Mark Farrell wants more cops on San Francisco’s streets, no matter what age.
Farrell, the former mayor turned mayoral hopeful, introduced a proposal this week that would allow more police officers to not only defer their retirements but return from them, serving on the force while still collecting their pensions.
Doing so would require voters to approve amendments to the City Charter, an effort Farrell promises to lead if elected mayor over Mayor London Breed and a slate of other challengers in November.
Farrell, who served as mayor for six months in 2018 following the sudden death of former Mayor Ed Lee, is one of several candidates challenging Breed in her quest for a second full term. With a potential Police Officers Association endorsement up for grabs and public safety still a central issue for voters, each candidate is jockeying to make their case.
Created by 2008’s Proposition B, the Deferred Retirement Option Program allowed officers with at least 25 years of service and who were at least 50 years of age to stay on the job while their retirement benefits were deposited in an interest-bearing account. It was abandoned in 2011 amid concerns over cost, with the city controller estimating that it would be cheaper to train and hire new cops than keep older ones on board.
Farrell said he envisions deferred retirement as a straightforward way to stem the staffing losses at the police department at a time when public safety is a priority issue for San Franciscans and the SFPD is likely years from reaching full staffing levels.
“This is not a silver bullet, but allows us, as we bolster our ranks through police academy classes and lateral recruitment, the ability to retain experienced police officers in our neighborhoods on patrol,” Farrell told The Examiner in an interview this week.
His opponents in the race quickly highlighted flaws in Farrell’s plan, including its cost and the years it could take to actually implement.
Breed’s campaign noted that she plans to fully staff the department with more than 2,000 officers before Farrell could realistically place his measure on the ballot. Should he win office, the next city election would be in 2026.
“By that time, we'll definitely be at a much better place with policing than we already are right now,” Breed said.
Farrell’s proposal comes as San Francisco’s elected leaders and candidates for office float an array of ideas to rectify The City’s dearth of police officers. The department's size has fallen to about 1,500 full-time sworn officers, its lowest staffing level in at least the past 10 years.
Supervisors sparred earlier this year over a proposal to establish new police staffing minimums. The resulting ballot measure spearheaded by mayoral candidate and Supervisor Ahsha Safai — which would have required voters to approve a future tax measure in order to fund recruitment efforts — was summarily rejected by voters this month.
Breed committed in her State of the City address this month to hire 200 in the next year and reach “full police staffing” within three years.
She’s touted a renewed interest in the department from aspiring officers, with the next academy classes seeing more recruits than any since the pandemic. She took special care to thank those “who led these efforts, including our Police Chief Bill Scott,” whom Farrell has promised to fire promptly if elected to office.
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The new police union contract, negotiated by Breed’s administration, raised San Francisco’s starting officer pay to $112,000 — the highest of any major city — and she’s confident the department is on the right track.
“The [deferred retirement] program is extremely expensive and in light of where we are with our budget challenges, it's just not the way to go,” Breed said, referring to the massive budget deficit The City will be forced to close this year.
Under Farrell’s proposal, the program would be expanded to more cops, but it would require them to be on patrol — and receive entry-level pay — no matter their rank. Though an exact cost estimate hasn’t been produced, his campaign is confident it’s affordable given the extreme amount of money the understaffed department pays its officers to work overtime shifts.
Farrell acknowledged that deferred retirement is not a long-term solution to the department’s structural staffing issues — but, he said, it would offer a short-term boost.
He excoriated Breed for announcing a plan in 2020 — following widespread social unrest spurred by the murder of George Floyd — to redirect $120 million from the police budget into support for Black communities, which he believes tanked department morale.
The outcome of that effort is complicated. Although The City did launch the Dreamkeeper Initiative, the police department’s budget is substantially larger today than it ever was before 2020.
“When we redirected the resources, not just from the police department but from other agencies, we did so making it clear that we are going to really make an investment in the African American community through the Dream Keeper initiative,” Breed said. “But we also did so without taking away any of our police officers.”
Still, Farrell believes the mayor’s 2020 pronouncement disincentivized recruits from signing up.
“This mayor has turned her back to the police department multiple times, siphoned off $120 million from their budget two years ago, and continues to ask for budget cuts,” Farrell said. “It has not been a mayor that has supported our law enforcement in San Francisco, and we need change in leadership at the top.”
Breed’s administration has continually pointed out that San Francisco is not alone among major cities in facing a staffing crisis.
Since Farrell’s policy announcement this week, his opponents have questioned his record on working with the police department.
In 2018, when Farrell was mayor, the San Francisco Police Officers Association lamented that Farrell was seemingly disinterested in working with the union to negotiate a new contract that was ultimately signed later that year.
“Although we have offered movement, we have been stalled and obstructed by the City decision makers (DHR Micki Callahan, Mayor Mark Farrell, etc.) who were either non-engaged or absent from the entire process,” Martin Halloran, the POA’s president at the time, wrote in a blog post.
The Police Officers Association did not return a request for comment by press time.
