Proposal Would Add 440 Police to City Force

Responding to what police officials say is a city “turning more violent,” the city manager Wednesday unveiled a plan to significantly increase the number of San Diego police officers, along with several revenue-producing options to raise the more than $62 million needed to hire the new officers.

The proposals, outlined to members of the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee, drew favorable reactions, particularly after Police Department officials described them as the best remedy to fight rising crime in San Diego.

Assistant Police Chief Norm Stamper, noting that homicides, drug offenses, gang activity and other serious crimes are increasing rapidly, warned that the city’s relatively small police force is finding it difficult to keep up.

“This city is in fact turning more violent,” he said.

Despite the gloomy picture, some council members were hesitant to seek voter approval of a massive tax increase to raise the police-officer ratio from 1.62 sworn officers per 1,000 city residents to 2 officers per 1,000.

Under the proposal presented by the city manager’s office and the police hierarchy, $62.2 million would have to be raised to pay for phasing in 440 new officers, and equipment for them, over three years. Each year thereafter, $49.1 million would be needed to maintain that number of officers.

‘I Hate to Raise Taxes’

“I hate to raise taxes for what I see as a fundamental basic government service,” said Councilwoman Judy McCarty.

According to police statistics, San Diego is the seventh-largest city in the nation, but ranks ninth among the nation’s top cities in the number of officers protecting every 1,000 residents. In California, there are five cities--San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Long Beach and Oakland--that have higher officer-resident ratios.

“There simply are not enough of us,” Stamper said.

Increasing the size of the police force would also improve overall police services, he said. Police response times would be reduced by 1 to 2 minutes, more officers would be freed up to work on crime suppression and crime prevention programs, and specialized units, such as gang and drug details, would continue to operate full-force.

“If we can respond more quickly to hot priority crimes, we stand a much better chance of putting people in jail and ultimately prison,” he said.

City Manager John Lockwood, in a written report to the council committee, said 140 more non-sworn employees would be needed to support the new 440 officers. The Police Department now has 2,447 employees operating under a $128-million budget.

Lockwood listed several options for raising the money to pay for the new officers, pointing out that much of the money would be needed to build new and improved facilities to accommodate the increased number of officers.

Revenue Options Discussed

He discussed the possibility of a property-tax increase, a utility user’s tax and the sale of general obligation bonds. In each instance, two-thirds of the voters must approve the measures before the funds can be collected.

Councilwoman Gloria McColl also suggested using some of the funds from the hotel occupancy tax to augment the Police Department.

But Lockwood made it clear that there are no existing general-revenue funds to pay for such a large increase of police manpower.

“A program of this magnitude would be very difficult to accommodate within normal revenues,” he said in his report. “The budgetary impact would result in substantial reductions in other city programs.

“For example, the cost of this program exceeds the total operating budgets of the library and the park and recreation departments.”

Under his plan, one of the tax-increase proposals would be presented to voters as soon as possible. If adopted, the new officers would be hired from 1991 to 1993.

Council members asked the Police Department and city manager’s office to recommend one of the tax proposals by March.

Until then, Councilman Ron Roberts said, he will worry that the 2 per 1,000 ratio might become obsolete if the population of San Diego continues to rise sharply. He said he is concerned that even more officers may be needed as soon as the requested ones are hired in the mid-1990s.

“I wonder if we’re not setting our sights too low.” he said.