SAN FRANCISCO — Eighty years after a small group of postwar police officers banded together to demand fair pay and decent working conditions, the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) stands as one of the city’s most enduring labor institutions — and a reminder that today’s benefits were anything but guaranteed.
Formed in 1946, just after the end of World War II, the SFPOA emerged at a time when San Francisco was both a union town and a city in transition. Returning veterans were flooding into the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and into the trades, and the power of organized labor was reshaping the economic landscape.
“In my estimation, the generative issues regarding the formation of the SFPOA in 1946 were vets coming into the SFPD, the strength of the labor movement in San Francisco, and the emerging desire to form an association to advance wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment,” recalls Mike Hebel, a retired SFPD captain and longtime SFPOA attorney.
Hebel, who joined the department in 1966 and went on to serve as a workers’ compensation attorney and POA legal counsel for decades, has become an unofficial historian of the organization. Though he was only two years old when the POA was founded, his institutional knowledge stretches back to its earliest days.
Born as a Social Club with a Serious Purpose
When the SFPOA first came together, it did so under constraints that would surprise many officers today. In the mid-1940s, police officers in San Francisco needed the consent of the Police Commission just to form an association.
“In 1946 and for several years thereafter, in order to form an association, you needed consent of the Police Commission,” Hebel explains. That consent was obtained, and what began as a largely social organization quickly developed a more serious focus: pay, hours, and working conditions.
Back then, pay raises were not automatic. Any increase in salary had to be written into the annual city and county appropriations ordinance, meaning officers were effectively required to lobby the Board of Supervisors for every raise. A successful raise depended on convincing a majority of supervisors to support it.
Over time, the SFPOA worked to move police compensation out of that purely political arena and into more predictable, formula-driven systems.
From Salary Surveys to Pay Formulas
By the time Hebel entered the department in 1966, the city had already begun experimenting with more structured approaches to police pay.
A key turning point came in 1953, when the association helped push through a new pay formula. Under that system, San Francisco could set police salaries up to the highest paid of the top in California with populations over 100,000 — a benchmark that often meant matching or approaching Berkeley’s or Los Angeles’ pay scales, then among the highest in the state.
From 1953 until 1975, Hebel says, the Board of Supervisors consistently interpreted this “permissive” language in favor of the officers, granting wages that made San Francisco police comparable to the highest paid in California.
That long-running understanding collapsed suddenly in the mid-1970s.
The 1975 Strike That Changed Everything
In 1975, as inflation surged to some of the highest levels in modern U.S. history, the annual salary survey indicated that San Francisco police officers could justifiably receive a 13% raise. Instead, the Board of Supervisors offered just 6.5%.
It was the first time in more than two decades that the city had declined to match the top pay allowed under the formula. For many officers, it was a breaking point.
“There had been other police strikes in the U.S., but none recently of the size of Boston” Hebel says. The best-known precedent was the 1919 Boston police strike, when then-Governor (later President) Calvin Coolidge backed a hard line: every striking officer was fired, and none were rehired.
Hebel, by this time a sergeant and a newly minted attorney, was one of the strike leaders in San Francisco. He had studied those past strikes and understood the risks. But officers, facing high inflation (CPI had increased 12.4% in the previous year) and what they saw as a broken promise, walked out anyway.
San Francisco’s police strike lasted three days; the fire department joined for one day. The legal and political stakes were high — and the outcome could easily have mirrored Boston’s. Instead, timing and politics intervened.
The city’s mayor at the time, Joseph Alioto, was in his second term and nearing the end of his tenure. A pro-labor mayor with no re-election campaign ahead of him, Alioto used a legal opinion from the city attorney to bypass the Board of Supervisors, negotiate directly with Police Association & Fire Fighter Union under emergency authority, and bring them back to work.
“Things just worked out in a good way,” Hebel says, reflecting on how close the city and its police officers may have come to a much more catastrophic outcome.
The strike did more than resolve a pay dispute. It led to a new compensation formula, in place from 1975 to 1993, tying salaries to averages among large cities. And it laid the groundwork — politically and culturally — for the next major shift.
The Era of Collective Bargaining
In 1992, San Francisco voters approved a charter amendment that brought formal collective bargaining to police compensation. From that point forward, pay, overtime, benefits, and other terms were governed by labor contracts, known as memorandums of understanding (MOUs), negotiated between the SFPOA and the city.
From Hebel’s vantage point, this was the culmination of decades of pressure and organizing that began with the association’s formation in 1946. Overtime pay, night differential, and retirement benefits — features younger officers may now take for granted — were all products of that long evolution in bargaining power. For example,
1968 – Major retirement benefit enhancement
1971 – Examination for the rank of Inspector
1971 & 1974 – POA Negotiate historic MOUs
1973 – POA’s campaign successfully reopens 2 Police Stations (Bayview & Park)
1974 – Massive retirement benefit enhancement including COLA’s
1977 – State Legislations – Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights (SFPOA was catalyst & major proponent)
1978 – Superior Court Victory – eliminated the 5-mile residency requirement
1984 – time & half & night differential
1997 – Supplemental COLA enacted – a retirement benefit enhancement
2002 – 3% at 55 retirement improvement; Supplemental COLA capped out at 1%
2008 – Basic retirement COLA – compounded instead of simple interest; supplemental COLA increased to 1.5%
Yet Hebel is quick to note that the gains have not been one-way. A charter amendment in the early 1990s reduced retirement benefits for newer police, fire, and miscellaneous city employees. In recent years, San Francisco firefighters successfully went to the ballot to restore some of their retirement benefits for its members hired after January 1st,2012, and police officers are now seeking similar relief.
Lessons for a Younger Department
With the department’s average age now in the late 30s, many officers came on well after the 1975 strike — and long after the early battles that defined the association’s role.
“What I’ve seen over the years is that the younger people coming into the department don’t realize what has preceded them,” Hebel observes. The benefits they now enter under — from differential payments to defined retirements — “did not just happen. They came from collective effort.”
On the 50th anniversary of the 1975 strike, Hebel wrote a detailed article for the POA Journal, offering a pointed piece of advice: “Never do it again.” He stands by that sentiment. The risk to public safety, the possibility of mass firings, and the legal and political fallout makes another strike both unlikely and, in his view, highly undesirable.
Yet his message to younger officers is not to be passive. Instead, he argues, they must understand their history and engage collectively to protect and improve what prior generations secured — especially around retirement security and health care benefits.
As the SFPOA marks its 80th anniversary in 2026, the story of its founding and its defining battles — from the postwar formation in 1946 to the turbulent 1970s and the advent of collective bargaining — is more than institutional lore. For Hebel, it is a living lesson about how far the organization has come, and how easily hard-won gains can be eroded if their origins are forgotten.
“Those who want to stay around and retire,” he suggests, are beginning to recognize that history — and with it, the continuing need for collective action by the SFPOA.
The 17% overall pay raise and improved working conditions in the new four-year contract just won by the SFPOA negotiating team demonstrates the importance of strong SFPOA leadership and the importance of coordinated ongoing efforts by police officers to ensure their political strength is vital to continuing successes for current and future generations of S.F. Police officers.
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