San Francisco has a pretty broken police force. It's understaffed, underfunded, and morale is extremely low due to poor leadership, a DA who won't prosecute, and city politics that constantly tie their hands.
Officers will often try and convince you to not file a police report, for things such as car break ins and sometimes even more serious stuff such as purse snatchings (such as one recent example in which the officer basically told the victim, "what's the point, you won't get your stuff back"). I've heard rumors that they sometimes also do such things as downgrade crimes to lesser offenses in their reports. There have been cover-ups involving two police Chiefs over the past 15 years, there are tons of pencil pushers doing nothing but eating up resources, oversight and punishment for officers is notoriously slow, and tends to make bad apple officers into said resource-eating pencil pushers (there are currently hundreds of officers on desk jobs and this is in a force of 2,000 that's understaffed).
The SFPD website is basically useless for looking up crime stats.
They also seem to cook the books, and/or willingly omit certain information from the public view (this has to be mostly from pressure within the Mayors office and by extension business interests who don't want the tourist industry...or certain political ambitions to suffer during a time of increasing crime in the city). The SFPD constantly releases murder stats that are lower than the FBI stats for SF. There have been multiple incidents recently of clear murder victims being labeled as suspicious deaths, or even accidental deaths and suicides...Or they're just kept in limbo with a medical examiner report that says "cause of death unknown."
One example of what the SFPD considers a "suicide" is: a French national stabbing himself multiple times outside of his apartment, going inside and locking the door, before washing the knife, and disposing of it (no knife was ever found). Neighbors heard a commotion and someone running away, but cops almost immediately implied it was a suicide, and ignored them. Ultimately, French inspectors came to SF and ruled it a homicide. The SFPD is "reviewing" their report.
The departments computers are pretty much universally outdated too.
The Fraud department is so understaffed and backed up that you currently have to wait 6 months to a year to have your case handled. They prioritize elderly victims, because they don't want them to die while waiting. I am completely serious, look it up.
I personally have been hassled by a couple attitude-having officers doing the good-cop bad-cop thing, for doing nothing but waiting for the bus. they thought i was someone else, and wouldn't tell me what was going on until after they yelled at me, searched me and detained me for half an hour. Then they let me go without saying sorry.
And it's not like the pay is low. Starting salary for an SF police officer is $80,000 a year, and many officers rake in $100,000+ in overtime. The SFPD also charges the most out of any US city for security at TV and film shoots, about $100 an hour per squad car, or $80 an hour for a motorcycle cop (if i remember right).
Our arrest and conviction rate is currently one the lowest out of any large US city. Our homicide clearance rate in 2007 was the lowest, at 32% compared with a national average of 52%.
That's the bad...of course most officers are good and professional and do a great job, but the problems with the SFPD, especially on the command/leadership level are pretty widespread.
We have a new chief coming in, George Gascon of Mesa, AZ, and he has lots and lots of ideas on how to improve the SFPD.
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Originally Posted by KRS88
20 Years ago I would of said LA in a heartbeat although the cops are still bad its nothing compared to the days when C.R.A.S.H. was in full effect. As for now I would say NYPD and Chicago's PD because lets face it the ones that are in the hood are complete jerks they rarely help you and half of them are crooket.
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SF had a similar unit named C.R.U.S.H (Crime Unit to Stop Homicides) in the late 70's and 80's that was tasked with stopping gang warfare in the city (when violent crime was at an all time high in SF), and had a similar reputation as C.R.A.S.H. The head of the unit was allegedly an inspiration for Denzel Washington's Character in the movie Training Day (he was actually a technical advisor on the movie as well).
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