Smooth sailing for sheriff’s reelection despite stormy first term  

You wouldn’t know it from the coverage, but there is a race for sheriff in San Francisco. Paul Miyamoto, the incumbent and California’s first Asian-American sheriff, has had a difficult first term dealing with multiple crises and a restive union. However, recent developments have made the race more cordial, as Miyamoto is expected to win against a relatively unknown challenger, University of California police officer Michael Juan. 

Miyamoto and Juan made their cases last week at a candidate forum held by the League of Women Voters of San Francisco at the Internet Archive in the Richmond. With a sparse crowd, it was a remarkably genial event in a contentious election where other races have been exemplified by stinging rhetoric. Far from roasting each other, the contenders seemed to enjoy some camaraderie from the late summer heat wave, which drove temperatures on stage to over 90 degrees. 

“I grew up about five minutes from here, where I still live with my family. I have been invested in San Francisco from my entire civil service career,” Miyamoto told attendees in his opening speech. “We were challenged at the very beginning of my first administration; within a month of becoming sheriff, we dealt with the Covid pandemic just as the rest of the world did … the strength that the members of the sheriff’s office showed in partnership and collaboration and carrying out our duties in those conditions, and how we transitioned out of that with the rest of the community, is an example of exactly what I bring to the table.”

The challenges Sheriff Miyamoto alluded to, including the pandemic and a generational wave of officer retirements contributing to a national shortage of qualified personnel, have left some visible marks on his first term. Most notably, chronic understaffing, combined with the ongoing emergency drug enforcement team deployment in response to the fentanyl crisis, led to an unprecedented gutting of the department’s fiscal year 2022–23 overtime budget in less than three months.  

Another consequence of the understaffing, combined with a growth in jail population due to the socioeconomic knock-on effects of the pandemic, has been increased violence at the jails. Last April, two of the city’s jails had to be locked down after seven members of staff had been injured, some severely, by inmate attacks in the previous two months. 

The assaults and injuries prompted the deputies’ union, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, to publicly demand Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors’ work to increase staffing at the jail and even call in the National Guard. The following month, the union’s political action committee said they would refuse to endorse Miyamoto for reelection. 

However, that stance appears to have softened by last week’s forum. 

“Sheriff Miyamoto has made some significant improvements in the last couple of months. He has improved the efficiency of the application and testing process and increased hiring,” union president Ken Lomba told The Voice in a text message. “Also, Sheriff Miyamoto returned our Senior Deputy position, which was being phased out previously; our members are very pleased with these changes and improvements.”  

“We have multiple layers of how we are recruiting right now. In fact, during my tenure, we hired a full-time recruiting officer for our staff, which we’ve never had before. Just for comparison, the police department has anywhere from 12 to 20 officers assigned to recruiting. We have one on our budget,” Miyamoto noted when asked about recruiting efforts at last week’s forum. 

He added that a “community engagement team” was formed as a “collateral duty assignment” for deputies to recruit new deputies from the city’s neighborhoods. The department is also networking with other states, educational institutions, and even the U.S. military “so they have a job waiting for them when they get out.”

Miyamoto also noted success in getting more funding for the department. 

“I’m very proud to say that under my leadership, I’ve gotten a budget of $323 million for this fiscal year, which is the largest budget of the sheriff’s office that’s ever been granted by the board and by the mayor’s office; it’s nowhere near what we need, but it’s a step in the right direction,” he told the audience. We have funding to address our staffing needs, but the most important thing is to get more people in place.”

Meanwhile, Juan, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and native of the Crocker-Amazon who served briefly with both the San Francisco Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office before moving on to the University of California Police, responded to moderator Nuala Bishari’s questions with answers on issues that were often similar to Miyamoto’s. In response to the sheriff’s answer on staffing and the budget, his reaction was, “I can’t help but say that was a great answer,” while restating the importance of the public being aware of the issues around the department’s staffing and jail overcrowding. 

That said, other challenges continue to emerge. Members of the Board of Supervisors have denounced what they termed as a “war on drugs 2.0” and blamed it for increased pressure on the city’s jails. And now, in reaction to a federal court order in a lawsuit by the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which cosponsored last week’s forum, Miyamoto is suspending new entries into the department’s pretrial home monitoring program.

The issue is whether the sheriff can require defendants in the program to consent to warrantless “home checks” to ensure they aren’t engaging in illegal activity while under house arrest. Miyamoto contends that the home checks are essential for the program to work. Breed, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, and City Attorney David Chiu support Miyamoto’s position, and the city is appealing the court order.

While that likely means even more pressure on jails, Lomba also supports the appeal: “Sheriff Miyamoto made the right decision stopping the pretrial ankle monitoring program,” he told The Voice. We believe in the future, this program should only be for non-violent offenses and non-drug dealers. We agree with DA Jenkins that violent offenders and drug dealers should be in jail.”