Cops, cops, and granny flats

Good morning! We’ve got a very interesting look at problems inside the San Francisco Police Department. Will Jarrett unearthed troves of data from local and state sources, with additional reporting from Eleni Balakrishnan; Joe Eskenazi offers analysis.

There are some troubling trends: Police response times have grown markedly slower over the past four years, even though the cops are now fielding nearly 40 percent fewer calls. There are tales of cops taking days to show up to burglary calls if they deign to show up at all. Recruitment and retention in the department are plummeting; the SFPD’s tally of “full-duty” officers dropped from 1,872 in 2017 to just 1,514 at present. But our data shows that a lower head count doesn’t correlate neatly with police response times or arrest rates: Reported property crimes, for example, were at their peak in 2017, when officer numbers were highest. The problems go deeper than staffing. As a former SFPD higher-up tells Mission Local, “You have an entire generation of cops who are disengaged. They have not been trained properly or are accustomed to doing as little as possible.”

In more police news, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins appears to be reexamining the manslaughter and assault case against SFPD officer Kenneth Cha for shooting Sean Moore in 2017. Moore ultimately died of complications from his wounds in 2020, and a coroner ruled the death a homicide. Now the DA’s office has requested Moore’s medical records and shared them with Cha’s defense attorney, delaying the next court hearing.

This could indicate that the DA’s office is interested in tying other parts of Moore’s medical history to his death, raising questions that could lead to dismissal of the case against the officer. Earlier this month, the DA also asked to drop charges against officer Christopher Samayoa, in the city’s only other pending police homicide case.

For a non-cop story, Annika Hom looks at four newly-converted garages on San Carlos Street that Mission Housing is turning into fully affordable accessory dwelling units, or “granny flats.” Sure, it will take a lot of ADUS to make a dent in the housing crisis, but Kevin Kitchingham, Mission Housing’s director of housing development and construction, says ADUs are at least “another tool in the toolbox.” The studio-sized, ground-floor apartments will go to residents who earn 55% of the area median income, and will be listed on DAHLIA, the city’s affordable housing website.

More soon,

Sara