San Francisco is short 540 police officers. San Francisco’s largest police district, by size and population, only has three to four officers on duty every night. In February, the city’s Deputy Police Chief told Public the city was 540 officers short, but the Department only had funding to hire 267 officers.
Now, in an interview with British journalist Freddy Sayers of Unherd, the leader of San Francisco’s progressive Democrats, Supervisor Dean Preston, has called for cutting $100 million from the city’s police budget.
Preston: What gets publicized a lot is my views around the police budget. Whether it's used well, whether it's making people safer or not.
Sayers: Because you supported defunding the police, is that fair?
Preston: I think we have a very, very bloated police budget. All kinds of waste in the police department. I mean, I could cut a hundred million dollars out of the police department.
