Chronicle’s Neilson’s Claim of Overstaffed SFPD Lacks Relevancy
She missed how the volume of tourists should drive SFPD staffing
On April 14, 2022, Chronicle data reporter Susie Neilson published an article on how the San Francisco Police Department might be overstaffed. Neilson opines:
San Francisco is one of the most highly policed cities in California. Academic research suggests that additional police officers often can reduce crime, but that other measures may have even greater impact. The number of sworn officers employed by the SFPD has stayed relatively steady from 2003 to 2019.
“Other measures may have greater impact” is a stealth endorsement of defunding SFPD.
Neilson’s dated and irrelevant comparisons
Here are some of the issues with Neilson article:
First, Neilson’s story is created on pre-2020 statistics, which is pre-George Floyd, which is before SFPD suffered a major exodus of personnel to surrounding agencies. Also, Neilson is writing a story during a critical time in the Chesa Boudin era based on data pertaining to before he was elected District Attorney. Her data was dated from the outset.
Second, Neilson conclusion is based on the ratio of police officers to every California city with a population greater than 100,000. Rialto and El Cajon are dissimilar to San Francisco in that they are so small, they do not have a professional sports franchise, and have never hosted something as large as a Super Bowl or national political party convention.
Third, on the similarity side, the only other California city to host multiple professional sports franchises, a Super Bowl, and a national convention is Los Angeles. Per Neilson, Los Angeles’ ratio of law enforcement to population is 25 per 10,000 residents, which is extremely close to San Francisco’s at 26 per 10,000 residents. Nothing earth shattering there!
What if Neilson had substituted other tourist-centric cities for Chula Vista, California?
So perhaps instead of comparing San Francisco to Chula Vista, we can compare San Francisco to similar cities that serve as popular tourist destinations. Per World Atlas, the top five U.S. cities that tourists visit are:
New York 10.2 million tourists
Miami 5.2 million tourists
Los Angeles 4.6 million tourists
Orlando 4.4 million tourists
San Francisco 3.3 million tourists
Here is the ratio of law enforcement to population for these more-similar cities:
(Notes: a) “LEO” represents law enforcement officers, b) these are all 2019 statistics, and c) “tourists” is a subset of “visitors,” which is a larger classification.)
Except for New York, the other four cities are all staffed within a percentage point of each other. New York, with 44 law enforcement officers per 10,000 residents, dwarfs San Francisco’s 26 officers per 10,000 residents by 70%. Perhaps that should have been the progressive Chronicle’s story.
How does New York’s staffing affect crime rates?
San Francisco lives up to its reputation as a haven for crime, with a crime rate 3-times New York’s crime rate. In 2019, one in 16 San Franciscan’s were the victim of a crime while in New York, only one in 49 residents were a victim of a crime. This New York statistic justifies San Francisco increasing the number of officers it hires instead of defunding or “reimagining” as the progressives advocate.
When a city portrays itself as a welcome crime target, it creates a cycle where crime begets crime. Every time an SFPD officer takes a police report, arrests someone, or has their bodycam video evaluated by a supervisor, they are taken off the streets. The removed presence of the officers creates a visible weakness to deterring crime.
Below is the ratio of the volume of crimes that each officer in a city must service.
San Francisco needs tourists
It is an understatement to say that, amongst tourists, the City has earned a reputation for extremely high crime rates.
I used absolute tourist visits to select the cities I compared to San Francisco. That requires clarification:
· New York’s 10.2 million represents only 125% of its population.
· San Francisco’s has 3.3 million tourists each year, which is almost 4 times our population.
· Orlando, which relies on Disneyworld, has 4.4 million tourists representing 1,500% of its population
Surprisingly, Orlando, which caters to family visitors, has the most similar crime rate as San Francisco. It is an indication that criminals tend to rely on unsuspecting tourists to meet their needs. On the other hand, New York seems to have prevented criminals from overfeeding on tourists by maintaining a greater ratio of police officers. This is a polar opposite interpretation to Neilson’s Chronicle article.
SFPD staffing post 2019
SFPD has been vague about its current staffing level. Statistics from the department have been clouded by the inclusion of officers assigned to the airport, injured officer, and civilians. I defer to SFPD Sergeant Rich Cibotti, who has written several articles about SFPD staffing:
The SFPD is Dying and No one Seems to Care and How to Conceal and Downplay Police Staffing Crisis. In the later article, Cibotti included the following graph that reflects more current personnel trends that Neilson’s ancient 2019 graph does not.
Cibotti’s graph:
Nielson’s graph:
It is not my intention to disparage Neilson. It is disquieting that her LinkedIn establishes that her education is in journalism, not data analysis. Similarly, SFPD’s Crime Strategist in charge of statistics has no education in statistical analysis.
SF’s government’ office of Economic and Workplace Development estimates that visitors, a larger classification than “tourists,” generated about $9 billion to the prepandemic SF economy. Residents’ should be concerned that if neither SFPD nor the Chronicle can accurately produce and analyze statistics, how can SFPD effectively assign personnel to the crime hot spots to save tourism, conventions, and our economy?