As part of this performance audit, we researched the investigative function of the San Francisco Police Department. The Police Department"s investigative staff is located in the Bureau of Investigations, which is overseen by the Deputy Chief of Investigations. The Bureau of Investigations is divided into four divisions: General Investigations, Narcotics, Juvenile and Forensics. Staff assigned to the Investigations Bureau are responsible for performing the traditional activities of the detective, such as evidence analysis, interviewing witnesses and victims and tracking down suspects.

As part of this analysis, we examined: (1) what is required to effectively conduct an investigation for different types of cases and crimes; (2) how investigative personnel are assigned to each investigative section; and (3) the assignment and disposition of cases, in order to determine the number of cases assigned, cleared, inactivated and/or referred to the District Attorney.

To accomplish these objectives, we:

• Conducted interviews with the Captains of the General Investigations, Narcotics and Juvenile Divisions, Police Lieutenants and Inspectors throughout the General Investigations Division and in the Vice Crimes Unit, and key staff from the District Attorney"s and Public Defender"s Offices.
• Randomly selected and analyzed workload and performance records from each of the investigative sections for the four-year period from 1993 through 1997;
• With assistance from the Controller"s Office Audits Division, reviewed a random sample of 242 felony arrest cases ("rebookings") and 253 other assigned cases ("suspect cases") from the General Investigations Division in order to gather data concerning the disposition of cases, how long cases remained active and the manner in which cases were investigated.
• Obtained and reviewed personnel distribution reports and organizational data for each investigative section;
• Researched applicable California laws and standards regarding arrests, investigations and prosecution;
• Reviewed and compared statistics published by the California Department of Justice, the California Judicial Council and the U.S. Department of Justice regarding arrests, investigations, prosecution, crime rates and administrative practices for San Francisco and other law enforcement agencies nationwide;
• Analyzed data from the District Attorney"s Intake Unit regarding felony rebookings conducted by the Police Department; and
• Reviewed a random sample of 40 police incident reports for cases turned down by the DA for prosecution.

Organization, Management and Current Staffing

As noted above, the Investigations Bureau is divided into the General Investigations Division, the Narcotics Division (which includes Vice Crimes), the Juvenile Division and the Forensics Division. The General Investigations Division, the Narcotics Division and the Juvenile Division are each overseen by a Captain, all of whom report to the Deputy Chief of the Investigations Bureau. In addition, the non-sworn Director of the Forensics Division also reports to the Deputy Chief of Investigations.

Investigative staff assigned to the General Investigations Division are responsible for investigating crimes such as homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, etc. The Division is divided into 12 sections, each of which specializes in the investigation of a specific personal or property crime. These 12 sections are:

Each section consists of five to 21 Inspectors and is supervised by a Lieutenant. The Captain of Investigations oversees the entire Division.

There is also a Narcotics Division, which conducts undercover investigations aimed at arresting drug dealers and confiscating drugs and other paraphernalia used in the commission of such crimes. The Captain of Narcotics Division also oversees the Vice Crimes Unit, which is responsible for the investigation of cases involving prostitution, gambling, bookmaking, permits and liquor law enforcement.

The Juvenile Division, which is part of the Investigations Bureau but headed by a separate Captain, consists of four sections: Missing Persons, Child Abuse (including physical and sexual abuse, kidnapping, child pornography and severe neglect), Juvenile Offender, and Youth Programs.

The Forensics Division, which is headed by the non-sworn Director of Forensics, consists of Crime Scene Investigations, the Photo Lab, the Identification Bureau, the Polygraph Unit, the Technical Services Unit and the Crime Laboratory.

