An Introduction to the SFPD

Photo by Thomas Hawk (CC BY-NC 2.0)

By Lou Barberini

Lou Barberini was a San Francisco police officer between 1996 and 2017. During his career, he primarily served as a bike beat officer and an undercover narcotics officer. He writes a blog at https://loub.substack.com/.

You’ve seen San Francisco police officers on the street and you’ve probably seen them in the movies, but what do you really know about our city’s police department? How many police officers does San Francisco have? What do they do? How do you become one? And what are the biggest challenges they face?

Formed during the Gold Rush in 1849, the San Francisco Police Department patrols San Francisco International Airport as well as the 49 square miles of San Francisco proper. Former Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Bill Scott has been our police chief since 2017. In San Francisco, the chief is nominated by a civilian oversight body, the Police Commission, whose nominee is then approved by the mayor. The chief serves at-will and can be removed by either the Police Commission or the mayor.

Directly below the chief of police are sworn and civilian executives known as the command staff, the department leaders who manage everything from labor relations to patrol operations. Under Chief Scott, the command staff includes two assistant chiefs, five deputy chiefs, eight commanders, and eight civilians. Most of the hard work out on the street is done by patrol officers supervised by sergeants, inspectors, lieutenants, and captains.

As of April 2023, SFPD employs 1,903 sworn officers and 766 civilians, including part-time employees. However, about 142 officers are assigned to the airport and 270 officers are not currently available for duty because they were either injured or on long-term leave. Thus, only about 1,500 officers are available for duty in the city, far short of the 2,182 recommended in the SFPD’s recent staffing analysis. To contend with this staffing shortage, SFPD recently required officers from investigative units to return to patrol the streets one day every two weeks. 

Officers enter the ranks of the SFPD either through the police academy or via transfer from other departments. An applicant is admitted to the SFPD academy after passing written, physical, and psychological testing, and a background check. At the academy, recruits are instructed in law, community engagement, defensive tactics, driving skills, and how to write coherent police reports.

Throughout their time at the academy, recruits are periodically required to apply what they’ve learned in simulations conducted by role-playing police officers. If a recruit fails a simulation, he or she is counseled and given another opportunity. A second failure results in dismissal. 

After graduating from the academy, recruits are sworn in as officers and immediately enter the field training phase. For the next 15 weeks, they are graded daily by a partnered field training officer (“FTO”) on their performance during real-life patrol. Generally, a new police officer works with an FTO for a five-week phase before the new officer “graduates” to another FTO. If the new officer fails a phase, he or she is afforded one extension. The path to becoming a police officer in San Francisco is rigorous: Only about 52 percent of recruits ultimately graduate from field training.

Upon successful completion of field training, new officers are typically assigned to Patrol, which is divided into ten district stations. Some districts, such as the Tenderloin, Bayview, and Mission, experience more crime and thus get assigned more officers. New officers remain on probation for approximately one year, during which time the chief of police can dismiss the officer for any reason.

Each police district is further divided into four, five, or six sectors. Each sector was historically patrolled by a combination of officers on foot and in vehicles and officers would take pride that no crime occurred in their assigned sector during their watch. “Sector integrity” has gradually eroded, however, as the number of sworn officers has declined and officers get called to cover adjacent sectors or districts.

About 70 percent of sworn personnel serve in Patrol. Fifteen percent are assigned to investigative units, while eight percent serve in special operations, which includes the SWAT team, bomb squad, hostage negotiation unit, marine unit, homeland security unit, and traffic operations. The remaining seven percent serve in administrative roles. Officers generally work four 10-hour shifts per week and rotate days off so that everyone eventually gets to enjoy a weekend with family. 

SFPD differs from smaller departments by having a dedicated investigations bureau. This means that whenever a patrol officer makes an arrest or takes an initial report, an investigator (usually holding the rank of sergeant) then handles the subsequent investigation and, if necessary, makes a presentation to the District Attorney’s Office for prosecution. This system permits officers to focus on patrol and investigators to focus on investigations.

What actually happens when SFPD receives a call for service? First, the call is received by a communications staffer, who keeps the caller on the line and tries to gather additional information while simultaneously typing in a narrative to a nearby dispatcher. That dispatcher then relays the typed message over a police radio channel to officers in the field. While this is efficient, neither the dispatcher nor the police officer gets to hear the fear in or inflection of a caller’s voice.

Crimes in progress are considered “A Priority” — meaning an urgent incident that demands an immediate response. A severe traffic accident may also fall under this category. Of lesser urgency are “B Priority” incidents, which could be things like an in-progress oral dispute over a parking spot. Lastly, a “C Priority” might be a burglary that occurred last week while a family was on vacation.

The lowest priority is a car break-in without suspects still present. In 2017, then-Mayor Ed Lee reassigned these calls away from SFPD to 311, where dispatchers instruct victims to file an online report. This change means that SFPD officers no longer hear car break-in calls on their radios, so they can’t make mental notes of where the hot spots are. In addition, fewer victims complete online reports, making the number of car break-ins appear lower than they really are. 

Like every industry, policing has been greatly affected by technological advances, though SFPD has typically been a late adopter. Both criminals and officers personally purchased cellphones long before they were formally issued to SFPD personnel. Despite the department’s proximity to Silicon Valley, it wasn’t until the middle of the last decade that SFPD officers were assigned work emails. 

Technology has also affected the volume and nature of 911 calls. Before the proliferation of cell phones, a citizen might have seen a suspicious person and made a mental note to call SFPD dispatch later on a landline after arriving home. But when “later” eventually came, the citizen might have been distracted and forgotten to call dispatch altogether. Now, not only can a citizen call in a suspicious incident immediately, they can also photograph or video the person in question. This has increased the volume of calls to which SFPD must respond.

Also, in the pre-cellphone era, during a lull in 911 calls, an officer was expected to be proactive. Go talk to that guy wearing the hoodie covering his face in the bus shelter while six MUNI buses have passed him by. Now, given the dearth of personnel available, most officers are purely reactive to calls for service.

Staffing is the most significant challenge SFPD currently faces. From 2018 through 2021, the number of sworn officers leaving SFPD exceeded the number of new hires by 444, and the number of academy graduates decreased from 197 per year to 46. The  situation is only getting more dire. While the most recent academy class graduated just 12 new officers, SFPD estimates that more than 110 sworn officers will retire or leave the department by the end of this year.