More Feet in the Street
By an 8-3 vote, the Board of Supervisors approved a plan to establish foot patrols for eight of the city's ten police district stations. The vote was in reaction to the increased violence in the city and gun-related murders. The Board said foot patrols would go a long ways to helping fight the violence in the city while members of the Police Officers Association said that foot patrols would mean slower response times to 911 calls. We had hoped that the debate would go forward in a restrained, honest, and intelligent way as befitting such an important decision, but that didn't quite happen. So much so, it took us a day just to figure out all the incessant craziness that occurred because of the debate. Let's just say we don't think Chris Daly will be attending any POA fundraisers in the near future. Not that they'd invite him anyways.
The fight over foot patrols and the somewhat related issue of extra funding for the police department gave us such great moments as the anti-Daly t-shirts, the the mayhem at last week's League of Women's Voters debate, Daly's accusing the SFPD of being nothing but a bunch of Republican slackers, the subject of some cute S.O.S anti-Daly flyers, and another Daly/Newsom spitball fight resulting in Chris' Evite.
You know, this is one of those things that makes San Francisco different than other places. Growing up in the East Coast, we know that if any political leader said anything like what Daly said they'd either get a warning shot to the head or get mysteriously mugged with no police around to do anything about it. Kind of like what happened to this SFPD watchdog lawyer who had to get a restraining order against a member of the POA after they tried to attack them.
Of course, the easy answer to all of this is to hire more cops but that's a whole other story. The SFPD say they need more money but the Board says they have all the money they need. Then there's the fact there's just not enough good cop candidates to hire so the police departments in SF and elsewhere in the Bay Area are going out to unusual places to try and recruit more police. Like the Folsom Street Fair.