more at SF Examiner
Hell… they got me too!”
That’s the title of Tracy McCray’s latest blog post, distributed to all members of San Francisco’s police union. She’s the acting president of the politically powerful organization that represents 2,000 members with a $3.5 million annual budget. But that didn’t stop robbers from smashing her car window. Good to know our local thieves don’t discriminate.
It happened on the 1200 block of Franklin between Post and Geary on March 23. McCray had stopped to visit a relative in the hospital across the street. She was gone for less than 30 minutes. But that’s all it takes in this town.
“I had officially become a casualty of the auto burglary epidemic!” she told her constituency.
And guess what? There was nothing in the car to steal.
Like most of us, she didn’t report the crime and simply got her window replaced, grumbling all the while. As a former lieutenant in The City’s robbery investigations unit, McCray knows the story too well.
“Robberies are not slowing down. Unfortunately, every morning, I get to read the big 19. It’s the list of all the major crimes that are happening. And robberies aren’t going anywhere,” McCray said in a wide-ranging “get to know ya” interview with The Examiner. “It’s unfortunate. But I think it’s the perfect storm, because now you have a police force that is very short. We have to triage our calls. … You don’t have officers out where we did before. It’s just too thin.”
It sure is. Just this week, Supervisor Catherine Stefani, a former prosecutor, held a hearing on the SFPD staffing shortage. Her numbers show the force is short 570 officers, a number that’s projected to grow to over 700 by the end of the year. (For those scoring at home, San Francisco has 1,612 officers currently sworn in.)
“We cannot meet the demand for service, implement necessary criminal justice reforms or protect our most vulnerable residents without adequate police staffing, and the public suffers as a result,” said Supervisor Stefani.
McCray echoed that concern in our talk, explaining that officers have to reply to calls for in-progress crimes first. If you call the SFPD after you got robbed, they might not get to you for days or maybe even weeks. It’s just another wrinkle in the ugly narrative surrounding crime in this town – a narrative McCray has helped promote nationally with regular appearances on Fox News.
stock Wix photo
Comments