Steven Greenhut: More cops isn't answer to every crime question

SACRAMENTO — As California's toughest cities struggle with violent crime, we are hearing a familiar refrain: "Hire more police officers." While more cops may be the right answer in some places, public officials need to consider a wider array of crime-fighting options and examine ways to stretch their existing budgets.

William Bratton, the former Los Angeles and New York chief, now heads to Oakland to help address a gang-driven crime wave. Bratton already has bemoaned the relatively small size of that city's police force and the court-mandated constraints placed on the Oakland Police Department because of a police-brutality scandal. As a consultant, he will be focused on using a new crime-fighting tool that helps police pinpoint areas to focus their resources.

That kind of high-tech approach sounds more promising than the typical scare campaign, designed to help loosen residents' grip on their wallets. For instance, during a City Council meeting in San Bernardino late November, city attorney Jim Penman said that in the light of pending bankruptcy and police layoffs that residents need to "lock their doors and load their guns."

The city manager in Stockton warned in a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown that the city would "slip into municipal chaos" by then-proposed pension cuts driven by the city's bankruptcy. He warned of a "mass exodus" of police officers.

In 2010, Stockton's police union gained nationwide attention for its graphic billboard signs — with a body count and images of crime-scene tape — welcoming people to "The 2nd Most Dangerous City in California" and demanding the city "Stop Laying Off Cops!" The Stockton Record reported that despite police spending reductions, the city's violent crime had dropped by 14.3 percent from the previous year.

Ironically, the same officials who argue that cutting police budgets will lead to mayhem also advocate pension policies that sap municipal budgets so severely that these cities have little choice but to slash the number of working police officers so they can pay for the retirees.

Reforming pensions, spending less money on gadgets (the state's alcohol-control cops just spend $70,000 for gas masks and bulletproof helmets, according to the Sacramento Bee) and outsourcing services seems better than always hitting up taxpayers for more loot. There's far more to stopping crime than giving agencies more money.

Last May, as the Washington, DC, City Council had a debate over police staffing and faced similar warnings of a coming bloodbath.

A Washington Post columnist talked to a prominent criminologist who had reviewed 27 studies that evaluated the possible link between police staffing and crime rates. "Almost half of the studies found no relationship between the two," wrote Mike DeBonis. "Of the remainder, more found that crime increased as police levels rose."

Criminologists argue that everything from cultural values to the average age of the population to various policing strategies have much to do with crime rates. A look at the FBI data shows no obvious correlation between police staffing levels and crime rates.

Even a recent University of California, Berkeley study that found a strong correlation between police staffing and crime reduction noted that some cities are "under-policed" while others are "over-policed." Sure, anarchic Oakland probably needs a bigger police presence, but the same can't be said for placid Irvine. In cities where additional police spending may be a good value, one should still wonder whether spending $484,000 in total compensation to a single, retiring police officer, as Bloomberg recently reported, is an effective use of resources.

The best crime-fighting tool remains a citizenry that behaves itself, and most people behave without having (or wanting) an officer on every corner. With crime rates at 40-year lows, this is the ideal time to take a calm look at crime-fighting strategies.