The SubZERO Festival in downtown San Jose earlier this month went off without a hitch, but business owners still plan to beef up security on the streets. (Photo by Jessica Shirley-Donnelly)
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“There’s a lot of competition for customers, residents, commercial tenants, and downtown needs to be putting its best foot forward,” says Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association.
With businesses struggling to entice customers to downtown over Santana Row and other shopping/entertainment districts, as well as a 22 percent vacancy rate for downtown office space, Knies says the businesses formed a Property Based Improvement District (PBID) in late 2007 to tax themselves and direct funds to combat perceptions as well as reality. The PBID’s self assessment was renewed this week by an overwhelming vote of downtown property owners.
Part of PBID’s plan is to staff the downtown core with two patrolling officers, preferably off-duty police officers.
“Really, there’s no substitute for the professionalism, the training, the way a skilled officer interacts with the public,” Knies says. “They can just kind of read the street from afar. Sometimes they don’t even need to walk down the whole block. Just the fact that they’re on the corner dissipates the problem.”
Jim Unland, president of the Police Officers Association union, agrees with Knies’ assessment, which is why the police union is fighting to have the PBID officers paid at overtime rates rather than the significantly reduced rate of secondary employment positions, which often entail security work for schools and other nightlife areas like Santana Row and The Plant. (More than 60 officers have already applied for the positions.)
“My understanding of the Downtown Business Association is they want them actively patrolling the downtown streets, and proactively taking enforcement actions,” Unland says. “Well, that’s the definition of patrol work. So, they’re trying to replace patrol officers, with essentially off-duty patrol officers.
Tom Saggau, a political consultant for the police union as well as several downtown bars and nightclubs, says some of his latter clients have lobbied City Hall for a greater security presence in the downtown core to little avail. He says without off-duty police, “basically it’s going to be mall cops who are running around causing problems.”
Councilmember Sam Liccardo, whose District 3 includes downtown, rejects any notion that City Hall has resisted a greater police presence. “There’s one person who decides how to allocate officers, and that’s the police chief,” he says, “and I’m not throwing the chief under the bus.”
But some observers on the political periphery say that’s exactly what the police union is doing to Liccardo. The fight between the POA and Liccardo turned personal during the last two years of contentious pension reform negotiations, which ultimately fell apart and resulted in the council forming Measure B and voters passing the measure earlier this month.
Unland recently sent a letter out to POA membership slamming Liccardo for again going after their pay through the PBID patrol program.
Liccardo disputes claims that he was trying to short-sell officers’ pay by classifying the PBID work as a secondary employment instead of overtime.
“Let’s be clear, when you call it patrolling because they’re walking down the street or they’re standing in front of a club with a badge and police uniform, to me it’s a distinction without a difference,” Liccardo says. “ To me, the value of the officers is that there’s somebody there under the color of authority, with the skills and the training to enforce the law.”
Unland and the POA will be meeting this week with the city’s chief negotiator, Alex Gurza, to discuss PBID patrol compensation. While negotiations between the two parties have often gone next to nowhere in the past, the subject of secondary employment carries added significance after an audit in March found wide-spread abuses of the secondary employment program.
An attempt to challenge secondary employment classification for PBID patrol could risk work in other areas, such as schools, shopping centers and other arts and music festivals, Knies says.
“I’m not sure what their argument is, because it seems the scope of work is very similar to the scope of work for a lot of other secondary employment jobs. They’re actually putting their whole secondary employment in jeopardy.”
Comments (5)
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arrogance ... Sat, Jun 23, 2012 - 3:16 pm
Licardo is feed them a line of bull and this owners are greedy. Licardo tells them go along and play nice when the A’s come we are all going to be rich. He has stripped police department to levels that they cannot police the city. Officers now work 50 to 60 hours a week. Cannot get a day off and are building huge banks of overtime that at some point will need to be paid. Licardo does not want to hire so he is telling these greedy owners to dig into their pockets and fund a few more cops. they are going along with it because they hope to get rich. I wonder also if Licardo has put some city funds into the downtown association to pay for these cops. this way they do not have to hire and can try and make an officer work for a lower wage doing the very thing the city should be paying cops to do.
What he is not telling them and they are blinded by their greed and lust to get rich when the A’s come is to see what Licardo cannot control. Licardo cannot control the criminals and sooner or latter someone will get killed or there will be one to many robberies. It will show up in the medial and word will get out that Downtown is dangerous. People will stop going downtown. It could happen in a weekend and the traffic could be reduced by 30 to 50% overnight. would you go downtown if you were worried about being robbed or killed.
they are trying to cheat and taking a huge risk history will tell you that downtown can blow up anytime. they are one shooting, rape, robbery or beating away from causing the public to say stay away from downtown its not safe. there are no cops and there are crooks everywhere. When that happens it will be too late and Licardo will be saying it was the pensions that did it but blaming the pensions is not going to bring people into your business is it.
Noe Longoria Sat, Jun 23, 2012 - 4:41 pm
I was the Downtown San Jose police deistrict supervisor on the midnight shift during the mid 1990’s. I can tell you that Downtown was very explosive then. Bars, drunks, and fights were the norm. Then throw in gangs, prostitutes and rowdy out-of-towners and you start getting an idea of the circus atmosphere. When I retired in 2004, the San Jose Police Department had approximately 1400 officers. The sytematic dismanteling of the San Jose Police Department by the current City administration has left the Department with about 1000 officers in 2012. This is precisely why Downtown business owners are crying for more police protection and are willing to pay for it. Several of my officers were injured while breaking up bar fights. They were covered because they were on city time. But if they get hurt while working off-duty, who will cover them? The secondary employer? Personally I wouldn’t work unless it was on City time.
Wil Smoke Sun, Jun 24, 2012 - 6:56 am
Yes let’s see if any officers will work for Liccardo after he and Reed have called them lazy, cancer, etc. after the officers patrol this area for overtime at min wage, then they can be deployed to every corner of the city ... Another stupid idea, by Liccardo!
Joe Stewart Sun, Jun 24, 2012 - 11:14 am
There are huge differences, and both Kneis and Liccardo know it, between providing security on private property and proactively patrolling public streets. At a shopping center, officers provide security and deal with problems that occur on that property. At a school, officers again provide security at the school and deal with students and their problems. Liccardo wants officers to look for problems on city streets and aggressively enforce laws. Officers will contact drunks and mentally ill homeless people. These are the people most likely to fight with officers. When working secondary employment, officers have none of the protections of on-duty officers if they get hurt. The issue is less about the pay rate than it is about using off-duty officers with no disability or workers comp protection as opposed to respecting the people you are asking to protect your property enough to insure them if they get hurt doing so.
sevenoneedwardthree Fri, Jul 20, 2012 - 4:26 pm
I agree that we do not need these pretend COPS patrolling the streets of San Jose. I believe these are the same guys that used to patrol some parking area off 2nd and San Carlos. THey used to try to dress like us then. The City needs highly qualified individuals doing this job, not a bunch of high school dropouts. Pay us to do the job that we are trained to do.