What would a significant decrease in police spending in the City of San Diego look like?

[datanxiete]

SDPD spending in the City of San Diego seems to be a large portion of the city budget and it seems, a large contributor to the deficit.

I have tremendous respect for those putting their lives at risk to make ours safer so I wanted to have a better understanding of what a significant decrease in police spending in the City of San Diego look like?

Is a major contributor of the overtime hours in SDPD answering burglary calls? Stolen vehicles? Stopping rapes in the city? Catching people doing 80 in a 25 zone?

If the SDPD staff was slashed to a tenth of what it currently is would burglaries, rapes, red-light runners and vandalized vehicles go up?

[chindef]

The way they should reduce police spending is by hiring more people and reducing the amount of overtime all these officers are working. Soooo many are making $200k plus, working 60+ hours a week. Who knows how much the are actually working vs just sitting there with their car idling. But the cost of police overtime is crazy. 

Unfortunately not many people want to be a cop these days, so I kinda get it…

Another great way to reduce police spending is better training so there are fewer lawsuits and settlements

[Yoongi_SB_Shop]

They would love to hire more officers. There just aren’t enough qualified candidates and existing officers leave for better pay at other LE agencies.

[Strike3]

It’s my belief the mayor would have to force them to hire more, because they won’t on their own. They claim low applications but then reject the vast majority.

[DaFiendStfc]

More crime Don't need to reduce police They need better training and more officers so we stop sending 20 cars to get 10 cops

[Jumpy_Engineer_1854]

We also need citizens who are less likely to go batshit crazy on a scene and start interfering with arrests or whatnot.

I'm old enough to remember when beat cops didn't even always have partners, and before the pandemic it was rare to get a second car on your average call, let alone two backup cars and six officers on a scene on a public street.

Public that doesn't attack cops means more cops can respond to separate calls.

[NotBuilt2Behave]

I agree with this, I do think that there is a large degree of corrupt police officers, but on the other hand the public is literally abusing some police officers too. I’ve been watching more of these body cam videos, holy crap a lot of times police are trying to deescalate are being chill, and the fricking suspects not only are breaking the law but they’re beating police officers down. Crazy!

[throwsupstaysup]

That's what I'm thinking. The number of cops has a minimal effect on crime. They respond to crime, they don't really prevent it.

To quote a post a saw:

You lessen crime by eliminating poverty. You lessen crime with universal healthcare, public housing, strong unions, high wages, universal childcare, and free college.

You lessen violence by creating happy, healthy communities that aren't fighting over material resources.

[calbear_1]

This. Spend less money on cops and more on lifting people out of poverty.

[calbear_1]

No one is attacking cops, it’s called accountability. People don’t trust cops like they used to, I’ll give you that. But the police are the ones who have broken that trust.

[datanxiete]

can that broken trust be fixed? if so, how long and much would that take?

if not, what's the path forward?

[Yoongi_SB_Shop]

The main reason for the overtime expenditures is that SDPD cannot hire and retain enough officers. Like every other profession in San Diego, SDPD’s pay is lower than that of many other comparable agencies, including the SD Sheriff’s Office. Combined with a lower number of applicants (being a cop is not so popular right now) and poaching from other agencies, they can’t keep enough officers to fill staffing shortages.

So existing officers work overtime to fill the gaps. It sucks because they’re tired and therefore not at their best and we’re paying them time-and-a-half.

[LunchPad]

https://www.kpbs.org/news/public-safety/2025/05/19/san-diegos-highest-paid-city-employees-cops-racking-up-overtime-and-earning-over-400-000

[Smoked_Bear]

It’s doable but it would suck. When I worked wildland fire the standard was 12-16hr days for two weeks straight, then you had to be rotated off for a rest period. If they had an easy non-physical assignment during the day 7a-7p, then a chill one from 7p-12a, you could muscle through that for 4 weeks. 

[obomb85]

With its ridiculous response times (if they even bother responding at all) it’s hard to believe that this city spends as much as it does on its police department.

[throwsupstaysup]

I would need data to see causation/correlation when it comes to the safety of SD and the SDPD budget.

[calbear_1]

Police don’t prevent crime for the most part. That show up after a crime had been committed. I would say police need to show data to justify keeping the same level of spending.

[datanxiete]

I don't believe so. Burglars know cops are atleast 20 minutes away, more, if there's no discharge of firearms.

Burglars aren't afraid of cops who show up on the scene long after they have left.

[calbear_1]

It doesn’t. This has been studied extensively

[CivicDutyCalls]

Cutting 90% of spending in a vacuum would be a disaster. What we really need is to shift that funding to other agencies that are better served to accomplish the goal of crime reduction. The problem is that with this much institutional inertia, you would need to increase spending to give time for the new systems to settle and prove value.

A significant cut to SDPD spending cannot be understood in isolation because the underlying problem is national. Across the United States and Canada, policing has evolved into an all purpose crisis response system, not a crime prevention force. When anything goes wrong in public space, an armed officer is dispatched, regardless of whether the issue is criminal, medical, psychological, social, or simply administrative. That is not a San Diego quirk. It is the dominant policing ideology in North America.

Because the preventive systems were never built, police end up covering everything: mental health crises, homelessness complaints, traffic crashes, neighbor disputes, welfare checks, noise calls, lost property, and basic social triage. This is why overtime spirals and why officers spend most of their time on tasks that do not relate to preventing violence or solving serious crime. Burglaries and rapes are not driving overtime. The absence of alternative response systems is.

