San Francisco leaders are proposing a program to offer some veteran police officers hefty pay increases to entice them to keep working past their retirement.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department has been able to fill all some gaps with overtime, and recruitment is up along with applications.
“We are about 500 officers less than we need to be,” he said. “On the back end if we could slow down the stem of retirement, that’s the biggest impact of DROP.”
DROP is the deferred retirement option program. It could allow some officers to put off retirement up to five years in exchange for a pay boost.
“We will have higher compensation and some lower, but were talking about figures to the tune of an average officer will earn $437,000 in their first year, an average inspector $522,000,” said San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen.
Ronen agreed that there aren’t enough officers but believes offering “DROP” is the wrong policy, and opposed putting the issue on a ballot.
“Throwing money to pay obscene wages to the oldest officers on our force when we just did the exact same thing last year at a cost of $166 million to the city makes no sense,” she said.
San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey was in the majority who voted to let voters decide.
“The reality of what we’re facing right now in law enforcement is this most competitive environment for law enforcement in modern history and San Francisco in not unique to it,” he said.
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“If you’re resentful because a police officer is making a high salary what I would say is the understaffed police department is itself creating this environment, where people are making a ton on money overtime. We shouldn’t be in that situation the only reason we are relying on so much overtime is because of the police staffing crisis we are in.”
In the meantime, San Francisco Mayor London Breed pointed out that reforms have also made a difference in allowing police to focus on the most important issues. While the San Francisco Police Officers Association said in part the staffing crisis is real and is only getting worse.
