Deep-blue San Francisco, California, has begun attempting to recruit police officers from Texas amid a severe shortage of law enforcement — which came after the city defunded its police department.
In July 2020, amid the George Floyd riots, San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) announced a $120 million cut from the police and sheriff’s departments’ budgets.
“Reforming our criminal justice system must go hand-in-hand with policy changes and budget investments to make our city more equitable,” the Democrat mayor wrote in a statement at the time. “By redirecting funding from law enforcement agencies back into the African American community, we are putting our words into action, and we are doing it by listening to a community that for too long has been unheard and underserved.”
In the aftermath of her decision, property crime skyrocketed — forcing Breed to reverse course and actually increase the police budget.
San Francisco is lawless. Two thugs do a smash and grab as every SFPD cop is assigned to Dreamforce convention in downtown San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/JhOfWeYnKq
— Asian Crime Report (@activeasian) September 14, 2023
Still, the far-left leadership in the city has been openly hostile toward law enforcement and openly pro-criminal with their soft-on-crime policies — leading to an increase in public drug use, homelessness and crime, along with a severe police shortage.
This month, the San Francisco Police Department will be visiting four Texas university campuses to recruit prospective cops: Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University. According to the San Francisco Standard, this is the first time that they will be testing candidates outside of California.
Meanwhile, due to the police staffing shortage, overtime has skyrocketed — increasing 54% between 2021 and 2022. Former police communications staffer Matt Dorsey also reported that the San Francisco Police Department’s full-duty officer count has been reduced by 335 since 2017. As of January, the city had only 1,537 officers — while a police staffing analysis estimated that San Francisco needed more than 2,100 officers to properly police the city.
Earlier this week, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association accused Breed of secretly defunding the police — revealing that they had discovered during a labor-management meeting that the Democrat mayor’s government had implemented stealth cuts to the sheriff’s budget. The association also noted that when it had asked the city about the cuts, the city claimed to be broke.
“We want to be part of the solution, but time and time again, the mayor seems to block the sheriff from doing that. And this is another example. She’s cut the funding for those items and it almost seems like silent defunding, you know? For us and we’re trying to help,” Ken Lomba, president of the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association, wrote in a statement.
This just happened today. We were in a discussion with the Mayors Office and we found out the Mayor cut the SFSO, did not fund critical equipment, when asked why the City said they were broke. But at the same meeting they were using Zoom and at the same time have Teams video…
— San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association (@SanFranciscoDSA) September 18, 2023