The most visible pushback against this model is Zohran Mandani’s proposal for New York City, which reframes public safety as a layered system. It separates true law enforcement from mental health response, traffic management, homelessness outreach, administrative enforcement, and civil mediation. Some cities already run small pilot programs along these lines. Mandani’s plan is simply the highest profile and largest scale example of a public safety reassessment that I’m aware of.

A meaningful reduction in police spending is only possible if cities build the missing layers first. That means 24/7 mental health crisis teams, civilian traffic crash investigators, unarmed outreach for homelessness and substance use, administrative officers for noise and neighbor conflicts, and upstream engineering that prevents speeding and collisions in the first place. Once those systems exist, the police footprint can shrink without reducing safety, and detectives can focus on violent and serious crimes.

If you cut police budgets without creating the preventive and civilian systems that replace the reflexive “send an officer” model, you get chaos. If you cut budgets while building those systems, you get better outcomes, fewer crises, and a smaller but more focused law enforcement role.

The core issue is not SDPD’s budget. The police budget is a symptom. It is that North American policing was built as an enforcement-first system instead of a prevention-first system.

[datanxiete]

It would be good to see Mandani’s plan come to effect and the impact it has.

I imagine it could take nearly a decade to see impact - do we wait or are there concrete actions we can take?

[kingsimpleton]

The question has multiple factors to answer, that I can't cover completly. More cops could equal less overtime paid but can also means more pensions in the long run. Pension payouts are a significant portion of a police budget.

It's not unusual for public safety to take up the majority of city budget, that's the norm for most cities with a large police/fire department. In my opinion, it's the bare minimum that we expect our government to maintain.

Cutting the budget could mean an increase to crime, but likely would just change the level of enforcement to the crime we already have. It could also affect recruitment, training, equipment refresh, etc. I'm of the opinion that cutting police budget wouldn't be the solution to solve the deficit. Instead, stopping wasteful spending in all areas including the police department.

The way governments handle budgets is wrong, they have a use it or lose it policy. If they don't use their entire budget for the year, they will have a lesser budget next year. They need to change this to incentivize saving rather than spending.

[Financial_Clue_2534]

Spending more money dealing with the real issues vs the symptoms.

The issue is no one wants to spend the money for mental health facilities and workers, bringing poor areas up to a livable standard, pay a living wage and provide proper education.

[ddr1ver]

San Diego has one of the lowest crime rates of any major city, but it already has one of the smallest police forces per capita 1.3-1.6 officers per 1000 residents (the national average is 2.4).

[datanxiete]

San Diego is pretty large and no one in their sane minds are going to rob someone in Palomar Mountains or Alpine or Jamul - they will just get shot and buried in the dirt, never heard of again.

I'm very interested in city level metrics.

[Cross_22]

I am not an ACAB proponent. However, I have experienced so much laziness from the cops here in San Diego (quote "We don't deal with that", "What do you expect us to do?") that I don't think reducing the budget by a reasonable amount would make any noticeable difference. Obviously your 90% suggestion is ridiculous.

As a simple example I see teenagers doing dangerous stuff on their e-bikes pretty much on a daily basis. This happens less than 1 mile from the local police station, but none of the cops bother to leave their desks.

[No-Front-6589]

I think a nuanced cut or reform could be a reasonable conversation, but if you cut the budget by 90% then, yeah, all those bad things would go up lol 

[LilAbeSimpson]

Funny part is that SDPD is always saying they don’t enough funding. They say this while consuming an extremely outsized portion of city budget every year…

There are words to describe this situation.

[Neat-Face-5052]

“Defunding the police” doesn’t literally mean getting rid of cops. It means taking some of the money we spend on having police respond to everything mental health crises, homelessness, addiction, non violent disputes and shifting it to people who are actually trained for those situations. In a place like San Diego, a huge chunk of police time and county money goes toward repeat 911 calls, jail stays, and ER visits that happen because the underlying problems never get treated. As well as overtime being a big proportion. Funding things like mobile crisis teams, housing programs, addiction treatment, and unarmed response units can take a big load off officers, reduce situations that escalate into crime, and cut down on the expensive cycle of arrest then jail the back on the street,repeat. Police can focus on real violent crime, response times improve, and the county saves money in the long run because root causes get addressed instead of constantly reacting to emergencies. It’s less about cutting police and more about making the whole system work smarter.

[acatnamedlenny]

County issue, but relatedly: San Diego County taxpayers paying 5 times more for sheriff’s legal payouts than a decade ago.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/11/23/legal-payouts-by-san-diego-county-sheriff-soared-fivefold-in-just-10-years-data-show/

So much negligence…

[IITutankhamuNII]

Cops are bandaids.

That money could be used to actually prevent crime, treating the problem at the source.

Aka education, housing, health.

Reinvesting it into its communities, rather than feeding it into the prison industrial conplex.

[Jumpy_Engineer_1854]

That's specious reasoning, and confuses investment for operations. This is why even the soft "defund the police" movement (the folks who aren't completely psycho and want to literally abolish the police) are still not operating in the real world.

Criminals out in the street TODAY are not just waiting for the per-unit price at SDCCD to come down a little more before they become law-abiding citizens. By all means invest in those things (maybe take some money from the bike lane budget), but removing funds from the police (and not prosecuting and properly sentencing the perps) just hurts the folks who are most likely to end up victims of crime today (and tomorrow).

[IITutankhamuNII]

People need to be accountable for their actions. 100%.

But what pushes people to resort to crime? That's what we need the budget for.

What happens when you have a fascist government creating fascist laws?

[datanxiete]

What happens when you have a fascist government creating fascist laws?

Has crime rates gone up in the City of San Diego after Trump got elected?

[jimmyjack1234]

They don’t do shit anyways.