WHERE SOLVING CRIMES TAKES TOP PRIORITY / San Diego police outshine San Francisco's with fewer officers per capita and more ground to cover

Photo of Jaxon Van Derbeken

Last of Three Parts .

San Francisco and San Diego are on the opposite ends of the scale when it comes to dealing with violent crime.

San Diego police rank first for solving violent crime among policing agencies serving the nation's 20 largest cities. San Francisco police rank last.

On average, San Diego police solved 64 percent of that city's violent crime - murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults - between 1996 and 2000, analysis shows. San Francisco police solved 28 percent.

Unlike San Francisco police, San Diego police make solving such crimes the top priority.

"Crimes against people are serious events," said Sgt. Gary E. Mitrovich, who oversees detectives working in San Diego's busy Mid-City Division. "You have a dangerous person out there in the street. We should take more effort to solve these crimes."

A Chronicle review of both departments found profound differences in their investigative practices.

San Diego has detailed investigative standards for each type of violent crime, frequently reviews the performance of its detectives and selects investigators based on demonstrated ability.

San Francisco has few written investigative standards, virtually no formal performance reviews and assigns inspectors to the various violent crime units based on how long their names have been on a list - not ability.

San Francisco police officials have begun looking at how the San Diego Police Department operates and whether the SFPD can benefit from similar approaches.

"We realize changes need to be made," said San Francisco Assistant Police Chief Earl Sanders. "We are looking for the causes and instituting remedies."

In every category of solving violent crime, San Diego police far outperform their counterparts in San Francisco.

Under FBI standards regarding clearance rates, police just have to make an arrest to claim a crime as solved or cleared. It doesn't matter what happens in court.

Police also can list a crime as solved for "exceptional" reasons - for example, the suspect is dead or in jail elsewhere, extradition is denied or the victim won't cooperate against a named suspect.

San Diego solved 36 percent of reported robberies, while San Francisco solved 20 percent, according to a five-year average from 1996 to 2000, the most recent data available.

Of rapes, San Diego solved 54 percent to San Francisco's 32 percent. Of aggravated assaults - nonfatal stabbings, shootings and beatings - San Diego solved 75 percent to San Francisco's 38 percent.

San Diego homicide detectives solved about 64 percent of their city's murders, while San Francisco police solved half.

"We catch the stupid and the unlucky. A lot of people get away with it," said Lt. Henry Hunter, supervisor of San Francisco's General Work detail, charged with investigating all of the city's nonfatal shootings, stabbings and beatings.

Neither city is particularly violent. San Francisco has 10 violent crimes per 1,000 residents and San Diego has 7.1. By comparison, Baltimore has 27.


There are some limits to the comparison between San Francisco and San Diego.

San Francisco is the proverbial melting pot of people from throughout the world, with no race or ethnicity making up a majority of the population. Its 777,000 residents live in one of the densest and most liberal cities in the country.

Many violent crimes are committed near public housing projects, where witnesses fear retaliation if they come forward.

San Diego is far from homogeneous, but its historical mixture of Anglo and Latino cultures defines the city. Its 1.2 million residents are spread out from crowded beach communities to rural farms.

San Diego still clings to a law-and-order sensibility passed on from decades past when it was predominantly a military town. Its police have to contend with suspects fleeing across the international border into Mexico - never to be seen again.


The police forces in the two cities are about the same size. San Diego has slightly fewer officers than San Francisco, 2,140 to 2,265 respectively. That gives San Francisco significantly more officers per 1,000 residents, 2.9, than the 1.7 officers in San Diego.

Despite its fewer officers per capita, San Diego police still have more investigators than San Francisco.

Overall, San Diego has more than 430 detectives, while SFPD has about 313 inspectors - more than 70 of which are assigned to noninvestigative duties such as department administration.

For the current fiscal year, SFPD's budget is $246.8 million, excluding the $26 million spent on security for San Francisco International Airport. The budget for the San Diego Police Department, which does not provide airport security, is $280.7 million.

Because San Diego has nearly 60 percent more residents, San Francisco's annual cost per capita, $317.79, for police services is significantly higher than San Diego's $229.49.

Both cities have experienced a significant drop in violent crime in recent years, although San Francisco has done better. The number of reported violent crimes in San Francisco fell 34 percent from 1996-2000. In San Diego, violent crime dropped 29 percent.

