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S.F. police report: homicides dip, property crime and overtime prompt staffing focus
Summary
Chief William Scott told the commission San Francisco ended 2017 with 56 homicides (down from 58 in 2016), reported a large rise in car burglaries and outlined staffing and overtime plans, including academy classes and reviews of mutual aid and special-event overtime.
San Francisco Police Department Chief William Scott reported Jan. 10 that the city ended 2017 with 56 homicides, down from 58 the previous year, and outlined several operational adjustments to address property and violent crime while managing staffing and overtime.
"We ended the year with 56 homicides, as compared to 58 year to date in 2016," Scott said, noting the department spent much of late 2017 without additional homicides and credited community partnerships and departmental effort for the decline. He emphasized that each statistic represents lives and families.
Scott said shootings and other violent crime were down slightly year to year but flagged property crime as a sharp challenge: the department recorded 30,980 car burglaries in 2017, a reported 24 percent increase over the prior year and a multi-year rise from approximately 15,000 in 2012. To address that trend the department has created a General Crimes Unit (48 investigators, 10 focused on property crime) and assigned at least one property-crime coordinator per district to better target multi-jurisdictional crews and recurring theft patterns.
On resources and staffing, Scott said SFPD had about 1,873 full-duty officers at the time of the meeting, compared with a 1,971 full-duty staffing target under the city charter. He said an academy class was underway and another scheduled in February, and that staffing analyses are being coordinated with the Controller’s Office and Supervisor Norman Yee’s staff as part of implementation of measures related to staffing levels.
Scott also reviewed overtime spending, saying the department had used about 55 percent of its overtime budget at roughly the midpoint of the fiscal year. He said a significant portion of that figure stemmed from reimbursable mutual-aid responses (notably the North Bay fires) and an unanticipated deployment for Patriot Prayer events; Scott said mutual-aid reimbursements should offset much of that cost.
Scott outlined prevention and outreach strategies including the ParkSmart campaign in tourist areas, enhanced foot beats and the use of data with the SFMTA to focus enforcement at high-risk corridors. He concluded by asking the public and partner agencies to remain engaged as the department pursues reductions in both violent and property crimes.
The commission received the report and asked for follow-up briefings on staffing analysis timelines and overtime accounting.
