THE TIMES POLL : San Diegans Question Plan to Hire More Police

An overwhelming number of San Diegans believe that drug- and gang-related crime has reached crisis proportions here, but most of them are not ready to raise taxes to hire more police--and, in fact, have doubts that additional police would solve the problem, a Times poll shows.

With the San Diego City Council scheduled to begin debate Thursday on more than $20 million in deep, wide-ranging budget cuts aimed at putting 140 new police officers on the streets by next year, the poll found that San Diegans share the council’s concern over crime, but question its proposed solution.

In particular, the poll reveals that most San Diegans apparently do not share the council’s confidence that hiring more officers will put a serious dent in crime and that they have strong misgivings about the proposed tax increases and budget cuts needed to expand the police force. San Diegans might be willing, however, to pay a new trash collection fee to help underwrite the police hirings, the poll shows.

Police Hirings Questioned

San Diegans agreed 81% to 16% that drug- and gang-related crime has reached an emergency level here, with 66% saying they believe that local crime has worsened over the past year. Twenty-three percent said they or a member of their immediate families have been crime victims within the past year.

But only 16% of those polled said that hiring more police officers is the best means of reducing crime, less than half as many who cited drug education programs in schools and tougher sentencing by courts as more effective methods.

Moreover, if the council goes ahead with its plan to hire more police, there is no clear public consensus over how best to finance that expansion, the poll shows.

San Diegans are closely divided--49% to 43%--over increasing property taxes to increase the size of the police force--far less than the required two-thirds margin that would be needed for approval if the issue appears on the ballot.

There also is less than majority support for the $21.8 million in budget cuts proposed by City Manager John Lockwood as a means of freeing the dollars needed to hire the 140 new police officers next year. However, if budget cuts are to be made, the ones that would least trouble San Diegans are funding for the arts, followed by brush and weed cleanup programs and delays in park improvements.

San Diegans are favorably inclined, the poll shows, toward another possible method of financing police hirings: establishing a $7.50-a-month trash collection fee for single-family homes.

$22.4 Million Next Year

Although a 1919 voter-approved proposition guarantees free trash collection to single-family homes, 52% of those polled said they either support or are leaning toward approval of a monthly fee. If the so-called “People’s Ordinance” were repealed, Lockwood’s office estimates that it would raise $22.4 million during the next fiscal year--money that then could be used to hire more officers.

The Times poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Sunday of 770 people throughout the city of San Diego. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Many questions in the poll detected a distinct ambivalence between San Diegans’ perceptions of the extent of the crime problem and their feelings about how to combat it, especially monetarily.

For example, given the choice between raising taxes or cutting existing services in order to expand the force, the poll found San Diegans leaning in favor of higher taxes--49% to 45%, a difference that falls within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

“While people acknowledge there’s a serious problem, they haven’t gotten to the point where they’ve figured out a dollars-and-cents answer to it,” said I. A. Lewis, director of the Times poll. “The solutions they like are the ones that seem to be the least costly, and the budget cuts they’d go along with are the kind that would least affect them.”

As the council turns its attention to the limited financial options available to hire more police, the poll sends mixed political signals to City Hall. In short, that message is: We think you’ve identified a significant problem, but are skeptical of your solution and are even more doubtful about your ideas of paying for it.

‘Emergency’ Action Backed

In addition to San Diegans’ 81% agreement that crime has reached emergency levels, the poll also showed nearly 3-1 support for Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s recent request that Gov. George Deukmejian declare a state of emergency over the situation--a plea officially rejected by Deukmejian on Tuesday.

Sixty-three percent of those polled said they believe that the mayor’s and City Council’s request for $103 million in state and federal aid to fight crime stemmed from a legitimate crisis, while only 22% viewed the incident as a publicity stunt.

As to how best to reduce the crime problem, drug-education programs and tougher sentencing by judges were the top two suggestions; they were named by 45% and 44% of those polled, respectively.

In contrast, only 16% felt that hiring more police would be the best solution to the problem, followed by jobs programs for youths (13%), drug treatment programs (12%) and gang diversion programs (10%). Only 8% saw the construction of additional jails as the best answer.

O’Connor, however, said Tuesday that she does not consider that apparently lukewarm public support for hiring more officers to be inconsistent with the council’s determination to do so. Increases in police staffing, she said, will enable antidrug programs that now reach only about half the city’s schools to encompass the entire school system.

“By hiring more police, we can send officers to the classrooms, where they can provide the kind of drug education people believe is necessary,” O’Connor said. “Doing one thing will allow us to do the other.”

Not Whether but How

Unless the council reverses the direction in which it has been heading, the budget actions taken over the coming weeks will be driven primarily by the members’ desire to accomplish their oft-stated goal of hiring more police--an objective that admittedly can be achieved only at the expense of other city programs. Indeed, the dialogue at City Hall already has largely moved beyond the question of whether to hire more police, focusing instead on how to fund that expansion.

