Myth #1: Police Departments Can Most Effectively Reduce Homicides

The latest scapegoat trend popular with progressive politicians and other civic leaders is to hold the local police department accountable for the city's murder rate - a statistic commonly tagged as the rising or escalating or soaring homicide rate. San Francisco's pols are no exception. It is much more convenient for officials to point the finger at the police department and ignore the real factors that affect the local murder rate.

Unlike drug dealing, burglary, robbery, and other crimes committed by a habitual criminal, most people who are so inclined usually slay just one other person in his or her lifetime. The operative word in that last sentence is "slay." The lawful killing of another human being committed in self-defense, or justified by duty and service (i.e., military or law enforcement service) is not a slaying.

The two major causes of murder or manslaughter are acts committed in the "heat of passion." Cold-blooded murder is committed deliberately, and culpability can be more readily measured against the standard of "malice aforethought."

Spontaneous murder that involves a family member, relative, friend, or coworker is committed on the spur of the moment and there is absolutely nothing law enforcement can do about it. Vicious murder, on the other hand, often involves retribution to settle a score, or cunning to advance a scheme. Typically, such murders involve disputes over family matters, money, drugs, or gang turf. Short of an officer being present through happenstance for the former, or having inside intelligence for the latter, there is very little that any police officer can do to prevent these crimes from occurring.

Expecting the police to stop murder is the equivalent of asking a physician to cure terminal cancer because the patient waited to long to seek treatment. As far as "heat of passion" homicide is concerned, we can look at two of life's eternal absolutes:

1) People will kill other people.

2) There is very little a beat cop can do to abate Rule Number 1.

The number of murders occurring in San Francisco has little to do with the daily tasks and regular duties of a police officer. Certainly an officer will investigate such incidents after each has occurred and strive to his or her fullest to arrest the guilty parties. But, apprehension is not prevention. Rather, it is the rest of the criminal justice system that could be most effective in reducing the number of these crimes. If every perpetrator of a lesser offense were more vigorously prosecuted and properly imprisoned instead of dealt a boilerplate offer and released on probation, one less petty criminal or adolescent thug would be free to roam our streets and degenerate into a heartless killer.

The root cause of street-kill homicide in any major city is a lenient criminal justice system that will not acknowledge its ineffectiveness. If the public were more aware of the number of instances where suspected murderers had been arrested and released for very serious crimes before they ever commit a homicide, they would be appalled.

When a major city thumbs its nose at immigration laws with an absurd sanctuary policy what does one expect? When you tacitly encourage drug dealers to commute by BART into your city to ply their product with little fear of criminal conviction, please don't blame the cops. When the city attorney attempts to enact "gang injunctions" against known killers and is thwarted by the Public Defender as well as other community groups, how can the finger be pointed at them or us?

By the time a murderous hooligan is finally imprisoned for the remainder of his life, some poor victim has lost his because a potential killer had not been sent away at the first opportunity. In San Francisco, as well as most large urban areas, the system is much too lenient on criminals who enter it through the proverbial revolving door.

Myth #2: San Francisco has one of the highest homicide counts

The second myth is that the San Francisco homicide rate is out of control and has for the past several years rocketed past the national average. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we are far below the national average for a city of this size.

While any murder is tragic, the dire statistics need to be put into realistic perspective.

The United States Department of Justice statistics for the year 2006 show that San Francisco was 38^th in the US for homicides per capita in cities with populations in excess of 250,000.

Murder rates are routinely quantified based upon the number of victims per 100,000 residents. By comparison, Detroit, Michigan had the highest murder rate in the country at 47.3 murders per 100,000 residents. Simply put, the city of Detroit, which has 917,000 residents, suffered 432 homicides in 2006 while San Francisco, with a population of 746,000 suffered only 11.5 per 100,000 residents, or 86 homicides. Baltimore, which has 100,000 less residents then San Francisco, counted 287 homicides or 43.3 for every 100,000 residents. San Francisco's homicide rate was smaller than cities such as Oakland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Miami, Houston, Phoenix, Boston, Los Angeles, and even Sacramento and Stockton.

The point is that while no homicide rate is acceptable, the reality is that police officers can do very little when one human being decides to kill another. However, if the other elements of the criminal justice system were to properly prosecute, incarcerate, deport, and supervise repeat offenders, the homicide rate would decrease significantly.