Based on the Police Department"s Personnel Distribution Report of March 9, 1998, the number of assigned sworn and civilian personnel, by division, is as follows:
 

While there are 313 authorized Inspector positions in the Police Department, currently only 182 Inspector positions are filled. In order to alleviate the shortage of Inspectors, the Department has been temporarily assigning Sergeants and Police Officers, ranks that are normally assigned to patrol duties, to the Bureau of Investigations. As a result, despite the shortage of Inspectors, 345 of the 348 authorized sworn positions in the Investigations Bureau were filled as of March 9, 1998. In addition, although the Inspectors exam was originally scheduled for September of 1997, as of the writing of this report, it was scheduled to begin on April 14, 1998 (see section in Introduction regarding the Consent Decree), which should help to alleviate the shortage of Inspectors.

The average length of service for existing Inspectors is 23 years, and 66 percent of Inspectors have worked at least 20 years for the SFPD. While this means that the Inspectors currently assigned to the Bureau have a great breadth of experience to offer, the Department may face serious problems over the next seven to 10 years as these highly experienced Inspectors retire and are replaced by new Inspectors who have less investigative experience.

Case Assignments

Exhibit 1.1 on the following page illustrates the investigative process from the assignment of the case through its disposition.

Most cases, particularly in the General Investigations Division, are received through the reporting of crime incidents to the Patrol Division through Central Dispatch (911). Each case is given a report number and then routed to the appropriate section in the Inspectors Bureau. In the Juvenile Division, many cases are also generated by referrals from the Department of Human Services" (DHS) Child Abuse Hotline and by calls from citizens to the Department"s missing persons phone number. Unlike the General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions, the cases in the Narcotics/Vice Crimes Division are often self-generated.

The General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions

The General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions have assignment officers who receive and assign cases to Inspectors within each section. It is the assignment officer"s responsibility to determine whether and to whom a case should be assigned. Cases are divided between felony rebookings and other cases ("suspect cases"). All felony rebooking cases are automatically assigned to Inspectors. A felony rebooking is the process in which an Inspector presents the case against a person who has already been arrested for review by a District Attorney. A rebooking is required when a person has been "booked" (arrested) without a warrant on a felony charge by a sworn member of the Police Department. ^[3] A rebooking involves corroborating the arresting Police Officer"s incident report through interviews with the suspect, victim, witnesses and arresting Officers. The District Attorney then decides what charges, if any, to file for prosecution against the suspect. Because the suspect must be arraigned within 72 hours after being arrested, the law requires that a rebooking be performed within 48 hours after an arrest. Because of this time constraint, a rebooking takes precedence over all other work. As such, an Inspector who is assigned a rebooking stops all other work and rebooks the suspect. 

Exhibit 1.1 The Investigative Process
(Diagram not available on-line)

The General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions also receive cases in which there is no initial arrest and a rebooking is therefore initially unnecessary ("suspect cases"). Suspect cases are either assigned to an Inspector or filed administratively. As defined by the Police Department, cases filed administratively are cases which are logged, indexed and stored without action, i.e., the case is not assigned to an Inspector for a follow-up investigation. According to the Police Department, cases may be filed administratively because the case has already been resolved, or because of the absence of investigative leads, high workload, staff shortages, the victim has requested no further action, or for some other reason.^[4] Cases which are not assigned due to the lack of investigative leads are filed administratively unless and until new information becomes available regarding the case.

In suspect cases which are assigned, the Inspector is responsible for investigating the crime, identifying and locating potential suspects and obtaining any necessary arrest and/or search warrants from the District Attorney. However, because rebookings take precedence over suspect cases and activities related to suspect cases must be deferred until after rebookings have been completed, Inspectors must often incur overtime in order to work on suspect cases. According to the Police Department, approximately 80 percent of investigative overtime results from activities related to suspect cases.

Narcotics and Vice Crimes

Unlike the General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions, the cases in the Narcotics/Vice Crimes Division are often self-generated. Investigators are expected to take a proactive role in identifying and tracking down potential suspects through the extensive use of informants. In addition, the Narcotics Division also receives general enforcement orders from the Chief of Police and responds to citizen complaints. Due to the large number of narcotics-related arrests in San Francisco, the Narcotics Division has its own special Rebooking Unit, which is responsible for rebooking suspects arrested for drug offenses by patrol officers assigned to the district stations.

