How San Diego reports the Police Department’s performance to the public today is substantially simpler than it was two decades ago.
The city’s annual budget used to measure neighborhood involvement, community satisfaction and many other metrics of a police officer’s job. Today, just two metrics remain: crime rates and response times.
When the mayor and council members talk about cutting or growing the Police Department’s budget each year, they more often talk about the impact to crime rates and response times than anything else.
As Bill Lansdowne has molded the Police Department since he became police chief in 2003, he’s also emphasized the value of response times in his decisions. When faced with budget cuts, he’s dismantled community programs and proactive units to spare patrol officers, who handle emergency calls.
Given the importance of these two metrics, I found a new report on police response times especially interesting. For the first time in a decade, response times worsened across every call category last year.