Guest Opinion | Fiscal Irresponsibility: The Demand for More Pasadena Over-Policing

Pasadena’s structural budget deficit is already arriving. But some City Council members are so fiscally irresponsible that they are pushing to increase an already high Police Department budget by another $3 million. They want to fund 11 more sworn officer positions. Their demand is for increased PD staffing is not based on any demonstrable need. It would push Pasadena to the top with the highest per capita policing level among the 40 comparable cities in California with populations between 100,000-200,000.

Mayor Terry Tornek has been sounding the alarm that Pasadena faces a widening structural budget deficit as the City’s costs will soon outstrip revenue. The structural deficit is already here as the City administration begins planning for the fiscal year 2017 budget. City Manager Steve Mermell told us that the Finance Department has informed him that a status quo budget – i.e., a budget that just maintains the City’s existing levels of staffing and services – for the next fiscal year would have a $7 million deficit because of cost increases that are already built-in such as inflation adjustments, previously bargained-for wage increases, and pension contribution increases.

In the 2016 fiscal year budget recently approved by the City Council, the PD budget was increased by a whopping 13%. Before the ink is barely dry on that big budget increase, some Council Members are already pushing to add another $3 million by increasing sworn officers staffing from 239 to 250. The Council’s Public Safety Committee will discuss a staff report on the 11-officer increase proposal at its meeting Monday, August 15, at 4:15 pm at City Hall. The Staff report is at the agenda’s end and can be accessed at the following link: http://ww5.cityofpasadena.net/commissions/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2016/08/2016-08-15-Public-Safety-Committee.pdf.

The staff report is neutral, neither recommending nor opposing the 11-officer increase. It acknowledges that the current staffing level meets the FBI’s ideal staffing level for cities with populations between 100,000-200,000. What it doesn’t say is that the FBI’s ideal staffing level is rarely the level adopted by cities. As reflected by the following graph based on the most recent FBI statistics, Pasadena is only one of three California cities in the 100,000-200,000 population range who meet that FBI goal; the 38 other California cities in that range are not close to the FBI’s ideal standard.

Pasadena’s ranking #2 among comparable California cities suggests its current per-capita staffing level reflects over-policing, not under-policing. Does Pasadena want to compare itself to the #1 City, Richmond, and the #3 City, Inglewood? The closest City with comparable demographics to Pasadena is Pomona; if Pasadena staffed at Pomona’s level, it would have about 90 fewer sworn officers. Even if it staffed at Burbank’s or Glendale’s per capita’s levels, it would have 35-60 fewer officers.

The empirical data on staffing thus shows that there is not a need for a budget-busting $3 million increase for higher staffing. The data warrants reducing Pasadena’s authorized number of police officers, not adding 11 additional officers. Moreover, if there were more money available for the PD – which there is not – money should be budgeted to increasing officer compensation rather than more police. The same Council Members who are now seeking 11 new officers were a short time ago arguing that the City should address the problem that it invests in training new officers only to have them poached by other cities. The attrition of trained officers and the City’s resultant loss of its investment in them has been a real problem, not a phoney issue like the push for more staffing. For example, Anaheim has hired-away a number of Pasadena’s officers by higher salaries. Spending taxpayer money on higher compensation to make Pasadena more competitive is a wiser investment than compounding Pasadena’s existing over-policing.

Increasing the PD’s budget another $3 million would require taking money away from parks, libraries, health services, affordable housing, minimum wage enforcement, and other programs that help address the underlying causes of crime. Rather than increasing PD staffing, Pasadena should set a 5-year goal of reducing police staffing to 200 officers and thereby saving more than $12 million per annum. Half of that savings should be devoted to increasing officer compensation; the other half should be the PD’s share of the looming structural deficit. That’s the fiscally responsible approach to police staffing.

 

Skip Hickambottom and Dale Gronemeier are local civil rights attorneys who are members of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.