Councilman Bruce Henderson, who has sharply taken issue with Lockwood’s proposed budget cuts--which would postpone planned improvements at Mission Bay Park in Henderson’s 6th District--argued Tuesday that it is “not too late to redirect the debate.”

“The people are absolutely right in believing that hiring more police isn’t the answer,” said Henderson, who has recommended that the city delay hiring additional officers and building police substations in order to instead build a city jail for misdemeanor suspects. Henderson’s suggestion could be in line with the poll’s finding of strong support for tougher sentencing by courts, an action that could require additional jails.

“The more we talk about this, I hope my colleagues will see that the crisis isn’t that we don’t have enough officers--it’s that we have 8,000 to 10,000 criminals on the streets who we can’t get in jails,” Henderson said. “I’m convinced that (other council members’) feet are not set in concrete on this 140-officer plan . . . especially now that we’ve seen what the manager says we’d have to cut to do that.”

The budget cuts proposed by Lockwood are designed to raise the $36 million needed over the next two years to hire the 140 extra officers and build two new substations. Lockwood has proposed a $21.8-million cut in recreation, social service and other programs over the next two years, as well as $14.9 million in reductions in capital improvement projects to fund construction of two substations.

San Diegans appear unenthusiastic about most of those proposed cuts, the poll shows. When asked which cuts they favor the most, they placed arts funding at the top of the list.

Unenviable Position

Forty-two percent of those polled said they favor reductions in arts funding--putting the arts in the unenviable position of finishing ahead, by a 3-2 margin, of the next-closest service categories earmarked for possible cuts. Twenty-eight percent said they would support elimination of the city’s weed and brush cleanup programs, while 27% favored reducing the Mission Bay Park improvements.

Youth after-school recreation programs and social services are the areas that San Diegans feel deserve the most protection from budget cuts, being named by only 8% and 9%, respectively.

“People don’t think it should be necessary to make these cuts,” O’Connor said. “Their feeling is, ‘We’ve already paid our taxes to Sacramento and Washington. Why can’t that money get back here to make local neighborhoods safer?’ They can’t understand why that doesn’t happen, and neither do I. The poll reinforces that strong sentiment that’s out there.”

The plan to hire 140 new police officers is part of a longer-range program to add 440 officers to meet the city’s overriding goal of raising manpower levels from the current 1.62 officers per 1,000 residents to 2 officers per 1,000. For that long-term program--intended to lower police response times--to be economically feasible, both budget cuts and tax increases probably would be needed to offset the estimated annual costs of $50 million produced by the higher police staffing levels, city administrators concede.

Under one proposal, property taxes would be increased $69 per every $100,000 of assessed valuation to pay for the Police Department’s higher budget. While 49% of those polled support that proposal, contrasted with 43% who oppose it, that is far short of the required two-thirds margin.

There is slightly stronger support, however, for a proposal to create the garbage collection fee. San Diegans agreed, 52% to 42%, that they would support such a fee to raise funds to hire more police. Repeal of the 1919 ordinance would require only a simple majority vote at the polls.

Saying, Doing Are Different

However, when people leaning in either direction on the trash fee question are excluded, the result is more evenly balanced. Among those who feel strongly about the fee, 41% favor it and 39% oppose it. Raising another factor that clouds the issue’s likelihood of passage, Times pollster Lewis noted: “Usually, more people say they’ll vote for something that’s going to cost them money than actually do vote for it.”

Not surprisingly, crime victims or their relatives--making up 23% of the poll’s total sample--felt somewhat stronger about the crime problem and the need to hire more police than those whose lives have not been touched by crime. For example, 85% of the victims described the crime problem as an emergency, contrasted with 81% among non-victims. Similarly, 74% of the victims said that local crime has worsened over the past year, a suggestion that drew agreement from 63% of the non-victims.

In general, low-income San Diegans believe to a greater extent than high-income individuals that crime has reached emergency levels, and older people are more concerned than younger people about the problem. However, wealthier people are more willing to raise taxes to hire more police--perhaps because they can more easily afford to do so than can poorer families, whose lives typically are more directly affected by crime.

CUTTING CRIME IN SAN DIEGO

In your opinion, what is the most effective way to reduce drug- and gang-related crime? (Up to two answers were accepted from each respondent.)

Drug education programs in schools: 45%

Tougher sentencing by courts: 44%

Hiring more police: 16%

Special jobs programs for youths: 13%

Drug treatment programs: 12%

Gang diversion programs: 10%

Using the military to stop drug smuggling: 9%

Building more jails: 8%

Neighborhood Watch programs: 4%

Other: 7%

Don’t know: 5%

To hire 140 additional police officers in 1990 and build two police substations, city programs and capital improvements will have to be cut by $36 million over the next two years. Which of the following budget cuts do you favor the most? (Up to two answers were accepted from each respondent.)

Arts funding: 42%

Brush and weed cleanup programs: 28%

Reducing Mission Bay Park improvements: 27%

Eliminating consumer fraud division of city attorney’s office: 15%

Social services: 9%

After-school programs: 8%

Don’t know: 18%

Source: Los Angeles Times Poll