Much of San Francisco’s police fleet is so aged—about 10 years for some cruisers—that the city spends roughly $4 million per year in maintenance alone. Like attrition in staffing, police vehicles must be chronicled and switched-out accordingly but the city has not kept an attuned ear to command staff and police union requests to replace archaic and unsafe police cruisers.
The San Francisco mayor asserts the city’s operating budget is under review and must take into account a $200 million accounting deficit.
Despite the city’s purported budget woes, San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) President Martin Halloran blasted elected officials: “Let’s see what the Board of Supervisor does. Chances are they will do little to nothing to correct this.” I’m a believer in getting more sugar with honey anecdotes but I also believe there is blood in the San Francisco Bay…and the frenzy is not a playful one among old chums.
The San Francisco PD police fleet replacement requests falling on deaf ears have mounted over several years whereby many once-capable cruisers become mere sidelined couches. A trickle of replacement police cars Band-Aid a festering wound.
In either case, it is admirable for a police union to go to bat for its officers’ needs. As in all jurisdictions, inherent liabilities in law enforcement are ubiquitous and foolishly made exponentially vulnerable stemming from seeming inattention and/or lackadaisical city leadership. Addressing such a problem belies liberal elected officials in charge of the purse strings failing to do the right thing for the ultra protection of its constituents. The result is a typical power-play with lives on the line.
Marty Halloran, the San Fran police union leader, shook the dirty laundry for the local media, saying, we “brought this to the attention of the media because sometimes certain elected officials only pay attention to a problem if it is on the 6 o’clock news.” Indeed, a finger wag in front of the cameras may squeeze juice (funds) from the political lemons.
To illustrate the problem, Halloran cited an example he encountered: “Yesterday, I saw a SFPD radio car parked near the Hall of Justice. This vehicle looked like it was recently in a demolition derby contest. I asked the officers assigned to the vehicle about it. Sarcastically, they told me that ‘It is the pride of the fleet at Central.'” KRON4 News reported that several SFPD cruisers are over 100,000 miles and took their cameras in a few with close to 130,000 miles with junk-yard-ready appearances.
As to the liberal political air, Erielle Davidson recently wrote a piece for The Federalist titled “San Francisco Is Suffering From The Excesses Of Its Own Liberalism” in which she recounts urban decay from personal experience. Of San Fran’s political muscle, Davidson says, “San Francisco, one of the richest cities in the country and home to a booming center of intellectual capital, has suffered from the excesses of its own liberalism. Bloated and inefficient spending, combined with a gross shortage of housing only worsened by rent-control antics and a fat city bureaucracy, has left a city in utter disrepair.”
Like any sanitation department vehicle, requisite and avid use is surely going to take its toll sooner than later. It’s the nature of the waste-collecting business which requires constancy stop/go motion for static removal of mounting garbage. Yet, unlike sanitation services, police forces are a 24/7/365 operation engendering paramount logistical upkeep of mobility.
In San Francisco’s specific situation, flat planes are a fantasy. The homes are built on steep grades which, for homeowners in a stupor, means stepping off the front stairs could result in a nasty tumble down the oddly-angled sidewalk or street. Now imagine the San Fran police fleet trying to brake in downward slopes while conversely revving horsepower upward…in a seeming cycle of slow/fast and stop/go machinations. Expedited toll?
Just when you think you have arrived at a terminus, it starts all over again. What goes up must come down and vice versa. Operating a motor vehicle on San Francisco’s unique hilly terrain does not bode well for any car, let alone a police cruiser running code (emergency mode). Bottoming-out must be so routine for cops that the thrill is gone. It’s not the cops’ fault for navigating on a landscape that is unforgiving to the police fleet. And that same difficult terrain posing a hindrance is exacerbated by dilapidated and dying police cruisers which got that way because of the bipolar geography.
An antiquated and ill-suited police fleet defaults to a gross deficiency for public safety provisions as well as officer safety protocols. Union president Halloran summed it up well when he said,”…officers are not able to get to that cry for help from our residents or to that 10-25 [distress signal] called by our fellow officers.”
A case in point was highlighted by Halloran who recounted last year’s Keystone Kop-like instance whereby San Francisco cops en route to an emergency call were stranded in an overused police car which stalled while “running hot.” The lights/siren wound-down to a belch. The alternative? Those police officers had to commandeer a citizen’s car to respond the rest of the way. Somehow police and a makeshift Uber does not seem to jibe.
