Deficient Recruitment Efforts, Not Low Pay, Responsible for SDPD’s Staffing Shortage

Abstract: The San Diego Police Officers Association and, to some degree, the San Diego media has long held that low pay was a significant factor in the department’s attrition rate that required pay increases to solve. A recent City-commission study that found the SDPD’s compensation (base pay range + cost of benefits) was near the bottom of the cities surveyed has prompted widespread support for further pay increases for the SDPD.

A review of all available data demonstrates that the attrition rate for the SDPD is overwhelmingly driven by retirement, not officers leaving for other agencies. In fact, the rate of officers leaving for other agencies in the past five years has dramatically declined from the prior five year period and has never represented as much as 1% of the total force in any given year. In the two most recent years, 2013 and 2014, retirement accounted for 60% of the total attrition rate and officers leaving for other agencies accounted for only 10%.

Moreover, the staffing shortfall itself would have been entirely avoided had the City not cancelled or greatly reduced the number of budgeted new recruits to hire over the past ten years.

Further, we find a pair of serious issues with the City-funded salary survey. First, the survey incorporates cities from entirely different markets, such as the Bay Area, LA-area, etc. many of which, such as San Francisco, have dramatically higher costs of living and higher rates of public pay in general. After restricting the comparison to only those cities within San Diego County, the pay disparity found is greatly reduced.

Additionally, the City passed a series of non-pensionable pay raises beginning in FY2014 which are not captured in the study’s analysis of base pay ranges. Consequently, the pay disparity reported is overstated.

Finally, we look at the theory arguing for an increase in public pay to match those of nearby agencies with higher level of pay and find it severely misguided. When job openings for 25 positions are met with over 3,000 applicants, implementing agency-wide pay raises in an attempt to retain the less than 1% who depart for other agencies in any given year is not merely ineffective, it is fiscally irresponsible.