City Council and community leaders are criticizing proposals to help close San Diego’s gaping budget deficit by cutting police overtime by $13 million and eliminating five detective jobs.
Critics says the police overtime cut could significantly worsen response times because they would come as the department faces a rash of vacancies that will force officers to work overtime to cover many patrols.
The detective cuts are facing backlash primarily because three of the detectives focus on prostitution while a new hotspot for that activity that has recently emerged on Dalbergia Street in Barrio Logan.
Police Chief Scott Wahl said he is proposing the overtime cuts because there aren’t other places to cut. But he told council during budget hearings this week that overtime is the first thing he’d restore if given the chance.
“Overtime is our lifeblood right now with the staffing shortages we face,” Wahl said.
The department has 165 vacancies — 1,873 officers when the city’s staffing model calls for 2,038 — and that’s expected to grow quickly with 35 officers slated to retire or leave for other reasons in June.
Jared Wilson, president of the labor union representing city police officers, said the situation is dire.
“Patrol staffing is already at critically low levels, resulting in unacceptable and dangerously long response time to 9-1-1 calls,” Wilson said.
Because the department has long faced staffing shortages, Wahl said officials have learned to live with a smaller number of officers and now consider the current staffing about 60 officers short, rather than 165.
But he stressed the current level is a bare-bones level of staffing that the city should not go below.
“That staffing level does not meet our response times,” said Wahl, adding that it means particularly long delays for non-emergency calls. “It just means we will get to your call at some point today.”
Council said it’s easy to criticize overtime because it sounds like extra pay doled out because of mistaken staffing decisions. But they stressed that it typically means crucial patrols are getting filled.
“The cut is actually more significant than I think folks realize,” Councilmember Kent Lee said. “That translates to officers that would typically be out (on patrol).”
Councilmember Marni von Wilpert said the department’s roughly $50 million annual budget for overtime is easier to understand when placed in context.
Since 2006, police calls have jumped by a third — from 518,000 to 687,000 — while the number of Police Department employees has dropped from 2,628 to 2,558 over that time.
San Diego has about 1.3 police officers for every 1,000 residents, far below the national average of 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents.
Council President Joe LaCava said the city should consider renaming overtime to clarify its role in law enforcement.
“It’s you delivering public safety patrols where they are needed when they are needed,” he said. “I really wish we could call it something else.”
But police overtime has long been criticized for its budget-busting impact because the department almost always ends up with more overtime hours than predicted before a budget year began.
The city’s independent budget analyst praised Wahl’s plan to rein in overtime but also expressed some doubt the chief could successfully implement it.
“These steps toward managing overtime spending are certainly a positive development,” said Baku Patel, an IBA analyst.
Wahl’s plan includes establishing a new staffing unit to centralize overtime planning and a new policy that “extension of shift” overtime will only be approved when absolutely necessary and only up to a pre-authorized limit per each police unit.
While the overtime cut is described as only $1.1 million in the mayor’s draft budget, Patel said $12.8 million is a more accurate number.
That’s because the police overtime budget for the ongoing fiscal year has risen to $56.2 million, and Wahl is proposing a cut to $45.3 million — a difference of $10.9 million.
Patel said pay raises slated to kick in July 1 will make that $10.9 million more like $12.8 million.
Patel said he doubts whether the police overtime budget can be cut that much, especially with the department’s attrition rate expected to jump about 15 percent during the new fiscal year — from 12 to 13 departures per month to 14 to 15 per month.
The police pay raises — 4% for sworn officers and 5% for civilian personnel — may create the mistaken impression that Wahl isn’t making cuts.
Those raises increase the department’s annual budget by $29 million to $702 million, but the proposed budget includes $7 million in operational cuts.
Included in those are five of the department’s 322 detectives, including one vice detective focused on graffiti and three vice detectives focused on prostitution.
Councilmember Vivian Moreno said the timing on the prostitution detectives seems awful, with prostitution appearing to have gotten worse in recent months on Dalbergia Street in Barrio Logan.
Wahl agreed the cuts were regrettable but said he plans to have officers from other parts of the city participate in the undercover stings needed to break up prostitution there.
He said he’s hopeful for the prospects of new proposed state legislation that would restore the power of officers to warn someone loitering to move along to another location.
But Wahl also expressed frustration that some previous stings haven’t had the desired impact because he said the city attorney’s office hasn’t followed through with prosecutions.
Wahl said the threat of prosecution is the only leverage officers have to persuade people suspected of prostitution to reveal who their pimps are.
Moreno said she’s frustrated that National City has appeared largely to have solved a prostitution problem that the city faced a few blocks away from Barrio Logan.
But Wahl said National City is still struggling. Wahl said the two cities push the problem back and forth across the border with stings that prompt the prostitutes to move — but only temporarily.
The police cuts are part of Mayor Todd Gloria’s plan to close a projected $258 million deficit in the city’s $2.2 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The mayor is scheduled to release a revised version of his draft budget Wednesday, May 14.
