Reporters should really be required to read their own paper's clips file before filing a story like this. SF Chronicle writer Charlie Goodyear leaves out the crucial police short-staffing piece of the puzzle that his own paper reported on here Nov. 17, in his account today of the 80 percent of murders this year in San Francisco which remain unsolved. Here's what Goodyear should have woven in to the unsolved-murders story, from his own paper's article (first link above):

The San Francisco Police Department is running far short of its mandated force strength, and Chief Heather Fong said...she wants the city to hire 250 recruits a year for the next three years to shore up the dwindling ranks. Police officials say the department has a total of 2,190 sworn officers but only 1,707 are available for field duty -- 264 short of the 1,971 that city voters set as a minimum in 1994.....One area where the police force has been hit hard is the inspectors bureau. The department has a budget for 302 inspectors, but 36 inspectors are now doing other work -- including 14 who are performing patrol functions -- and there are 59 vacancies. No one has been promoted to inspector since August 2003. An additional 40 inspectors are expected to retire by July of next year. That would leave the number of investigators at fewer than 170.

In addition to the city's elected supervisors re-adjusting city budget priorities to fund the additional manpower police say is needed, there must be more emphasis on the community's responsibility for raising young men to NOT be killers or criminals. Grand Rapids had an interesting conversation about that last summer. It goes back to parenting, neighborhoods, even literacy, and public education. What's not needed in San Francisco is the political posturing by city supervisors yesterday about police department audits and a dopey homicide-prevention commission. It's also time to 86 the scapegoating of police by the mayor and chief over a recent spoof video scandal, in order to score points with minority constituencies. The hounding out of a reform-minded black education superintendent (Arlene Ackerman) by a bunch of idiot white SF Green Party members (see last half of this post) is a lamentable footnote to the city's growing murder problem. Without drastically improved public schools, more murderers will be in the pipeline.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN FRANCISCO, UNSOLVED MURDERS, POLICE STAFFING

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 13, 2005 09:46 PM