On Sunday there was a large line of men (with a few token women) in front of Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco's Civic Center.
They were waiting to take a four-hour written exam as part of a hiring process for the San Francisco Sheriffs Department.
I wished them all luck and privately hoped they would do better than their counterparts on the San Francisco Police Department which is one of the most outrageously lazy and overpaid groups of municipal employees in the country.
They refuse to get out of their patrol cars and actually interact with citizens, let alone engage in any proactive work such as a stakeout in a high-crime area. For instance, in the Civic Center every night, there are car break-ins galore and the broken glass from car windows looks like a fresh snowfall every morning. When my neighbor Holly, whose car has been broken into eleven times in the last three months, expressed her outrage to the Police Department, their official response was "maybe you should move to the suburbs." I'm not making this up.
Dan Noyes on the local ABC news station recently did a story on the subject and you can get to a YouTube clip of it by clicking here. The best quote is from Andrew Korniej, a supernumerary at the opera whose car has been broken into repeatedly. "I think it's embarassing for the city." The out-of-shape suburbanites who tend to work as cops in San Francisco, however, have no shame. I believe living in the City and County of San Francisco should be a requirement for new hires because whatever the policy is right now, it's not working and every citizen knows it.
I wholeheartedly agree that the #1 requirement for being a member of the SFPD should be San Francisco residency. What I would really like to see is beat cops who are residents of the neighborhoods that they patrol (dream on, eh?).
ReplyDeleteThe ineptitude of the SFPD borders on incompetence; the backlog of unsolved crimes is matched only by the increase in violent offenses.
ReplyDeleteIt is incomprehensible that an intelligent, wel-meaning mayor such as Newsome is continuing to support them and is standing behind their inefficient chief.
Did you know that in '01-'02 my ex was trying out for the SFPD? At 40? That's when I knew he'd lost his charming, but tenuous hold on reality. Of course, he blew it at the final interview by admitting he used to live with a drug dealer and had taken drugs himself. When it comes to the crunch, some people habitually shoot themselves in the foot. Fortunately, he did it figuratively, so he couldn't end up doing it literally. It might have been someone else's foot if he were ever trusted with a gun. On the other hand, that ineptitude could have been his key to advancement with the SFPD. But I digress.
ReplyDeleteDear Fragile Lisa: That's a funny story about the naivete of your ex. He would have made a cute cop, which would have been at least been some improvement in the force.
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