How to improve public safety, and pay for it
During the best days of my tenure as a criminal prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office, I felt inspired by the courage of victims and witnesses who came forward to tell the truth. I marveled how a trembling teenager could overcome intimidation and even threats to take the witness stand, offer her tear-filled account and identify her assailant sitting nearby in the courtroom.
Our community is made safer by their courage, and by that of the police officers who serve us daily.
We should expect no less courage from our elected leaders. Too often, though, we hear only simplistic, vague solutions for fighting crime. We aren’t told how their ideas will work or, in an era of budgetary scarcity, how we will pay for them.
We deserve the truth.
This requires moving beyond platitudes and sound bites. Our next mayor must identify specific, fiscally feasible steps needed to restore San José as America’s safest big city.
Politically powerful unions seek to reverse Measure B, the 2012 voter-approved pension reform measure, to boost officer morale and retention. Their plan suffers from one defect: they can’t find a way to pay for it.
We need a credible plan for restoring police ranks that includes how to afford the officers we’re employing.
Annual pensions for officers and firefighters retiring in the last five years averaged $104,000, with a 3 percent increase annually. With growing ranks of retirees, San José taxpayers spend $200 million more on retirement benefits today than ten years ago.
We can’t simply hope economic growth will solve this problem. Our three largest sources of tax revenue will increase by a projected $23 million next year, but retirement costs will grow by $24 million. And that’s in a good year.
A better path lies in continuing fiscal reforms but investing the savings in public safety. I crafted a strategy last year with Mayor Chuck Reed to identify more than $30 million in savings from pension and fiscal reforms to invest in police retention and hiring. We’re restoring officer pay–but not benefits–and committing millions more to hire and train cadets.
Hiring officers will take several years, however, and budgets will remain tight for several more. Through this period, how can we make San José safer?
We lack the dollars to spend more, but we can spend smarter. I’ve described a plan for doing so in a book now landing on San José doorsteps, and on my website (www.samliccardo.com/a_detailed_plan). Among the ideas:
- Restoring “community policing” by eliminating mandates that rotate officers among patrol beats as often as every six months, too short a time to build relationships and trust in our neighborhoods.
- Employing technology and analyzing data to improve officer deployment, and setting up a voluntary on-line registry of security cameras to crowd-source information.
- Reducing truancy and gang recruitment through partnerships with school districts.
- Leveraging the expertise of our gang detectives by lengthening their three-year tenure in the gang unit.
- Focusing housing resources to shelter domestic violence victims and their children during their most vulnerable moments, the 24 hours after fleeing their abusers.
- Strengthening police oversight of card clubs and other crime-inducing businesses and ensuring they’re paying their share in fees and taxes.
Sound bites urge that we “overturn Measure B, and the cops will return.” Yet we face a $3 billion unfunded liability in our retirement accounts. We can no longer meet today’s priorities by mortgaging San José’s future. We need a credible plan for safety–one we can afford.
This piece was written for the Mercury News, you can read it online here.