Sunday, August 04, 2002

Why am I not surprised?

Violent criminals who prey on San Francisco's residents and visitors have a better chance of getting away with their crimes than predators in any other large American city.

The San Francisco Police Department solved, on average, just 28 percent of the city's murders, rapes, robberies, shootings, stabbings and other serious assaults between 1996 and 2000, a Chronicle computer analysis shows.

That was the lowest violent crime "clearance rate," or solution rate, among the nation's 20 largest cities. The large-city average was 42 percent.

This is precisely the mediocrity that socialism and berueacracy breed. Added to that, their desire to disarm us so that we cannot defend ourselves from these crimes.

The Chronicle found a police department that doesn't pick inspectors on the basis of ability and performance, where few are held accountable for inferior work or effort, where solving crimes is not the highest goal, and where inspectors often investigate crimes from their desks rather than going out to interview victims and find evidence and witnesses.

And just in case you wanted to feel a little less secure about airport security:

Few have had a longer look at the SFPD than Jeff Brown, for 22 years San Francisco's elected public defender and a police critic.

"My sense of the San Francisco Police Department as a whole is there really is a lack of professionalism," said Brown, now a member of the state Public Utilities Commission. "It's a pretty sloppy department."

Brown says Lau, whom Mayor Willie Brown appointed chief in 1996 after 25 years on the force, hasn't been effective.

"I've never seen leadership within the department," he said.

"We're doing the best we can with the resources we have," said Lau, a candidate for a federal airport security job.

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