Policing the police requires staff

EDITORIAL

The San Francisco Police Commission oversees a department with a budget of almost $400 million, and the commissioners are supposed to approve that budget before it goes to the Mayor's Office. But when the department gave the commission its outline of next year's budget plans, the entire document consisted of one page.

Commissioner David Campos, who has served on the boards of some much, much smaller organizations, puts it directly: "I've never seen a nonprofit operate like this."

That's really nothing new for the SFPD, which has been uniformly terrible about getting the public — or, as it turns out, even the commission — honest, useful, and direct information about department operations. So if the Police Commission wants to be serious about improving oversight, it needs to hire independent staff.

Staffing a commission seems like a silly idea at first: After all, the police chief and a cast of hundreds under her command officially work for the commission and ought to be able to handle most staffing needs. But the Police Department is a mess right now, and the department brass are very good at hiding, downplaying, or obscuring unpleasant information. Remember: This is an agency where detectives who frame people for murder get promoted, homicide cops let killers get away, overtime and other costs are out of control, and discipline is a joke.

Money's tight all over, and it's going to be hard to convince the supervisors that one of the highest-ticket agencies in the city needs more money and more staff, but the commissioners can address that directly. Just take, say, $200,000 out of the department's budget (about a .05 percent cut) and use it to hire a budget analyst, a policy analyst, and an independent staff investigator or staff attorney. That will pay for itself the first month. *