San Diego police officers are using force more often in encounters with residents, even as the city’s crime rate declines, according to data obtained by Times of San Diego.As use-of-force reports increase, the racial gap has widened over the past three years. SDPD officers are seven times more likely to use force on Black residents than on White residents, and nearly twice as likely to use force on Hispanic residents as on White people.To analyze trends, Times of San Diego requested all police use‑of‑force reports from 2017 through 2025. During that period, reported use-of-force incidents rose, as did reports of officers facing violent encounters.
Because officers often report multiple types of force in a single incident — for example, completing a physical takedown and then deploying pepper spray on the same person — Times of San Diego removed duplicate entries so that each instance referred to a single encounter. Times of San Diego then filtered the incidents by race. To calculate rates, we obtained population data from the city, divided the number of incidents for each racial group by that group’s total population, and multiplied by 1,000 to achieve per‑capita rates. After adjusting for population, Black residents make up just over 5% of San Diego’s population, while White residents comprise nearly 42%. Of the nearly 79,000 Black residents in San Diego, 17.4 out of every 1,000 had force used against them in 2025. That compares with 2.5 out of every 1,000 White people.The 2025 rate of 17.4 use‑of‑force incidents per 1,000 Black residents was just below the peak of 17.9 per 1,000 people recorded in 2023. It remains well above the 2017 level, when nearly 12 out of every 1,000 Black residents experienced police use of force.While the use-of-force disparity is highest between Black and White people, the rate at which San Diego police used force on Hispanics also rose dramatically over the past nine years. In 2017, police reported 955 use-of-force incidents with Hispanics, which, when factoring in population, put the use-of-force ratio at 2.3 Hispanic people who had force used on them out of every 1,000 people – the same ratio that White residents experienced that year.
The ratio, however, has increased since, nearly doubling in 2025 to 4.5 Hispanic residents per 1,000 people.Conversely, use-of-force ratios for White people, based on population, have remained largely unchanged since 2017. In 2025, 2.5 White residents out of every 1,000 had force used on them, only a slight increase since 2017 when police reported they used force on 2.3 White people out of every 1,000 individuals.
Racial disparities in the San Diego Police Department’s use of force have been present for years. In 2021, the department released the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) Report, which looked at policing practices where racial disparities were present and the contributing factors. The report found that 26% of all use-of-force incidents reported between 2016 and 2020 were against Black people, even though Black residents only made up 6.2% of the population of San Diego. White people, on the other hand, who represented 43% of San Diego’s population, had 38% of all use-of-force incidents. Hispanics, according to the report, accounted for 31% of all use-of-force incidents, but made up of 40% of San Diego’s population.While the 2021 report was the first of its kind, no similar report has been conducted since.
A steady increase in force used by police
In March, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and police Chief Scott Wahl appeared together to present San Diego’s latest crime numbers, which showed crime had dropped by 6.3% in 2025 from the previous year. The data, Mayor Gloria and Chief Wahl said, showed an overall decrease in crime from 2021 through 2025.“This achievement can be largely attributed to outstanding police work, meaningful community partnerships and effective use of technology,” they said in a joint statement at the time.While crime was down during that period, the number of police use-of-force reports increased in each of those four years, according to the data.In 2021, San Diego police reported 3,969 instances of force used on individuals. As crime dropped, use of force spiked by nearly 27% by 2025 to 5,021 reports of police force. The increase is even more dramatic when looking at use-of-force numbers since 2017. That year, police reported 3,601 instances of police force, 39% fewer than in 2025.
While police are using more force during encounters with the public, data show that the public is also using more force against officers.From 2021 to 2025, San Diego police officers reported a 70% increase in assaults and battery against them, according to the California Incident-Based Reporting System. The number may be higher because some incidents may go unreported, and some reports may not clearly identify the victim as a law enforcement officer. The data from the California Incident-Based Reporting System also does not indicate which assaults on officers led to force used on the assailant.
A mix of ‘complex social factors’
Just what is driving the increase?In an email to Times of San Diego, San Diego police Lieutenant Cesar Jimenez said that while forceful encounters with police “have a significant impact on individuals and communities,” it is important to remember they represent less than 1% of the public’s encounters with police.Jimenez said explaining the racial disparity in force requires a more complex analysis than comparing encounters with the share of the city’s population.“Disparities in use of force, and police contacts in general, are often influenced by complex social factors such as poverty, housing instability, and crime victimization,” Jimenez wrote. “For example, officers have frequent contact with unhoused individuals in response to community concerns and requests for service. Because Black residents are disproportionately represented among San Diego’s unhoused population, those contacts can contribute to disparities in enforcement data.”But key indicators of rising poverty, homelessness, and crime victimization that San Diego police cite did not rise in conjunction with the years in which use-of-force incidents increased, and as the disparity between experiences between Black, Hispanic and White residents widened.Jimenez added that police supervisors are required to review all reports of police force, regardless of whether the reports are generated from police in the field or those they encounter. In addition, he said the city’s Commission on Police Practices reviews the reports to add another layer of oversight.“We recognize that disparities are complex and require a long-term approach,” Jimenez wrote. “Through training, accountability, and sustained community engagement, SDPD remains committed to building trust and reducing disparities wherever possible.”
‘Social and economic factors do not use force; officers do.’
Attorney and civil rights advocate Geneviéve Jones-Wright — founder and executive director of Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance, or MoGo — said using socioeconomic factors to rationalize disparities in policing only masks the real issues.“When a racial disparity reaches the highest level in a decade, the question cannot be limited to whether the numbers can be explained,” she said. “The question must be whether the systems producing those numbers are just, lawful, and accountable.“Poverty, housing instability, and crime victimization may shape the circumstances under which police encounters occur, but they do not explain away the officers’ decisions to use force,” added Jones-Wright. “They do not absolve the department of responsibility. And they cannot be allowed to obscure the racialized impact of policing practices. Poverty, housing instability, crime victimization, and other social and economic factors do not use force; officers do.”Jones-Wright says that while Blacks do represent a greater percentage of San Diego’s unhoused population, and that socio-economics do have an impact on crime and police encounters, that should result in change and more restraint, not more violent police encounters.“San Diego cannot accept a decade-high racial disparity in the police force as inevitable, incidental, or too complex to confront.”
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