Statement: “And now, rather than losing officers to other agencies, we are seeing officers choose to come work for the San Diego Police Department,” said San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria during his Jan. 10 State of the City address.
Determination: Mostly True
Analysis: A San Diego police staffing shortage snowballed during the pandemic, fueling spikes in response times and overtime spending.
From July 2021 through June 2023, 417 officers left the force, including 118 who went to other law enforcement agencies. Academy graduations couldn’t match the losses.
During his State of the City address earlier this month, Mayor Todd Gloria claimed that the tide has turned. He said officers are now coming to work at the San Diego Police Department rather than departing for other agencies.
This would be a significant shift.
So, has the department seen a flood of experienced newcomers? It is seeing more of them.
Since July, the department reports that it has brought on four officers from other agencies and one officer who decided to return to SDPD. Another eight experienced officers are now in the hiring process – and four are former SDPD officers. If all make it through the hiring process, the department will have added at least 13 experienced officers well before the end of the fiscal year in June.
This means that just over six months into the fiscal year, the department is seeing an influx of experienced officers roughly equivalent to the number it has seen in recent full fiscal years. These arrivals have hovered between nine and 14 annually in the past three fiscal years.
So this year’s trend does suggest some change.
But departures of experienced officers haven’t ground to a halt.
Between July and early last week, a dozen San Diego police officers took jobs with other law enforcement agencies – an average of two each month.
If the trend continues, the department is on track to lose more officers to other agencies this fiscal year than it did the year before a controversial city Covid vaccine mandate spawned a dramatic backlash from many officers. The mandate was first announced in late August 2021 and ended in March 2023.
Still, the number of police departures so far this year is far less than the more than 50 officers who left to go elsewhere each of the past couple years.
The takeaway: Fewer San Diego officers are bailing on the department in pursuit of jobs elsewhere and more officers look to be arriving – or returning – to the San Diego Police Department.
That doesn’t mean the department’s staffing woes are over.
The city’s independent budget analysts said last year they expected the department’s staffing crisis to endure for four to five years – and that was if the department met recruitment and retention targets it wasn’t projected to meet. Budget analysts predicted the police force would shrink by about 60 net officers annually the next few years.
The department is losing fewer officers so far this year, but recent police academies haven’t been full, limiting their ability to minimize net losses.
Jared Wilson, who leads the San Diego Police Officers’ Association, also noted that planned retirements are down a bit this year but are expected to escalate the next couple years.
Wilson, whose union is now negotiating its latest contract with the city, said how the agreement pans out for officers will reverberate in the future. He declined to elaborate on the details, citing ongoing talks.
“We have lost less people in FY 2024 (to) other agencies, a trend in the right direction,” Wilson said. “However, a strong contract this year will be necessary to fill academies and fill our ranks before a huge loss of officers next year.”
The city has taken other steps in recent history to try to address SDPD’s recruitment and retention woes. It reinstated a cash bonus program for experienced California officers coming to SDPD and for current officers who successfully recruit others and is soon set to open a childcare center for officers and their families. The department also launched a program to prepare potential applicants to land jobs at the department. It hopes to soon award a $200,000 contract to a management consultant to help with recruitment too.
Despite those efforts, SDPD isn’t out of the woods when it comes to its staffing woes though more experienced officers are taking jobs at the agency. Gloria’s statement implied more dramatic improvements.
Gloria spokeswoman Rachel Laing said the mayor’s statement earlier this month wasn’t meant to declare “mission accomplished.” She said the goal was to show the city is making progress.
“The statement accurately notes the clear reversal of an unfavorable trend, which is what the language attempted to capture with maximum word economy. While the numbers support the statement, we’re also basing this on interest expressed in lateral moves and a general shift in sentiment regarding working at SDPD vs. other agencies,” Laing wrote in an email. “Never did we intend to – nor did we, in my opinion – suggest that our recruitment and retention issues were solved.”
We label a statement mostly true when it’s accurate but there’s an important nuance to consider.
We’re deeming Gloria’s claim mostly true because more experienced officers are taking jobs at SDPD, but the department’s staffing challenges are far from behind it.
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