SAN FRANCISCO - Some San Francisco police officers working
at San Francisco International Airport may be reassigned to patrol city streets
to deal with spikes in violent crime.
A bill by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi
passed the Public Safety Committee on Monday and could go before the full Board
of Supervisors as early as next week. The bill calls for police Chief Heather
Fong and airport Manager John Martin to work together to “create a staffing plan
to redeploy sworn airport personnel under certain circumstances and set
reporting requirements.”
Mirkarimi introduced the bill in February
following a 2006 City Controller report that found the police department’s
airport bureau could save $2 million per year by redeploying some of its own
resources internally. The report also found that the airport bureau was budgeted
for 34 sworn officer positions in excess of its need. But the audit determined
that the bureau could not spare officers for permanent redeployment.
The
airport bureau is part of the San Francisco Police Department, but is funded by
the airport’s budget, which is separate from San Francisco’s general
fund.
The legislation calls for Fong and Martin to develop a plan by
which The City, operating below its charter-mandated minimum staffing level,
could borrow officers from the airport “to respond to staffing shortages,
increases in crime or violence or other circumstances that create a need for
additional sworn personnel in the city and county.”
The department
reported on January 26 that it employs 1,706 active-duty officers. In 1994, the
charter was amended to require a minimum staffing level of 1,971 officers in The
City, apart from the airport bureau. Several city neighborhoods, including the
Bayview, Mission and Western Addition, have suffered troublesome rates of
homicide and other violent crime.
But Martin and bureau Cmdr. Jim Lynch
cautioned that assigning airport officers double-duty could lead to mandatory
overtime and canceled vacations for those officers. “The controller’s audit was
clear that staffing effectively is justified,” Lynch said after the hearing
Monday.
The federal Transportation Security Administration mandates
security measures that the bureau must meet. Lynch declined to reveal the
federally mandated staffing levels, citing security concerns, but Mirkarimi said
Monday that “we haven’t come close to the floor of what the TSA regulation
is.”
Revenue Diversion
Of increasing concern to airlines (and many airport operators) has been local political interest in siphoning money away from airports for other non-aviation purposes. This activity, known as revenue diversion, is prohibited by federal law, but is allowed, in a few instances, under special arrangements that were "grandfathered" in the federal statutes addressing this issue. Current law, 49 U.S.C. 47107(b), requires any report receiving an AIP grant to promise, as a condition to that grant, that all revenues generated by the airport will be spent on the capital or operating costs of that airport.
On the Web:
Revenue Diversions at San Francisco International Airport: $12.5 Million (DOT-IG Report)
http://www.oig.dot.gov/item.jsp?id=1283
Improper Diversion of Airport Revenue