Mayor Gives Up Police Guards After Criticism

Mayor Maureen O’Connor has given up her police bodyguards after criticism by the head of San Diego’s police union about her protection privileges.

Four officers are back at their regular assignments after O’Connor’s decision this month to abandon the protection, according to Harry O. Eastus, head of the Police Officers Assn., and several police sources.

Eastus wrote a letter to O’Connor on Aug. 4 that criticized her level of commitment to the San Diego Police Department, pointing out that there has been “no appreciable increase” in the ratio of officers to citizens since she took office in 1986.

“I would remind you that the response of alleged death threats directed towards you during your term as mayor has been the assigning of as many as four full-time police officers to act as your personal bodyguards and drivers,” Eastus wrote.

The union president called it “a ratio of police to citizens not enjoyed by any other San Diegans.” San Diego has ranked near the bottom of the 10 largest cities in its ratio of officers to population for several years.

In an earlier letter to Eastus, O’Connor said the ratio had been increased from 1.5 to 1.62 officers per thousand during her tenure in office.

The Police Department today, she wrote, “has a better ratio of officers to residents, is exceptionally well equipped, is better paid and is more thoroughly trained.”

Top police officials excoriated Eastus for even raising the issue of the mayor’s personal security and said it could lead to even more threats against her. Paul Downey, the mayor’s spokesman, said O’Connor never discusses the issue.

Although the mayor may have private security, she no longer has 24-hour-a-day police protection, officials said. However, two officers will still be assigned to either side of the dais during City Council meetings.

Eastus said it was never his intention that the mayor not be protected.

“We don’t care one way or the other about how many cops she has,” he said. “We were just pointing out the disparity between what regular citizens get and what an elected official gets. A lot of people get death threats. But they don’t get four police officers assigned to them, either.”

O’Connor, he said, probably released the officers assigned to her because of his letter.

“It was made public and she was embarrassed and couldn’t handle it,” he said. “She threw her sucker in the dirt and had to be childish about it.”

The issue of police protection arose out of O’Connor’s refusal in July to condemn the rap song “Cop Killer.” The mayor and two other council members declined to join the six other council members in writing a letter to Time Warner’s president urging that he discontinue marketing or selling music that “encourages or glorifies the killing of police officers.”

Such an action, O’Connor wrote, would “infringe upon the company’s freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment.”

But Eastus was unmoved and compared the song to the mayor’s own death threats.

“When San Diego police officers received such a threat in the form of a song designed to impress our already-troubled teen population, you would not even lend your voice to those decrying that conduct,” Eastus wrote.

Police officials said the mayor of any large city should be afforded police protection and that in other cities the mayor enjoys an even greater number of personal officers.

Those close to the mayor says her style is one of personal freedom and that she likes to be able to go where she pleases without fear of attack.

Eastus said that although O’Connor had four bodyguards, there were only two with her at a time. The others were used as reserves and all stayed at her guest house outside her Point Loma home.