Advocating for Public Safety Funding
This blog discusses the need for public safety funding due to an increased use of overtime and a staffing shortage. It looks at the importance of overtime in keeping officers on the streets and the $27 million public safety supplemental.
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London Breed
45th Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco.
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Good news: our $27 million public safety supplemental has been scheduled for the Board of Supervisors Budget Committee on Wednesday 3/15. Thank you to all the community members who have been advocating for this important funding to be scheduled and approved.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
This important short-term step will help keep our city safe, while we do the long-term work to address our police staffing shortage. We are responding to the community that wants us to focus on the open-air drug dealing, retail theft, home break-ins, and gun violence.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
This supplemental is required because SFPD has exceeded its budget due to an increased use of overtime. Overtime is expensive, but it’s the only choice we have due to our staffing shortage. We are short over 540 police officers, so overtime helps keep officers on our streets.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
OT has helped us conduct targeted operations in the Tenderloin and Union Square. It has helped with violence reduction initiatives and tourism deployments. It has helped SFPD respond to tens of thousands of calls for service since July 1 that wouldn’t have otherwise met.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
The large majority of the funding is for planned overtime to continue existing police service levels and around $1.5m will support retired police officer ambassadors who compliment foot beats. It basically keeps us doing what we've doing this year.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
If the supplemental is not approved, SFPD will be forced to take actions to immediately reduce spending, including: cutting back our retired police officer ambassador program and reducing the number of police officers in service who are currently funded by overtime.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
In addition, until this funding is approved, SFPD is under a hiring freeze imposed by the Controller. This has two impacts: we cannot start any new academy classes and we cannot add 25 new retired police ambassadors set to be deployed this week. https://t.co/9gDsavBmWF
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023 -
Public safety is our top priority. On Tuesday we joined residents and small business owners from across the City in the Tenderloin in support of this effort. Passing this funding shows we are listening to the number one issue facing our residents. Let's get it done.
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) March 10, 2023