Workload Data

Based on workload data provided by the Investigations Bureau, the General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions receive an estimated 117,681 cases per year. ^[5] Of this number, 90,535 cases (77 percent) are filed administratively and therefore not investigated by an Inspector. The remaining 27,146 cases (23 percent) are assigned to Inspectors in the General Investigations and Juvenile Divisions for follow-up investigations. This figure consists of 10,285 rebookings (38 percent) and 16,861 suspect cases (62 percent). In addition, an additional 9,501 felony rebooking cases are assigned to Inspectors in the Narcotics Division and Vice Crimes Unit, for a total of 19,786 rebookings assigned per year for all investigative units. Additionally, a number of self-generated cases are investigated by personnel in the Narcotics Division and Vice Crimes Unit.

The Disposition of Assigned Cases

There are two possible outcomes for cases which have been assigned to an Inspector. Cases are either "cleared", and eventually closed, or inactivated. Cases which are inactivated remain unresolved and the records are eventually destroyed once the statute of limitations for the particular offense(s) involved expires.

As defined by the State Department of Justice (DOJ), an offense is "cleared" for crime reporting purposes when at least one person is arrested, charged with the commission of the offense and turned over to the court for prosecution or cited to juvenile authorities. Additionally, according to the DOJ"s definition, a case can be counted as an "Exceptional Clearance" when the Police have definitively identified the offender, have enough information to support an arrest and know the location of the offender, but for some reason cannot take the offender into custody. An example is a case in which a suspect is deceased. The San Francisco Police Department uses the following 16 clearance codes:
 

All rebookings are considered cleared by the Police Department, regardless of the final outcome of the case. Rebookings therefore can only receive Clearance Code #6 (Adult Booked), since they involve an arrest. On the other hand, suspect cases can be cleared by any one of the 16 clearance codes. For example, if a suspect is identified, the Inspector will request an arrest warrant from the DA. If a warrant is issued, and the suspect is arrested, the case is cleared using Clearance Code #6 (Adult Booked). If the DA declines to issue a warrant, the case is cleared using Clearance Code #10 (DA Refuses to Prosecute). The most frequently used clearance codes by the Police Department are Code #6 (Adult Booked), Code #10 (DA Refuses to Prosecute), Code #11 (Complainant Refuses to Prosecute), Code #12 (Not Prosecuted) and Code #8 (Prosecuted by Other Agency, e.g. the California Department of Corrections).

The Acceptance of Cases for Prosecution  ^[6]

All cases which are cleared are not necessarily prosecuted or convicted. For example, although all rebookings are counted as clearances, these cases are not necessarily prosecuted by the DA. The DA often chooses to discharge (e.g., dismiss) the case and not prosecute a rebooked suspect. In such instances, the suspect is released and no further investigation takes place. As such, the case is cleared but may not be prosecuted since proof of guilt has not been clearly established. The DA may discharge a rebooking using one of the DA"s 46 discharge codes based on witness and evidence problems, the admissibility of evidence and other general categories.

In addition, suspect cases that are cleared by the Police Department are not necessarily prosecuted by the District Attorney"s Office. In fact, the majority of cleared suspect cases are not prosecuted by the DA, primarily because the DA or the complainant refuses to prosecute. Suspect cases that are cleared by the Police Department but not prosecuted by the DA do not receive a discharge code.

Based on data collected from the Investigations Bureau and on the results of our sample of suspect cases, we prepared Table 1.1 below, which shows workload and performance data for the General Investigations Division ^[7] on an annual basis.   Table 1.1 Annual Workload and Performance Data for the General Investigations Division, 1993 - 97  

Table 1.1 above shows that there are approximately 20,993 cases assigned to Inspectors in the General Investigations Division annually, consisting of 10,216 rebookings (49 percent) and 10,777 suspect cases (51 percent). Of the assigned cases, 17,680 cases or 84 percent are cleared by Inspectors. However, although 84 percent of assigned cases are cleared, only 7,424 cases or 42 percent of the cases cleared (35 percent of cases assigned) result in prosecution by the District Attorney"s Office. As a result, there are an estimated 10,256 cases per year (58 percent of cleared cases and 49 percent of assigned cases), which are cleared by the Police Department but which are not prosecuted by the DA. Exhibit 1.2 below shows the number of rebookings, suspect cases and total cases prosecuted by the District Attorney as a percentage of cleared cases for the General Investigations Division.

