The next steps in the struggle over SFPD staffing

Dorsey, the former top spokesperson for the police department, successfully convinced voters that the proposal before them was not a genuine attempt to bolster the police department’s ranks, but rather a deceptive measure that would require a future tax to fund the department’s staffing efforts.

Now, Dorsey hopes to parlay that momentum as he looks to tackle police staffing in City Hall instead of the ballot, which is likely to be quite crowded in November with the presidential election and a bevy of other races on the horizon.

“My hope is that with some of my colleagues, the mayor, and everybody focused on their own elections, it will clarify the minds necessary to do the right thing and to make real progress toward a fully staffed police department,” Dorsey told The Examiner.

Instead, Dorsey announced last week that he plans to hold quarterly hearings to gather input from police and city officials about what tools they need to begin to recover from the yearslong decline in the department’s ranks. The SFPD's number of full-time, sworn police officers has declined from more than 1,800 in 2019 to about 1,500 today.

Dorsey said he hopes the Board of Supervisors and mayor have the political will to fund the department's needs to address its issues in the upcoming budget. This could mean funding a program to help improve officer retention as they navigate the police academy, or matching the hiring bonuses offered by neighboring departments.

Dorsey’s pitch to police: “Tell us what you need, and then I’m going to do everything I can to hold the board accountable and everyone in this building accountable.”

Waiting to hear what the department wants and then finding a way to fund it is the opposite of the approach Dorsey took last year when he introduced the police staffing measure that he ultimately disowned.

Dorsey’s initial vision was to reestablish a police staffing minimum in the City Charter, which was stripped out through 2020’s overwhelmingly-approved Proposition E.

Not only did Dorsey want The City to establish a staffing goal, he also looked to force it to reserve a set amount of money for every officer short of that target to help fund recruitment efforts. The proposal didn’t delve into what that beefed-up recruitment might look like, leaving that to department leaders to figure out in the future.

Dorsey has repeatedly shown himself willing to throw money at the problem at a time when The City is facing a yawning budget deficit and Mayor London Breed has ordered departments citywide to prepare for steep budget cuts.

The fight over Prop. B was, at its heart, a fight over those dwindling resources.

Labor unions, which are actively negotiating new contracts with The City, were fearful that Dorsey’s concept would divert city money into police recruitment and thus necessitate cuts elsewhere, including to the departments where their members work.

Their champion, Supervisor Ahsha Safai, argued that Prop. B was a more fiscally responsible way to achieve Dorsey’s goal of fully staffing the police department. Safai successfully amended Dorsey’s initial proposal and won support from a thin majority of the Board of Supervisors to place Prop. B on the ballot.

Enraged by his defeat at the board, Dorsey led the charge against Prop. B on the ballot.

Early polling suggested Prop. B could have been successful, but Dorsey and his fellow opponents mounted a well-resourced campaign against it, outraising the campaign in support of the measure by a two-to-one margin.

“I knew that we would have a good outcome if I could make my case,” Dorsey said. “The question was whether and to what extent voters were paying attention. I felt like had it not been for the fact that we were in a relatively quiet, uncontested Democratic presidential primary, I would have been dead in the water.”

The measure failed at the ballot and proved successful in uniting progressives who view increased policing as the wrong way to address public safety issues and moderates who felt they shouldn’t need to pay more taxes to have more cops patrolling the streets. It ultimately lost, with 72% of votes cast against it.

An Examiner analysis of the precinct-level election results shows that Prop. B faced more opposition in The City’s wealthier areas, and where fewer residents of color live. The measure received majority support only in areas with median household incomes below the citywide average. Greater support for Prop. B was also correlated with higher Asian composition, suggesting greater approval within that community.

Mayor London Breed, meanwhile, committed in her State of the City address to achieving the full staffing level — which is a dynamic and nonbinding number based on demand — in three years. The City’s efforts have apparently paid off, with increased applicants from new officers and academy classes at their highest level in recent years.

“We've seen people come back to SFPD that left, we see lateral changes from other police stations,” Breed told The Examiner. “So we're starting to see an improvement, and I would say that it's coming directly from the officers themselves in terms of feeling supported and respected.”

But even if it does reach its stated-but-unofficial staffing goals, Dorsey could look to enshrine a target in the City Charter.

“I still think we will have to go back to voters at some point to have a minimum staffing level,” Dorsey said. “We should never be in a situation like we're in again, where we fell prey to activists and competing unions to prevent us from making progress.”