A new set of interim regulations adopted in December of 2008 include several which imposed burdensome requirements on officers or their clients, and appear based on no or limited and dubious public safety rationale. In addition, one implicates individual privacy rights, since it requires officers to turn over details of their private client contracts, including the amount paid for security. The struggle over this regulation continues today, with apparently the first test case now being singled out for disciplinary action in front of the Police Commission. Meantime various major business clients are said to be readying legal action should their own individual Patrol Special Police Officer be served regarding the same issue. 

For complex and varied reasons, since the mid-1990s the Patrol Special Police Officers and their professional association have not responded effectively to resolve the above problems. Accordingly, their fortunes have waxed and waned, with the unfortunate result that forces have been reduced from 400 members City-wide, to only about 40 officers today. 

Yet the Patrol Special Police Officers remain undaunted, and ready, willing and able to serve San Francisco’s pressing public safety needs for augmented policing services. Merchants, residents, and some City agency administrators remain willing to step up and answer the call of major local and national leaders, including President Obama, for citizens to help themselves, precisely because government cannot do it all. 

How the Patrol Special Policing Program is Unique 

Patrol Special Police Officers deliver policing that:

1. acknowledges every citizen’s right to be free of fear and violence

2. is cost effective and timely, because it focuses on crime prevention to begin with, not prosecution after-the-fact

3. serves the client who is victimized, but also respects the perpetrator and community/district culture

4. is democratically-determined according to both the desires/needs of the client and the district culture, not imposed from the top down by civil service employees

5. builds trust in all law enforcement, and encourages citizens to report crime and take preventative measures on their own behalf

6. treats clients as customers, as opposed to mere subjects of the government’s benign or not-so-benign paternalism regarding what safety services are ‘good’ for them

7. responds rapidly because officers are located and stay in their client’s specific district

8. connects with breaking news about crime because they are on police radio bandwidth and are the only patrol service with such connection 

9. focuses on quality of life issues thus freeing up the SFPD officer to focus on more serious crime. 

These Officers share a unique and particular programmatic “culture of care” for their clients, a factor that makes them truly “Special” in a way that governmental-delivered policing is not structured to be. Nor will governmental policing ever again enjoy the luxury of adequate staffing, or the possibility of softening a traditional, defensive posture in the face of increasingly violent criminal activity and new forms of crime including sophisticated gangs and American terrorism. 

Patrol Special Police Officers quickly develop specific knowledge of the culture of the district they serve, because many live there or serve only that limited area for years at a time. Thus, they come to have intimate knowledge of community business and residential life, patterns, and members, and readily win the confidence of their constituents. 

These Officers are practical counselors as well as peace-makers. They assist diminish fear and help business victims evaluate their options considering all business exigencies as well as financial and time resources that may or may not be available to prosecute– which is not always the best remedy. They restore calm by helping citizens quickly return to an even emotional keel after they or someone they know, have been victimized. 

These Officers provide services that also benefit even those who do not participate or pay, but who live, work, or shop in their client’s area. Many clients report they feel good about contributing this benefit to their community. As the owner of an art studio in the village of Glen Park said of her officer: “I feel better knowing that my art class students are passing through areas that are patrolled. We are doing a good thing for Glen Park.” And Patrol Special officers are never hesitant to help anyone who needs it, client or not.

These Officers cost almost nil to the tax-payer precisely because their policing services are designed to prevent crime to begin with, or designed to solve it quickly and at the lowest level of disturbance before full-blown gang warfare develops, or violence-prone outsiders move into a community. 

These Officers cost almost nil because services are negotiated in the open marketplace with individual merchants and residents or even a few City agencies who pay a voluntary amount each month, or per event – an amount that is less than half what government-sponsored off-duty policing costs for more costly and less democratically-determined policing. 

Yet compared to some free-wheeling, barely regulated private patrol operators or worse yet, perhaps well-meaning but fearful citizens whose fuses grow short and who decide to arm themselves, Patrol Special Officers are not rogue officers out of control and ill-trained. They are uniformed with a historical patch declaring them to be “San Francisco Patrol Special Police Officers,” and armed by State law. They are also held accountable to the public interest via regulation by the Police Commission. Individual officers are initially vetted in the same detailed security background check that regular SFPD officers undergo. They are appointed by the Commission, and annually trained in both the classroom and on the weapons range by the SFPD who also trains each regular SFPD officer. Finally, each senior Patrol Special officer reports in daily to his or her SFPD District Captain before starting a shift. 

