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already. Go ahead, Chief K hell, The statistics for major crimes in San Francisco for the month of November seem to reflect an overall increase. Is this How do you account for this? The up that we're witnessing here in November and apparently partially in December. No one

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incident is sufficient to cause a change in the crime trend or the crime rate. However, over the past year, we've had to deploy a tremendous amount of our manpower into areas where we have had specific problems. Now, for example, you pointed out San Francisco State. We

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had approximately 600 men deployed into that particular area for a three week period. Now, this is not all of them because some of those men were from the surrounding counties because we engage in mutual aid. In other words, we assist the other agencies when they have

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problems. We had manpower in from as far away as Santa Cruz, Fremont and various other areas, but it took from our own department a number of men over a period of time and they had to be taken away from the general policing of the entire city.

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And this hurts at a time when our crime rate is rising, there isn't any question about it. But this was a fairly long period of time and come from within the community itself. But this also raises the question. In this complicated picture you describe, what is

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the role of the police department going to be? Does this suggest changes in the police Department structure? Or maybe in the entire philosophy of police? The role of the police officer has completely changed from what it was five or 10 years ago of necessity because of

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these new situations arising in this great change that has taken place in the attitudes of people because of the changes that have been brought about in the new techniques and, uh, approaches that we have had to develop because of the changes in the law, the interpretation

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placed on the law by the upper courts. Our role today is completely different. We have to operate in a completely different way, trade that they're going to be brought into court. They're going to be exposed and then that they will suffer the consequences themselves. Do you

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think an informer system, then is essentially a part of police work? Uh, information? The gathering of information. The willingness of people to give information is an absolute necessity, and this is one of the problems today. People don't want to become involved because they're afraid that they

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are then going to be exposed. Uh, there are two types of informers. There are the individuals who have a reason for giving the information. It may benefit themselves personally because they are involved in some kind of trouble, and they're kind of bargaining. But then there's, uh,

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the information that comes to the police through the general public. But because of the viciousness of people and the viciousness of criminals today, they're quite concerned about giving information, and we have to be very careful how we protect them. Then, after we get the information again,

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we have to find the ways of solving the case with this knowledge and yet not exposed the person who gave us this information. Two more questions, Chief, It seems to me that statistical sophistication and gathering facts has increased greatly in the past few years. Does this

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account for your heavy statistical accounting I would say that the improvement that we have made in our gathering of statistics, statistics and presenting them does not substantially changed the picture because we have always had November. My question. Okay. What? How does this stack up against other

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cities like New York City? Well, of course, New York has changed their whole system since Howard Leary took over there a few years ago. And I think that you will remember that when he moved in, I think his robberies or burglaries jumped up some 70 80

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or 90%. Really? Not because of the fact that the crime jump that much, but that he changed the system of rating these particular crimes and placing them in certain categories. And again, he wanted a true picture of what was happening. The situation is desperate. You're using

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that word considering Well, I'm talking about a situation which I have no intention of allowing to continue. We have an increasing number of robberies through the year, and this is something that has to stop in order to protect the public. Well, of course, this has been

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the trend during the year 1968 and not just in San Francisco, but across the nation in all of our major cities. It's no consolation. As I've pointed out just recently that other cities are experiencing a great increase in their crime rate. But I think that the

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nation for the first nine months was up approximately 22%. In our major crimes. We are up 18% up to the end of November. But this indicates a tremendous increase in our robberies, particularly and again in stolen autos. Now stolen automobiles has been a problem with us

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because of the fact that San Francisco has an unusual density of, uh, population being a compact city with many people crowded in here. We have an excess of 9000 automobiles registered to the square mile, in addition to some 400,000 coming in here every day. During the

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problems at San Francisco State College, I believe that almost all of the stations were reduced somewhere between 55 60% while the police went out to San Francisco State. Did this have any impact on the crime rate in the overall city? You see any direct correlation between

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the two, because if there wasn't an increase in crime and this raises a lot of questions, do we have do we need more police or fewer police or different methods. Uh, you you can't. You can't find any one simple answer to the rise in crime. And

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you can't just say that one specific incident is responsible for an important rise in the crime rate. You have to take in everything that's happening throughout the entire city. And certainly we we hurt very roughly. When we take men away from the general policing in the

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city and and and move them into an area, there's any question about our robberies and various other crimes rise because of the fact that they police officers are not in view and the other parts of the city. But you have to take into consideration the changes

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that have taken place in the social order, the change that has taken place in the population of this city, the manner in which people move about, uh, the abandon with which they conduct themselves. Today. They commit crimes, and they just don't seem to care that they're

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going to jail. Do you think the courts are tying your hands to use the common turn? Uh, again, I first want to point out that as long as, uh, the courts and our system of justice spell out what the law is and how it must be

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enforced. We will operate within the framework of the law. This is our duty, and this is our democratic way of operation. So we're not crying about it, But I want to point out to you, Very frankly, there isn't any question about it. Our task is much

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more difficult today in the protection of the public, uh, than it was even five years ago what we have a job to do. But we feel that the changes in the law and there have been many have made our job extremely difficult. Can you name a

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coal? Well, the laws of search, seizure and arrest. There was a time when I was on the street. If I knew there was stolen property in a place, I went in and got it. And if I got the stolen property, brought it into court and showed

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that that property was stolen and that this man was in possession of it, that was it. Now, today you have to have the reasonable cause to justify your going in in the first place. And if you do have, uh, confidential informants you have to be able

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to establish this fact. We had confidential informants and we never divulged who they were, and we had them for many, many years Now we have persons who are very reluctant to become informers or to give us information, Uh, which certainly they should. I'm wondering whether there

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are really that many more crimes or whether you people are just getting better at detecting them. You know, we take, uh, the various violations or crimes that are committed in the city. And if they have the elements of a particular crime, that's the way we chalked

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them up, whether they're serious in nature or not. If they have the elements of a robbery, for example, a couple of youngsters, uh, stick another youngster against the wall takes two bits out of his pocket by fear. We, uh, mark that up as a robbery because

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this is exactly what it is. It has all the elements of it, even though the loss is not great. And perhaps there's no injury involved. But we feel that we have to be very frank and very honest in our statistics, and this will continue to do

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what do you look for in San Francisco in the coming year. Chief, we have started off the year with some heavy sheets. As we say in crime, we've had a number of cases of robbery again, which is indicative of the the continuing number of these particular

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types of crimes. However, I want to say this to you that we're going to make particular details as we did in burglary last year. And, uh, I think we did a pretty good job in controlling the burglars because we adopted some special types of details which

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we will carry on and in robbery and the other various crimes where we have been hit pretty hard. We are going to adopt particular details, uh, particular methods to cope with this. Naturally, we're not going to reveal the nature of them. But desperate situations require desperate

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remedies, and we'll come up with techniques, uh, to cope with them and to reduce the robberies in the city. Now, I want to say this to you that the criminal has to recognize the fact that he's going to have to suffer the consequence of his act.

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We've had a number of people killed in robberies, uh, seriously beaten. And we've seen a viciousness attached to the robberies, uh, in this city over the past year that just can't continue, period. And we are going to put a stop to it. Uh huh.