Most of San Diego's detectives work out of district stations and are generalists, investigating thefts, burglaries, robberies and nonfatal shootings and stabbings.

"Our system is very expensive because of the amount of staffing we have," said Capt. Ron Newman, who oversees San Diego's homicide and central robbery units. "We have come to the conclusion we can't make it less expensive."

Its homicide squad has 20 detectives, five detective sergeants, five crime scene investigators and two lieutenants, while San Francisco's homicide detail consist of 14 inspectors and one lieutenant.

San Francisco's sex crimes detail has eight inspectors and one lieutenant. San Diego's has 13 detectives, two detective sergeants and one lieutenant.

San Diego police assign an investigator to every reported aggravated assault and robbery.

In San Francisco, only about 30 percent of the reported robberies and aggravated assaults are assigned an investigator.

San Diego assigns a team of six investigators to each murder. If one takes time off, a replacement investigator is brought in.

"You have six people brainstorming every case," said L.D. Martin, a detective sergeant on San Diego's homicide squad.

San Francisco assigns two investigators to each murder. Even when one investigator goes on vacation for several weeks, no replacement is usually brought in.

Since 1995, San Diego has used one of its six-member homicide teams to investigate "cold cases" - those murders that remain unsolved for years. Recent breakthroughs in technology like DNA comparison have spurred this effort. San Francisco has no systematic cold-case review.

"Since the cold case team started, 47 homicides were solved," said Jorge Duran, a detective sergeant assigned to San Diego's homicide squad.


San Diego detectives are selected based on their performance and the recommendations of their superiors.

"They had to have made their bones on the street," said Newman, the San Diego detective captain, who retired earlier this year.

A new detective must first put in time - at least two years - at one of the department's nine district police stations. From there the top performing detectives can compete for a slot on one of the specialized investigative units at police headquarters, such as commercial robbery or sex crimes.

After years of work in a specialized unit, the top investigators are considered for a spot on one of the department's homicide teams.

Homicide detectives review the candidates and send a list of three to supervisors for selection.

"Homicide, it goes without saying, you want your best people there - it's the most serious crime," said Mitrovich, a detective sergeant.

To become an inspector at the San Francisco department, a police officer must pass a test. Previous job performance and experience are not considered.

Those who pass the test are transferred to the various investigative units based on their seniority. Homicide inspectors are chosen on the basis of how long they've had their names on a wait list - not on proven ability. This system was started in the late 1970s to ensure all officers have an equal shot.

San Francisco police administrators said the wait-list system needs to be changed to ensure the best people get assigned to the vital investigative positions.

"There are several ways to change it. One way is just like pulling a tooth -

you just do it," said Sanders, the assistant police chief.

The wait-list system is a central element in the Police Department's contract with the Police Officers Association, which views it as a way to protect officers from losing plum assignments because of favoritism and City Hall meddling.

"Management has over the years wanted to get rid of the system - to put the 'best and the brightest' in - which is total bull," said Lt. Paul Chignell, a former president of the Police Officers Association. "The adequacy of investigations has no relationship to the transfer policy."


Each investigative unit at the San Diego Police Department has its own investigative procedures manual - most of them are more than 100 pages. The sex crimes manual is 126 pages.

San Francisco police conduct many of their investigations over the phone and often require crime victims to come to the Hall of Justice for follow-up interviews - or their case will be dropped.

San Diego investigators don't expect crime victims to come to them. The guidelines require detectives to take certain basic steps on each case.

"If the victim of a felony crime cannot be contacted in person, the investigator must state the reason on the follow-up report," said Detective Sgt. Mitrovich. " 'Well, I didn't feel like it,' or 'It was more convenient to call' - those are not good reasons why."

"(Investigators) will physically go out to the scene and contact the victim, " said Detective Sgt. Tim Muren, a San Diego robbery division supervisor.

For each violent crime, an investigator must re-interview the victim, regardless of how vague the information they originally told a patrol officer.

"Often the victim has had time to think about it and fill in the blanks - maybe something will occur to them that they forgot in the excitement," said Mitrovich.

"Sometimes the follow-up contact is a courtesy, but you just don't know what you'll get," he said. "We find a lot of our victims know the suspect. They might have been reluctant to tell a patrol officer, but a detective should get through that."