The Challenge Intensifies 

Starting in mid-2008 the Police Commission  funded several police improvement research studies independent of any consideration of the Patrol Special program already in the field and trained to assist. They looked at increasing foot patrols–when foot patrols existed. Then in March, 2009, the Commission decided--yet again-- to re-cycle “community policing” in only one of 14 City police districts, Ingleside, where a small pilot program was initiated. Yet two months earlier a group of merchants and residents in the Glen Park village in Ingleside had already initiated a Patrol Special Officer safety program, one that was completely overlooked in the City’s planning. It is anyone’s guess as to how long this re-cycled initiative will last when federal funds run out.  And it’s also anyone’s guess as to how long it will take citizens to recognize the blatant and callous waste of tax-payer dollars on duplicative safety services when programs to seniors, the mentally-ill, and children are being cut back. 

More problematic, the City seems intent upon pursuing a model of policing that is actually passe. “Community policing” was introduced across the country in the early 1970s, but never successfully implemented in San Francisco. As recently as August 17 at a Public Safety Committee meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said that community policing had failed. Not only that, but even today as in the past, regular SFPD officers have to be ‘taught’ what community policing involves, and motivated to go out into the community and get to know their clients. 

Meantime the Patrol Special officers don’t need to be taught. They know their clients. They have to know and serve their clients, in order to stay employed. Their model of policing service delivery is by its very nature and structure, a democratized system that is community-centered. They already enjoy special privileges and the trust of their clients that only increases over years of effective service. They are regularly called into the homes and businesses of their clients, to plan safety services in a wholly participatory way. 

The City also funded a three-month study commencing in March of this year, to define and purportedly resolve problems associated with operation of the Patrol Special Police Officer program. However, past historical conflicts dissuaded the majority of Patrol Special Police Officers from providing all information requested by the Boston research group, including confidential financial data regarding private contracts for service. There remains a real possibility that the ultimate recommendations to be belatedly released in November or December, will publicize the “lack of cooperation” of the Specials and sound yet one more drive to render ineffective this neighborhood policing program.

Winning the Hearts and Minds of the Citizens 

Some citizens apparently live in a fantasy world even today, and hold onto the rarified idea that government can ‘do it all’ and that’s what they pay taxes for. Government might be able to do so, but more money must be found to cover extensive policing services. If more money cannot be found then services will continue to be cut. 

Some citizens believe that government is the only effective or efficient way to deliver policing services, but history proves otherwise. Policing was first provided at the neighborhood level by citizens who watched out for each other and developed low-level, low-cost local dispute resolution mechanisms that worked just fine. But when the King discovered that providing policing was a way to make money, the handwriting was on the wall. Gradually more services were turned over to government, but the original motivation for such was not to improve quality and retain connection to the neighborhoods. The motivation was money. And, the higher or more complex the level of law enforcement provided, the more money could be charged. 

But why wait for serious crime to grow, crime that requires an expensive type of law enforcement, when disturbances can be prevented or solved at a lower and local level as done in the past?  Why not nip crime in the bud,  not by hiring a plastic surgeon (the SFPD) to handle a carbuncle, but by hiring the right specialist for the correct level of service, the Patrol Special Police Officer, for a low-cost solution?

And why not find out precisely what it is that clients of the Patrol Special Police Officers value and want, then improve the quality of services over time, to render them even more valuable and marketable to the broader public, whose awareness must be raised, and desire become action? 

San Francisco no longer has the luxury of throwing money at crime, and must seek alternate solutions. Aren't budget cut-backs in social services, proof positive that every available tried-and-true cost-effective alternate delivery service for public safety must be wholeheartedly supported by our Mayor and Police Department, in order to free up scarce resources? Shouldn’t a policing program that are not taxpayer funded be managed fairly and consistently by our Police Commission, hired by the City agencies when needed, and publicized honestly and positively to citizens who wish to pay to augment their own neighborhood safety services--and may have to do so soon, like it or not? 

Let's now only cry 'woe is me' and wring our hands. Every problem presents opportunities to be creative in finding solutions. The Patrol Special Police Officers provide one such solution.