Fact check: San Jose congressional candidate’s cop claims disputed

San Jose police staffing levels have become a key dispute in Silicon Valley’s hottest and most unusual election.

In a recent campaign TV ad, Congressional District 16 candidate and former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo boasts of adding 200 police officers while representing the city. But the city’s police union and state Assemblymember Ash Kalra, one of Liccardo’s former City Council colleagues, say it’s the opposite — and that Liccardo is to blame for hundreds of officers leaving the city because of slashed pensions.

“After seeing Sam’s campaign ad we are seriously concerned with any potential cognitive decline he may be experiencing because he clearly has forgotten he was on the San Jose City Council and voted in 2011 to fire 66 police officers and 49 firefighters,” Tom Saggau, spokesperson for the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, told San José Spotlight. “His campaign ad shows him in bed, and that makes sense since he must have been dreaming about increasing police staffing. What he actually did was break the SJPD.”

As a councilmember, Liccardo in 2012 pushed for the voter-approved Measure B, championed by his mayoral predecessor Chuck Reed. The measure aimed to reduce the city’s growing pension debt, but drastically cut benefits and pensions for the city’s police and firefighters.

The measure caused years of acrimonious legal battles between the city and its labor unions, which Liccardo settled in his first term as mayor in 2015. But the damage had been done. In 2016, councilmembers enacted a state of emergency over the staffing shortage, which hit a historic low of 798 street-ready cops in 2017, excluding academy trainees and those out on leave, according to a city services report.

“Sam Liccardo is running as fast as he can away from the truth,” Kalra said in a statement distributed by the campaign of Liccardo’s congressional opponent, Assemblymember Evan Low. “As a San Jose city councilmember, I saw firsthand how Sam drove valued police officers out of this city.”

The police union ties Liccardo to the exodus of 500 officers — and has provided data to back it up. Saggau said that number is based on data from when Liccardo was in office. He provided a staffing chart that spans 2011 through 2016 showing a total of loss of 631 department staff over that period — 366 of which were resignations and 265 were retirements.

Saggau said not all the retirements could be blamed on Liccardo, but maintains many were in response to Liccardo and Reed’s push to slash benefits and pensions with Measure B. Saggau said the union couldn’t find resignation data beyond that time frame, but maintains the trend continued through the end of Liccardo’s time in office.

The police union — in statements the Low campaign has distributed — also claims staffing was down to 900 street-ready cops when Liccardo termed out in 2022. City reports put that number at 960 that year. Factor in all staff, not just street-ready cops, and the number jumps to 1,153.

But that’s still lower than staffing levels when Liccardo first joined the council and the department was at peak workforce. A 2021 city report on police staffing confirms another union claim of nearly 1,400 total sworn staff in 2007.

Liccardo’s claim about adding 200 officers comes from city hiring data when he was mayor between 2016 and 2022. The number comes from subtracting the 791 total hires over those years by the 571 total retirements and separations that occurred in the same period.

Those numbers include academy trainees, which are often factored into staffing numbers, city spokesperson Demetria Machado told San Jose Spotlight. The data table was made in August 2022. Critics have said counting recruits in hiring numbers is disingenuous since many fail out of the academy.

The Liccardo campaign maintains public safety didn’t decline over his term, and has publicized a 2023 city chart showing that in Liccardo’s last year in office, the city hovered around 120 sworn staff per 100,000 residents, which city officials deemed a 10% increase over the previous decade.

“The facts are clear. During his time as mayor, Sam Liccardo expanded the police department by over 200 officers, improved officer pay, reduced police vacancy rates and left San Jose with the lowest homicide rate of any major U.S. city,” Liccardo campaign spokesperson Gil Rubinstein told San José Spotlight. “That’s why he has the support of law enforcement and public safety leaders.”
Firefighters are getting involved in the dispute on both sides. As Liccardo celebrated the opening of the new Fire Station 32 in San Jose on Thursday, firefighters protested outside City Hall over Liccardo’s support for Measure B — which also slashed their pensions.

But San Jose Fire Chief Robert Sapien, Jr. is defending Liccardo’s record, arguing Liccardo was key to the success of the 2018 voter-approved Measure T, a $650 million bond measure that payed for disaster preparedness, public safety and infrastructure projects. The money went toward building new fire stations across town, including Fire Station 32.

“We were also able to complete Fire Station 37 which is responding to 2,500 calls a year now,” Sapien told San José Spotlight. “We are also enjoying a brand new training facility that was also a product of that time period. The time that Sam Liccardo was mayor happened to be a very productive time for public safety. I feel very fortunate we were able to be so productive.”

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.