City Manager’s Office Criticized : Report on Police Stalls Panel

Since last month’s slaying of yet another San Diego police officer, the City Council Public Services and Safety Committee has been anxious to act on a 9-month-old plan that would enlarge the 1,300-member Police Department by 50%.

On Wednesday, the committee sat down intending to work on the proposal. So when Deputy City Manager Sue Williams said her office wasn’t quite ready with the necessary information, and asked that the matter be tabled the response, to say the least, was unusual.

Council members, along with a lawyer for the San Diego Police Officers Assn. who was present, publicly lambasted the city manager’s office for what the lawyer termed “an apparent lack of concern” over the safety of San Diego police officers.

“We believe that the cop on the street needs a showing of good faith that the city manager cares,” said Chris Ashcraft, the POA attorney. “This inaction isn’t helping.”

Councilman Bill Mitchell, who has led the effort to employ more officers, was equally miffed. “This sabotages efforts to get . . . new officers on the department,” he snapped.

Councilman Mike Gotch, who chairs the Public Services and Safety Committee, grudgingly agreed to Williams’ request and scheduled a special meeting May 8 to review the expansion proposal.

“Will the report be ready by then?” he asked tersely.

Williams said it would.

Wednesday’s episode evidenced the apparently increasing fears on the City Council’s part that San Diego’s crime problems, despite declining statistics, pose a growing threat to civilians, police officers and others paid to enforce the city’s laws.

During Wednesday’s meeting, the committee directed that the city’s civil service and personnel departments review a proposal that would establish a municipal park ranger service to patrol San Diego’s major recreational areas. Under that proposal, lifeguards would be designated as park rangers and would be allowed to carry batons and Mace.

The same proposal, to be reviewed at the committee’s May 8 meeting, would authorize police officers to patrol the waters of Mission Bay. Unarmed members of the Mission Bay Harbor Patrol now handle that job.

In addition, committee members requested that police administrators explore ways to station more personnel in Balboa Park, where vehicle thefts and car burglaries are flourishing.

Assistant Police Chief Robert Burgreen warned that the Police Department already is stretched thin--a fact not lost on the committee.

“I’m talking about an augmentation, not draining existing resources,” Gotch noted.

Less than a week after the July, 1984, McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, council members led by Mitchell tentatively proposed a major expansion of the Police Department to provide better community service and more-adequate officer protection.

Mitchell advocated hiring 677 new officers, a figure that would strengthen the force to two police officers for every 1,000 San Diego residents. The present ratio stands at about 1.52 officers per 1,000 residents--a ratio considerably lower than most major U.S. cities, according to Mitchell.

But while the per-capita number of police in San Diego has consistently been lower than that in other major cities, the Police Department’s mortality rate in recent years has outdistanced virtually every other large community. Ten San Diego police officers have been killed since 1977; three have been slain since September.

After the slaying of patrolman Thomas E. Riggs on March 31, the Police Department established an in-house task force to spend at least three months determining why its mortality rate is among the nation’s highest.

The task force’s first meeting is scheduled for Monday.

Burgreen told the committee on Wednesday that the Police Department is at a loss to explain why “our officers are being killed . . . . That’s why we implemented this study.”

Councilman Ed Struiksma, himself a former San Diego motorcycle patrolman, asked Burgreen whether the department shouldn’t order all of its officers to wear bulletproof vests. Although such vests are standard issue, wearing them is not mandatory. Riggs was not wearing a vest when he was shot in the chest.

Burgreen said that many officers choose to go without their vests because they are often uncomfortable, particularly in warm weather. He noted that Police Chief William B. Kolender is considering the vest issue, but has made no decision.