SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — San Diego's proposed fiscal year 2027 budget would give the San Diego Police Department more than $700 million, which is a more than $15 million increase over the current year.
But the President of the San Diego Police Officers Association says the added funds won't go where they're needed most.
Chief Scott Wahl presented his spending plan Friday, outlining how the department would use the allocation.
"This year, for the first time in recent history, the department is on budget. Getting there required some tough choices and none of them were free," Wahl said.
Wahl's proposed budget includes 18 new parking enforcement positions, a new mentorship program, and an e-ticket system.
He also wants to keep funding focused on police academies while reducing overtime costs.
"Maintaining our police academies and the pipeline must remain a priority," Wahl said.
Jared Wilson, President of the San Diego Police Officers Association, pushed back on the proposal, taking issue with what he described as cuts to sworn officer positions.
"He has proposed cutting 29 sworn positions in our budget. That's devastating," Wilson said.
Wilson also raised concerns about response times and staffing levels.
"It does not recognize that it takes 40 minutes for officers to get to some of these priority calls. It doesn't recognize that our staffing levels are under 50% in some of these places," Wilson said.
SDPD said no positions will be cut, only frozen.
The Department told us in a statement: "No personnel will be laid off or demoted as part of this proposed budget. Freezing these positions will not impact patrol staffing."
Wilson said the size of the budget increase shouldn't be taken at face value.
"Some of that increase is 18 parking enforcement positions, to generate more revenue. Some of that increase is contractual obligations the city has. Some of that is pension debt obligations the city has to pay. So ultimately we're going to see a massive decrease in service to the point of $7 million even though the budget is being added to this year. Those aren't real effective increases," Wilson said.
In the same statement, SDPD said: "The San Diego Police Department determines staffing based on workload, specifically the number of calls for service we receive, and the time it takes to respond to them. We have been transparent about the fact that we are often below recommended staffing levels.
This gap reflects an ongoing staffing shortage, a challenge faced not only by our Department but by many large law enforcement agencies nationwide. As Chief Wahl noted today, there has been an anticipated large wave of retirements over the last few years due to DROP. We are nearing the end of that wave toward the end of this year, and hope to see numbers stabilize and improve moving forward with our continued recruitment efforts.
We use overtime to help offset the current shortfalls; however, overtime funding only supports the equivalent of about 25 additional officers per day.
Given these constraints, the Department continuously evaluates how best to manage call volume with available resources. This includes prioritizing calls by urgency. Priority Zero calls, the most critical, are consistently answered in under seven minutes. Lower-priority calls, however, may experience longer wait times than we would like.
This is not unique to San Diego, but part of a broader national trend. The San Diego Police Department is actively pursuing more efficient ways to reduce wait times, including leveraging technology, while maintaining a strong focus on emergency response, officer safety, and public safety."
Mayor Todd Gloria is set to release his final budget proposal on May 13.