  Exhibit 1.2 No. of Cases Prosecuted as a Percentage of Cases Cleared General Investigations Division, 1993 - 97

Although 100 percent of rebookings are cleared by the Police Department, as illustrated in Exhibit 1.2, only 53 percent of rebookings are prosecuted by the DA. Additionally, while 69 percent of assigned suspect cases are cleared by the Police Department, only 27 percent of such cases are prosecuted by the DA. Overall, as noted above, only 42 percent of the cases assigned and cleared by the Police Department result in prosecution by the DA.

As such, the clearance rate is not an accurate measure of a jurisdiction"s success in prosecuting and convicting suspects. A better measure of the City"s performance in prosecuting and convicting suspects is how many of the cases assigned to Inspectors result in the formal filing of charges by the District Attorney"s Office against a suspect arrested by the Police Department.

Comparison of San Francisco"s Filing Rate to other California Jurisdictions

In order to compare San Francisco"s rate of prosecution with other California jurisdictions, we reviewed statistics on felony arrests and filing rates published by the State Department of Justice and the Judicial Council of California. Based on these statistics, only one-half of the felony arrests presented by the Police Department to the DA result in the filing of formal charges against a suspect. This is compared to the overall filing rate of 74 percent for all jurisdictions Statewide. As such, the San Francisco DA files charges in relatively fewer felony arrest cases than in other California jurisdictions. Table 1.2 below shows the number of crimes and felony arrests and the number of felony and criminal filings in Municipal and Superior Court as a percentage of felony arrests in 1995 for San Francisco and other California jurisdictions.

Table 1.2 Crime Rates, Felony Arrests and Filing Rates in San Francisco and Law Enforcement Agencies in Other California Counties, 1995    

Table 1.2 shows that San Francisco"s felony filing rate is significantly lower than other Bay Area counties and the median and Statewide filing rates. Table 1.2 also shows that San Francisco has a higher crime rate and a higher felony arrest rate per 100,000 population than other California jurisdictions. Thus, although San Francisco"s felony filing rate is lower than in other jurisdictions, this may be in part because of the high crime and felony arrest rates in San Francisco as compared to other California jurisdictions.

However, Table 1.2 also illustrates that the San Francisco DA"s Office has a conviction rate (the number of convictions as a percentage of filings) which is close to other Bay Area counties, the median of the top 12 California counties, and the Statewide conviction rates. Thus, although the San Francisco DA turns down many more cases for prosecution than other jurisdictions, the conviction rate in San Francisco, which would be expected to be higher, is no higher than in other large California jurisdictions.

The Filing of Charges by the DA in Felony Rebooking Cases

As reflected in Table 1.1, there are 10,216 felony rebookings assigned to Inspectors in the General Investigations Division per year. In addition, another 9,570 rebookings are performed by the Narcotics/Vice Crimes and Juvenile Divisions, for a total of 19,786 rebookings performed per year by the Police Department. While all 19,786 of these rebookings are automatically cleared by the Police Department, based on data from the DA"s Intake Unit, only 10,103 or 51 percent of these cases are accepted by the DA for prosecution. The remaining 49 percent or 9,683 rebookings are discharged, and are therefore not prosecuted by the DA.

Based on statistics provided by the DA"s Felony Rebooking Intake Unit, Exhibit 1.3 below shows the individual performance of investigative units of the General Investigations Division with regard to felony rebookings. Also based on data from the DA"s Felony Rebooking Intake Unit, Exhibit 1.4 compares the percentage of felony rebookings filed by division for the General Investigations Division, the Juvenile Division, Narcotics and Vice Crimes.

