1/According to today's response by the SFPD to my CPRA request, San Francisco's curfew (which ran from May 31, 2020 through June 4, 2020--or less than a week) cost the City approx. $3.57 million in wage costs alone for its own extra officers (thread)
2/I had originally asked for the number of sworn officers in excess of previously-set staffing requirements (i.e. those brought in because of the curfew). For whatever reason, the SFPD gave me records through June 12 instead, but this is wild (Y-axis is # of xtra officers) 
3/Despite the curfew ending on June 4, SFPD continued to ramp up their staffing over the following days, hitting a peak of 976 extra officers on June 6, 2020 before descending, through fits and starts, to 171 extra by June 12.
4/But like the Ginzu, that's not all. The SFPD also requested mutual aid from twenty four different police and sheriff's departments, most (for whatever reason) coming from long distances from the Central Valley (Fresno and Merced were big donor localities).
5/The City is on the hook for approximately $115,000 in costs to house and feed these extra officers (a total of 643 over the period from May 31, 2020 through June 6, 2020, i.e. two days after the curfew ended).
6/The City doesn't reimburse salaries to mutual aid officers in most cases (presumably they're paid by their home jurisdictions), but it *does* pay for its own sworn officers.
7/According to the SFPD's response, the payroll costs incurred by calling its own extra personnel to duty during this period (not clear whether that's the 5/31-6/4 period I asked for or the 5/31-6/12 period they gave figures for-I assume the latter) was $3.57 million.
8/Note: The SFPD's accounting software doesn't have the capability to issue cost-per-day, so what they say they did was to take their total YTD expenditures of $5.37 million, of which $5.25 million was personnel costs, and compare it to the requested period.
9/Since the requested period (again-not clear if this is 5/31-6/4 or 5/31-6/12) was "approximately 68% of the total hours YTD, so using that ratio, the personnel costs would estimate to be $3.57m"
10/I'm not an expert on police payroll, but their approach in calculating an estimate of payroll costs as described above seems facially reasonable given the limitations of the software, so it may be the best guess we have at the moment.
11/I haven't seen firm citywide estimates of the damage allegedly caused by the riots which preceded the declaration of the curfew. Based on what I saw at the Saturday May 30 action, it's hard to believe whatever damage there was would top $1 mil, much less $3.57mil.
12/(Again, I'm a criminal defense attorney, not an insurance defense lawyer, so I make no claims to expertise in the area of damage analysis, but it does seem fair to assume that most if not all of the non-local businesses--e.g. Westfield Mall tenants--were insured).
13/Based on what I saw before the curfew order and during the period of the curfew on our streets, the SFPD's main priority was the protection of *property*--specifically, Westfield Mall and merchants in the Downtown and Union Square cores.
14/Which raises a substantial public policy question: how do San Francisco taxpayers--many of whom rarely if ever go to Union Square or the Westfield Mall--feel about spending $3.57 million of their money to guard them at public expense?
15/These figures would appear to confirm something I said I sensed at the time was the case when Mayor Breed announced a "surprise" end to the curfew--i.e. that the City, bleeding as it is from the COVID-19 related downturn,simply couldn't afford this level of policing for long.
16/Which, of course, leads to an important tactical option for protesters. In the 1960s, it was possible to "fill the jails" in smaller communities and force change by bringing the justice system to a halt. Given the growth of the police state, that is less true now. BUT!
18/....they very probably can win :)
19/Finally, the George Floyd uprising (for want of a better term) has been mostly spontaneous and not coordinated across City and county boundaries (with the exception of SF and Oakland both getting lively at the same time).
20/If, hypothetically, the uprising in SF resumed the intensity it displayed on May 30-31 *at the same time* as risings in Fresno and Merced and the other places where the SFPD draws its mutual aid reinforcements, force becomes less of a practical response from the City.
21/So the moral of the story may be that mutual aid works for both sides --or it should. /end.
