San Francisco Supervisor: Police Force Not Keeping Pace With City's Growth

San Francisco’s economy is booming, but there's a dark side to all the growth: crime. Two supervisors say it's time to beef up the police ranks by hundreds of officers.

Supervisor Scott Wiener believes with more people and new neighborhoods, the police department hasn’t kept pace.

“We don’t have enough police officers to adequately address property crimes,” Wiener said. “We don’t have enough police to do traffic enforcement.”

A city study suggests San Francisco needs hundreds more officers, and that’s exactly what Wiener and Supervisor Malia Cohen are calling for it. They want the city to have about 2,200 officers, more than 200 above the current staffing.

“Even getting back to the charter mandate in 1971 would have a huge impact in terms of what we’re able to prevent in addition to what where able to do in the way of catching people responsible for certain crimes,” SFPD Chief Greg Suhr said.

“What I could caution against is that more police means less crime in fact,” SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi said. “Studies have looked at policing levels and have concluded that more police doesn’t necessarily mean less crime.”

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