  Exhibit 1.3   % of Felony Rebookings Accepted by DA for Prosecution General Investigations Division Units, FY 1996 - 97 NIU=Night Investigations Unit; DVRU=Domestic Violence Response Unit; SID=Special Investigations Division   Exhibit 1.4 Percentage of Felony Rebookings Accepted by DA for Prosecution for General Investigations, Juvenile, Narcotics and Vice Crimes, FY 1996 - 97

As illustrated in Exhibits 1.3 and 1.4, the investigative units with the highest filing rates for rebookings are Night Investigations (81 percent), Juvenile (77 percent) and Homicide (75 percent). The investigative units with the lowest filing rates for rebookings are Fencing (32 percent), Vice (35 percent) and General Work (45 percent). As discussed in Section 1.1, the higher filing rates for Night Investigations, Juvenile and Homicide may in part result from their practice of deploying Inspectors to more crime scenes than under investigative units.

The Prosecution of Suspect Cases

As reflected in Table 1.1, of the 10,777 suspect cases assigned to Inspectors per year, 7,464 cases or 69 percent are cleared. However, only 2,008 or 27 percent of these cases are cleared due to the arrest of a suspect. Such cases involve the warrant arrest of a suspect who is subsequently prosecuted by the DA (rebookings are not required for warrant arrests). The remaining 73 percent or 5,456 cleared cases are cleared using other clearance codes and are therefore not prosecuted by the DA. Based on our sample of suspect cases, Exhibit 1.5 illustrates the distribution of clearance codes for suspect cases in the General Investigations Division.

Exhibit 1.5   Distribution of Clearance Codes for Suspect Cases Cleared as a % of Total Clearances, General Investigations Division 1994-1997

Reasons for San Francisco"s Low Prosecution Rate

There have been numerous possible reasons cited as to why San Francisco has such a low filing rate compared to other jurisdictions. However, these reasons are primarily anecdotal and often cannot be substantiated. For example, according to the DA"s Office, San Francisco juries are harder to convince of a suspect"s guilt than juries in other counties. In addition, San Francisco has one of the highest per capita crime rates and the highest per capita arrest rate (particularly for narcotics offenses) in the State, resulting in a large volume of cases which must be funneled through the criminal justice system. Other reasons cited by the DA and former staff of the Mayor"s Office include the poor quality of police reports, bad arrests, the lack of investigative skills possessed by patrol officers, the absence of Inspectors at most crime scenes and the under-utilization of PC Section 849(b) ^[8] by the Police Department. Additionally, the DA"s standard for accepting cases for prosecution is very rigorous.

In order to identify specific reasons as to why cases are not prosecuted, we analyzed the distribution of District Attorney discharge codes for rebookings discharged by the DA in our sample of rebookings. In addition, for the suspect cases which were cleared using Clearance Code #10 (DA Refuses to Prosecute) in our case sample of suspect cases, we reviewed each case file in order to determine, if possible, which discharge code the case would have received if the case had been assigned a discharge code by the DA. Table 1.3, on the following page, exhibits the results of our analysis on an annualized basis. This table also includes data for suspect cases which were cleared but not prosecuted and which were assigned a clearance code other than #10.

As reflected in Table 1.3, of the 10,256 cases that are not prosecuted each year, 5,906 cases (58 percent) are presented by the Police Department to the DA for prosecution but are refused. An additional 2,064 cases (20 percent) are referred by either the DA or the SFPD to other outside agencies for prosecution, such as the California Department of Corrections (CDC). The remaining 2,286 cases (22 percent) are cases that are not presented to the DA but are still cleared by the SFPD, and therefore do not result in prosecution.   Table 1.3   No. of Cases Not Prosecuted by Reason on an Annualized Basis, General Investigations Division 1994 - 97