincing voters to pass it.