'That city? No thanks.' San Francisco PD still struggles to recruit new officers despite $112,000 starting pay

SAN FRANCISCO, CA- If one wants to examine the dearth of people signing on to be police officers in the country, one need look no further than the City by the Bay, which has one of the highest starting salaries among police agencies in the country. Despite a starting pay of $112,398 with no experience, San Francisco simply cannot fill academy seats. 

According to Bloomberg, the San Francisco police academy only graduated 26 officers last year, the lowest number in at least a decade. It is one-third the number of recruits that attended the academy in 2019. It appears the anti-police sentiment in the country, and in California in particular, has taken a toll on police recruitment. 

Bloomberg notes this year’s total may surpass last year’s number, however, when a reporter visited the academy recently, there were only about a half-dozen recruits engaged in physical fitness and police tactics in a gym. 

Last month, San Francisco boosted the starting pay to the above level, which is the highest salary for rookie police officers in any large American city, is nearly double the starting salary in the country’s largest police agency, the NYPD, and more than what many Secret Service agents earn. 

“We are bending over backwards,” said Patrick McCormick, head of hiring at the SFPD. 

Many external factors impact recruiting in San Francisco, including its extremely pricey real estate market, meaning that $112k doesn’t go quite as far. San Francisco is also a “progressive” city, a misnomer if there ever was one. The city, as have many liberal-run large city departments, tied the hands of its police officers, and an overall hostile public safety environment has turned off a lot of people who considered a career in law enforcement. 

There have been some signs of hope recently, which included the recall of far-left George Soros stooge DA Chesa Boudin. In addition, local lawmakers, who have seen businesses and residents fleeing the city due to high crime, have increasingly backed police officers, at least publicly. 

Sadly, San Francisco isn’t alone, with many police agencies nationwide having difficulty recruiting police officers. For example, the Dallas Police Department has set up recruiting billboards in Chicago, hoping to attract police officers from that city located in a state that has virtually completely tied the hands of cops. 

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has approved bonuses of $5,000 for certified police officers willing to relocate to the Sunshine State from other states. Ithaca, New York, has offered a $20,000 bonus for lateral hires. 

“Twenty years ago, we would have hundreds of people knocking down our door to be police officers,” said Ted Schwartz, Ithaca’s acting police chief. The city has a population of 32,000 and is home to Cornell University. Schwartz continued, “That’s not true in our society anymore.” 

Three police departments with the highest starting salaries are in California: San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. Seattle and Phoenix round out the top five. 

Meanwhile, two cities with the highest crime rates–New York and Chicago–are in the bottom five, with starting salaries of $58,580 and 58,842, respectively. 

Statistics show that staffing at US police departments dropped almost 5% in the three years ending in January 2023, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a policy group headquartered in Washington, DC, that surveyed 182 police agencies. They found that much of that decline was caused by officers outright quitting or retiring from their agencies. 

In 2022, resignations were 47% higher than in 2019, before the George Floyd anti-police riots of 2020. Retirements meanwhile rose 19% during the same period. 

Perhaps no event has driven the shortage of law enforcement recruiting more than the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. Democrat lawmakers and progressives seized upon the death, a combination of positional asphyxia, medical reasons, and drugs painted as a police-induced homicide, to attack police, claim police were systemically racist, and push to defund the police. 

The negativity attached to police officers, combined with increased public scrutiny of everything police do, has significantly impacted police departments' efforts to attract recruits. What person would want to put their personal wealth on the line (after many cities/states eliminated qualified immunity), not to mention their physical well-being for people who hate them? Why risk your life for a public that, in many cases, doesn’t want you there? Why bust your ass for politicians who call you “stormtroopers” and “racists?” Who would sign up for that? The answer appears to be not that many. 

In San Francisco, one police instructor told Bloomberg that much of the training for recruits is heated toward “the worst day of their life” since most of them are likely to be placed in situations that turn violent. 

There is more to improving policing than simply having additional personnel, which Bloomberg acknowledges. Training, resource allocation, and priorities (not necessarily those of politicians) often determine how effective a police department is. As Bloomberg notes, and we agree, “more staffing on lousy police departments won’t necessarily help the public–and it might hurt.” 

However, reducing the number of cops on the beat can take a toll on communities, according to Ben Struhl, executive director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He gave an example that while reducing violent crime without a related surge in arrests is desirable, such efforts are often delayed when a department is understaffed and struggling to meet its primary emergency response responsibilities. 

“Without police in the first place, it’s really hard for police to be strategic.” 

Law Enforcement Today recently reported on the Oakland (CA) Police Department, which has struggled due to reduced headcount of officers. The city, which has lost 5% of its officers since 2019, has response times for emergency 911 calls often exceeding 45 minutes, the worst such time in California. 

Staffing issues are more than just a big city problem, however. In Arcata, California, a remote town in the northern part of the state, many officer departures caused local lawmakers to cut policing to only core services and cut back on a community-oriented response unit. As a result, that town started offering $50,000 sign-on bonuses to prospective new hires. 

“These bonuses sound more like sports teams than a civil service position,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It feels like desperation.” 

However, as mentioned above, hiring in cities with excessive living costs is extremely difficult. In the San Francisco Bay Area, competition between agencies is stiff, with all local police and sheriff’s departments’ salaries starting up to $100,000. 

In Alameda, located just south of Oakland, officers start at $113,654 annually, more than in San Francisco. That city also offers a $75,000 signing bonus, the highest in the country, however, that bonus comes with a caveat. Officers must stay five years, or they have to pay back part of the sum. 

“They’re just throwing money at the problem,” said Barry Donelan, head of Oakland’s police union. “When you talk about $50,000, $75,000, they become mercenaries. You think that officer really wants to put roots down?” 

In San Francisco, they need to overcome the public perception (which is reality) of homelessness, drug addiction, and related public defecation and attempt to do so by highlighting the “big-city vibe and cultural attractions” of the once beautiful city. The SFPD has produced a “splashy recruitment website and video,” Bloomberg reports and has made outreach into states such as Texas and New York for recruits. 

“You have to be able to talk to everybody from the billionaire who calls you because somebody broke into their house to the drug addicts who just overdosed on fentanyl, and we brought him back from almost dying,” said McCormick, hiring chief at SFPD. “Some districts, you’re talking to both of those people in a single shift.” You could also be talking to the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who got beat up under suspicious circumstances, but we digress. 

The city has enjoyed some measure of success, with applications rising in 2023 and recruits coming from states such as Nevada and Alabama. Despite that, there are still only 23 recruits in the current class, and it isn’t assured they will all graduate. 

Political pressure is being brought to bear for a long-term solution to the department’s staffing issues and will be a component of upcoming battles over the city budget. A ballot measure to set minimum personnel levels for the SFPD is also pending in March. 

There are already some headwinds to the approval of the measure. While she initially supported it, Mayor London Breed has reversed course after some Board of Supervisors members included a clause that would have required a new funding source for the recruitment drive to avoid significant budget cuts in other areas. 

Unless the city can come up with a funding source, it will “literally…have to close [food] pantries,” said Ahsha Safai, a board supervisor. “We have to come up with a way to actually pay for this so we’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul.” 

San Francisco may have some decisions to make.