Police Consolidation Study Reveals High Costs

San Bruno decided it would no longer share a police chief with Millbrae in after a one-year study concluded the cost-savings of a shared police force between the two cities was insufficient.

San Bruno will publicly release the study Friday on its website, but San Bruno Patch recently obtained a copy.

Consolidating San Bruno and Millbrae police departments would save approximately $275,000 a year in personnel costs, but the cities would incur a one-time implementation cost of $480,000.

The study compared four other police departments throughout the Bay Area that are comparable to San Bruno and Millbrae: South San Francisco, Mountain View, Milpitas and Pleasanton.

Here are some of the highlights revealed about both the San Bruno and Millbrae police departments.

• The average Millbrae officer’s salary is about $7,000 less per year compared to a San Bruno cop, while the average salary for a Millbrae records officer is about $7,000 more.

• San Bruno and Millbrae spend about 65 percent of their budgets on police services, the highest amount compared to the four other similar cities in the Bay Area. Mountain View spends about 51 percent, for example.

• Millbrae and San Bruno have the lowest ratio of officers per capita, about one for every 1,000 residents, while other cities average about 1.2 per 1,000.

• The crime rate per 1,000 residents in Millbrae and San Bruno is the second lowest.

• Millbrae and San Bruno have the lowest service call amount, 23 percent below the second lowest city of South San Francisco.

San Bruno Patch Editor Martin Ricard contributed to this report.

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