That fiasco was publicized via media outlets yet still…city hall remained tight-lipped regarding urgent vehicle replacement and, more importantly, perils posed to the public. If cops can’t get there, what good is calling 9-1-1?
Disrepair
SFPOA’s Halloran continues to make media rounds, colorizing it publicly, decrying to news reporters how battered the police fleet is: “The lights and sirens don’t work, the computers don’t work, the loudspeakers don’t work.”
Besides endemic public- and officer-safety principles, concerns are drawn for which a legal entity can not overlook. Each state has motor vehicle laws legislated to help govern every automobile on the roadways. Those laws certainly apply to the police who are charged with enforcing traffic codes to ensure motor vehicle safety. So what happens when police vehicles are ill-equipped, deemed unfit, and not roadworthy? They are sidelined. Rules are rules. And that creates a public safety nail-biter.
The fewer police cruisers available to respond to the public’s emergent needs equates to delayed response time. In-progress calls—perhaps involving violent individual(s)—means the police are not going to get there in any decent time to preclude hostility and/or apprehend violator(s). Would you care to live in a city limping along with dire public safety circumstances?
Given San Francisco’s reported budget woes, perhaps the city can entertain other options such as community involvement and patronage. After all, the police fleet dilemma is a public entity serving some private demographics who nonetheless deserve to be rest assured. Other jurisdictions which found themselves in similarly dire predicaments were salvaged by private sector donations.
The only tricky part in such a government/business construct is the potential expectation of favoritism from police officials, should misdeeds arise on the floors of corporate America involving suited characters who retain accounting records reflecting how much they revived the police force. Nowadays, city officials and police executives should know better than to simply handshake such a Hail Mary. If any semblance of a wink accompanies that handshake, run for the nearest restroom and wash your hand vigorously; get that curse down the drain and don’t look back.
In this public/private concept, surely, a contract should be explicitly drawn and endorsed by all parties. Personally, I do not favor such an arrangement at all; it beckons accusations of impropriety and leaves the impression of special considerations in which no law enforcement agency ought to partake. But one hard-hit and socioeconomically starved metropolis found solace in such a private venture.
Private Funding?
In March 2013, the city of Detroit lived what San Francisco is reportedly experiencing now: A beleaguered economy resulting in an aged and urban blight-looking fleet of public safety vehicles. So decrepit was Detroit that, while bankruptcy was on the table, the city pulled up its boot straps and eventually created The Blight Authority. For a government, it doesn’t get any more transparent than that.
The particular workaround for the Detroit Police Department was facilitated by private donations from local businesses and major corporations. The philanthropic method granted replacement of Detroit PD’s antiquated and unsightly police cruisers with brand-new ones at no cost to the city (taxpayer). That is symbolic of how a jurisdiction is perceived by its constituents and how supportive the climate may be towards law enforcement. Albeit unorthodox and having a dubious appearance, it nevertheless saved the police force from pushing rusted hulks of police cars down the streets. Hopefully, such an arrangement won’t come back to bite them in the bumpers.
Having never visited there, I’ve no idea how local poles are in San Francisco. But I can assess from multiple reading excursions among various media entities in and around San Fran that the political climate may be hot to the touch on certain days and cold on others. If that bodes well or not pertaining to private funding allocations donated to the city—specifically its public safety forces—I do not know.
After all, this is a metropolis environment which has yet to arm its officers with Tasers; they are still hammering out policy. OpsLens published a piece on the infighting infrastructure a few months ago, navigating the politics entangling its Taser policy and how it has languished for well over one year. That, too, can be construed as an officer safety factor. While members of the public rail against lethal use of force by police, San Fran’s roughly 2,200 cops won’t have a chance to abate any of that angst without the intended tool to accomplish such a goal. Not their fault, either.
It is incredulous to not have modern-day police technology on the duty belts and in the hands of law enforcement officers anywhere. To not even have adequate (safe) mobility to field calls for service is an even more remote contention, but it prevails in the city by the bay.
The swirling political undercurrent encountered by the San Francisco Police Department has been unforgiving for decades, as reported in the San Francisco Examiner: “Traditionally, The City’s moderate faction favors increased police spending, while the progressive faction tempers spending on cops against other needs like social services.”
At least the San Fran cops have a designated hitter (union) batting on their behalf. KRON4 reported that union boss Halloran is bellowing for city officials’ ears to hear: The “problem has not been fixed last year, or the year before, and unless they make some serious changes, the problem will continue.” Does it take the death of a cop or citizen before corrective measures are implemented? Unquestionably, that rhetoric is reality no one could afford.
