The patrol specials say the Police Commission face-off is all about the SFPD officers' lust for a piece of the multimillion-dollar security pie, alleging that moonlighting SFPD officers covet the security business controlled by patrol specials.
While the competition is mostly about money, some of it touches on pride: The specials think of themselves as loyal and dedicated police officers who just happen to work for private clients. "When I'm out in the field I do police officer work," says assistant patrol special Jane Warner. Meanwhile, SFPD officers regard the specials as ill-trained mercenaries -- "a liability to themselves and the citizens," as Sgt. Mickey Griffin was quoted by the Associated Press last October. (In a brief interview, Griffin denies having made the statement attributed to him. He was also unable to recall what he did tell AP and maintains he never saw the story, which was printed in the New York Times.)
Whether the SFPD can be bought is one thing, but it can quite legally be rented under Section 10B of the city's Administrative Code: SFPD officers who volunteer for overtime are routinely detailed to provide security services for businesses, and the private client picks up the tab. (The major difference between patrol specials and SFPD officers is that 10B limits SFPD officers to work for just one client at a time.)
Citizens and businesses can request these "augmented" police services through the SFPD Field Operations bureau, and if the chief agrees that those services are warranted, Field Operations refers the request to the district station with jurisdiction. District captains help determine the exact need for security and quote a price, although they're not above "strongly recommending" a whole squad of officers for really large events or clients, one Field Operations lieutenant says. Officers working under 10B are detailed to everything from movie and TV commercial shoots to construction projects and street fairs.
The going rate for a 10B officer is time-and-a-half, which goes to the cop, plus a 22.5 percent markup for "administrative overhead" that tumbles into the ravenous maw of the city's general fund. Oh, and there's a four-hour minimum per officer rented. According to Lt. Don Carlson of the Field Operations bureau -- the clearinghouse for 10B assignments -- clients fork over $44.83 an hour for daytime police services, while a "night premium" bumps the rate to $46.69 between 7 pm and 9 am. For a bar owner, the $373 he might pay an SFPD officer for eight hours of security services might exceed the combined payroll of a bartender, a waiter, a doorman and a DJ.
Lt. Carlson says about 1,050 of SFPD's 1,800 officers are currently signed up for 10B projects, with 10B work going to about 75 to 80 percent of those who request it. SFPD officers ordinarily work 10-hour shifts four days a week. The department limits officers to 14 hours on the job during those four days, but on "off" days 10B officers apparently can work an unlimited number of hours. An industrious cop could easily chalk up 60 hours a week on his timecard if there was enough 10B work to go around. (Lt. Carlson says he is currently working on new guidelines that would cut back 10B work to 20 hours per pay period.)
The 10B attraction is self-evident. Freshman police officers gross $43,952 a year; cops can earn a few thousand more through seniority, by accruing premium pay for joining the motorcycle detail or by taking emergency medicine training. But by the fourth year, an officer bumps the salary ceiling; to earn more, he must gain a promotion or work on the side.
Our financially teetering city is reluctant to pay cops time-and-a-half unless there is a newspaper strike or a parade. So what's a poor police officer plagued by a mortgage and orthodontist bills, plus commutes from Martinez in a gas-sucking urban assault vehicle, to do? Faced with these conditions, wouldn't you try to squeeze out the competition?
A Federal Case
That's exactly what a couple of patrol special officers allege: That a group of SFPD officers tried to muscle in on the specials' turf. Check out the following incidents, alleged in Russo & Reyes v. Willis Casey et al., a 1992 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The suit draws on the alleged events that followed the deal signed in 1991 by patrol specials Steve Russo and Sam Reyes with the John Stewart Company, managers of HUD's Geneva Towers housing project. Over the life of the two-year contract, Russo and Reyes would have netted about $2.5 million for policing one of HUD's more unsecure housing developments. The specials would have done some of the work themselves, but also would have hired 10B officers from the SFPD and cops from surrounding jurisdictions at wages comparable to the city's.
Russo & Reyes v. Casey maintains that SFPD officers weren't about to let the patrol specials win this contract. The suit alleges that the John Stewart Company was contacted by at least five unnamed district captains and by similarly anonymous figures in then-Chief of Police Willis Casey's office. The callers allegedly pressured the John Stewart Company to hire "a group other than Russo and Reyes," identified in the lawsuit as Beijing Private Security Services, a company managed by SFPD officer Leroy Henry, whose wife Bitsy was its president.