The two police departments take starkly different actions when a gun is used to commit a crime.

San Diego detectives not only investigate all gun-related crimes, but in most cases follow the patrol officers to the crime scene - regardless of whether the gun is fired.

"If the person is willing to show the gun, that means he is willing to use the gun - we want to get those people off the street as soon as possible," said Muren, the robbery unit sergeant.

In San Francisco, two-thirds of the gun-related crimes are never assigned to a police inspector for investigation, a Chronicle analysis showed.

San Diego police solve more than 50 percent of the store robberies in which a gun was used. San Francisco police solved 10 percent, according to an analysis of SFPD data from July through December 2000.


All San Diego detectives are given use of a car, one that they are urged to take home at night so they can quickly get to crime scenes.

San Francisco inspectors must vie to use a limited number of cars from a centralized motor pool. At times, some inspectors said, cars have been unavailable.

Both departments have cut back on overtime for investigations, although San Diego makes an exception for its homicide detectives.

"There is unlimited overtime for homicide," said Newman, the homicide and robbery captain.

Differences between the two police departments also can be found in how they supervise investigators.

In quarterly performance reviews, each San Diego detective is judged by the standards in the investigative guidelines.

"The whole idea - do you have accountability, do you have standards?" said Sgt. Stephen D. Cross, a supervisor in San Diego's sex crimes unit. "I want to know how complete they are, how fast they get out to the scene. I would be concerned about a detective who spends all their time on the phone."

The review of a detective's work doesn't stop there.

"We do a random check with victims to make sure the detectives have actually done the work," said Muren of the robbery division.

The San Francisco Police Department does none of this on a systematic basis.

Formal performance reviews of inspectors were halted two years ago because they were viewed as too subjective, said Capt. Roy Sullivan, a supervisor in SFPD's Inspectors Bureau.

"We still have an antiquated system," said Sanders, SFPD's assistant chief.


Sanders wants to adopt the San Diego model of deploying investigators to district police stations. He hopes this will cut down on inspectors not investigating nearly 70 percent of the robberies and aggravated assaults because they don't see any obvious leads to follow.

"The perpetrators want you to put it in a file and not bother with it," Sanders said.

Plans are being drafted that would reorganize the Inspectors Bureau, sending investigators out to each of the 10 district stations, he said.

SFPD also is talking with the Police Officers Association about making sergeants and inspectors the same rank, thus increasing the number of inspectors from 313 to 550 and broadening the pool from which key positions are filled, said Police Chief Fred Lau.

"If we can get police officers on the street at the time the report is being taken, at the time the incident is occurring, I think our success rate will be much higher," said Lau.

Station-based inspectors should become familiar with both the victims and criminals in the district and be able to spot leads from a patrol report that would go unnoticed by inspectors working out of the Hall of Justice, Sanders said.

"Most crimes happen within the scope of the neighborhood where the perpetrator lives," he said. "Inspectors at the stations will say, 'I know this guy, I know this description.' "

Discussions have started with the Police Officers Association, Sanders said,

and he hopes the department's station-investigator plan can be in place by the end of the year.

"We are trying desperately to change," Sanders said.



MONDAY: Getting away with murder is easier in San Francisco than just about anywhere else.

TODAY: Why San Diego is so much better than San Francisco at solving violent crimes.

   San Francisco   777,000
   San Diego     1,223,000
   San Francisco        47
   San Diego           320
   San Francisco       10
   San Diego            7.1
   San Francisco    2.9
   San Diego        1.7
   San Francisco(x)    $317.79
   San Diego           $229.49
(x) Excludes the $26.6 million SFPD spends for SFO security. San Diego police 
do not provide airport security. 
   -- VIOLENT CRIMES SOLVED, 1996-2000
                                  San Francisco    San Diego
   Violent crime solved               28%            64%
   Murder solved                      50%            64%
   Rape solved                        32%            54%
   Robbery solved                     20%            36%
   Aggravated assault solved          38%            75%
   Status of the 418 murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults 
committed in the city from July 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2000:
   Solved     73 (17%)
   Unsolved  345 (83%)
  Source: SFPD, SDPD, California Dept. of Justice data and Chronicle analysis
   Chronicle Graphic