Two Sacramento mayoral candidates want to hire 100 cops. Another wants to cut the police budget

As Sacramento faces a $50 million budget deficit, the four viable mayoral candidates have vastly different views on how to fund its most costly and controversial department.

Flojaune Cofer wants to over time cut $70 million from the police budget. Steve Hansen and Dr. Richard Pan want to hire at least 100 cops in year one. Kevin McCarty falls in the middle with a desire to keep staffing levels steady to start, only hiring new cops if city revenue grows.

The police budget hit an all-time-high of $228 million in the current year, including about 100 vacancies. The council still gives the department the money for the vacancies, which officials use to pay officers for mandatory overtime.

Mayoral candidates that support filling police vacancies

In their first year as mayor, Hansen and Pan both said they want to fill the 100 vacancies. Both said that would not add to the city budget.

However city spokesman Tim Swanson said filling the 100 vacancies would indeed add to the budget due to employee costs that increase each year, and the newly approved union contract.

In future years Hansen wants to hire at least an additional 100 officers, his spokeswoman Sarah Robinson said.

“People are getting burned out and they’re leaving early because the work conditions are very difficult,” said Hansen, a former councilman, during a Sacramento Bee and KVIE debate Wednesday. “We need to make sure there’s enough officers to do traffic enforcement and community-oriented policing, where people build relationships in the neighborhood.”

Robinson said it was “premature” to say where in the cash-strapped budget Hansen would cut to find cash for the new officers in future years, but said he would not cut homeless shelter funding.

Pan said he is not yet sure how many officers he would want to hire after filling the 100 vacancies, or how they would be funded, but he would know once elected. He agreed with Hansen on community-oriented policing.

“We need to have more community policing and we need to have opportunity for law enforcement and the community to learn about each other,” Pan, a former state senator endorsed by District Attorney Thien Ho, said during the debate. “So they’re not just looking at the community ... as a place where there’s a handful of people they have to go and arrest.”

If elected, Hansen or Pan might find support for hiring cops with the more moderate sector of the council — Lisa Kaplan, Rick Jennings, and if re-elected this year, Eric Guerra. The city police officer union, along with Guerra and Kaplan, have endorsed Hansen for mayor.

Cofer pushes for police budget cuts

On the other side, Cofer’s plan could find significant support on the council as well. Councilwomen Caity Maple, Mai Vang and Katie Valenzuela last year voted to shift $6 million away from police and redirect it to opening new homeless shelters. But without an extra two votes, it failed. The three could support Cofer’s budget reduction, if Valenzuela wins re-election this year. Vang and Valenzuela have endorsed Cofer for mayor.

Cofer said she arrived at $70 million as her proposed amount to cut because it would bring the department funding down to $147 million — the level the council approved for the fiscal year that started July 1, 2018. That’s the year voters approved the Measure U sales tax increase. The money, intended mostly to uplift disadvantaged neighborhoods, partly went to police, said Cofer, an epidemiologist who chaired a city advisory committee on the topic.

The proposed cut would not mean any police layoffs, Cofer said. Instead, she would not fill the 100 vacancies, and as officers leave or retire, she would not replace them. She would also cut down on the hours of police overtime assigned, which was recommended by a consulting firm in 2020. She would redirect the $70 million into hiring more non-police personnel to respond to non-violent calls in the hopes of reducing instances of racial profiling detailed in a June city audit.

“When I hear things like, ‘our police department is understaffed,’ what I’m thinking is, ‘our police department is not using their time efficiently,’” Cofer, who is Black and has attended protests against police brutality, said during Wednesday’s debate. “And that’s a waste of public resources. I’d like to see that change because that will build trust.”

In the wake of the 2020 Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Mayor Darrell Steinberg led the creation of a new city department called the Department of Community Response. The idea was to hire non-police personnel to respond to non-violent 911 calls, including but not limited to homeless calls. He said over time it would cut the police budget by at least $5 million. But the police budget has instead grown in every year since.

While DCR still exists, 911 calls are not diverted there. Instead the department’s staff have presented to council that their time is largely used to respond to 311 calls about homeless camps near homes and businesses. DCR employees visit the camps and see if they can get people into shelters, though all beds are typically full, or on a long wait list for housing.

Under Cofer’s plan, the new city employees hired to respond to non-violent calls would include homeless calls, but not be exclusively homeless calls.

Candidates with law enforcement endorsements

Hansen has received endorsements from the Sacramento Police Officers Association and the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association. He has received campaign donations from the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and the Peace Officers Research Association of California.

McCarty has received money from the LA County Probation Officers Union, California Correctional Peace Officers, and California Statewide Law Enforcement Association. Those groups wrote him checks when he was running for assembly, which he transferred to the mayoral account.

The primary will be held March 5. The top two candidates will advance to the general election Nov. 5. Ballots arrive in Sacramento residents’ mailboxes next week.

Find more coverage of the city races here.