The fatal shooting of a man in a Hillcrest dessert shop during the holidays may have had nothing to do with the police shortage. But Hillcrest residents perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the rash of crimes in this area has to do with criminals and aggressive panhandlers perceiving that we’re easy prey.

Estimates are we’re down 200 officers. We’re losing good police officers to other cities because they pay more, and some, like Los Angeles, are paying signing bonuses. Even our fire department reported that applications for emergency response personnel dropped from an average of 2,000 applications to 100.

Mayor Sanders says the city doesn’t have the resources to immediately end the cycle and pay our emergency personnel comparable pay to other cities. Instead, he argued in his State of the City address, San Diegans will just have to tighten their belts.

Unfortunately, the taxpayers are not the ones responsible for city officials promising to employees and retirees outrageously high pension benefits and free health care. And then, when investigated, they hire private attorneys at $500 an hour and bill the taxpayers. It’s simply an outrage.

City Attorney Mike Aguirre has made it clear that the city’s current $2 billion deficit isn’t going away anytime soon, and it may balloon further. He echoes what municipal bankruptcy expert Pat Shea voiced in the mayoral campaign. The city is heading for inevitable bankruptcy.

This paper and others here urge the City Council to give our officers comparable pay now. We don’t want to lose those who know us the best, many of whom are gay or lesbian and others who are wonderful officers.

The response from Mayor Sanders and the council is that the city doesn’t have funds, which seems a bit disingenuous. Four members of the current council are billing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal fees in their defense regarding investigations and possible indictments. Our own Toni Atkins reports spending tens of thousands a month for her legal fees. Some attorneys are charging $400-500 an hour.

Aguirre estimates that the city has already paid $45 million in legal and administrative fees during the pension debacle. The money is a complete waste. It translates into 500 police positions.

Few employers pay the legal fees of employees charged with job-related illegal behavior. If the city does it, then it should only pay the hourly rate charged by public defenders, which is about $80. Public defenders don’t make $400-500 an hour.

Aguirre has asked the agencies considering legal action against councilmembers to wrap up their investigations and negotiate settlements of some kind with the four under scrutiny. He says they should take mercy on the taxpayers footing these bills.

And the four councilmembers, all of whom are termed out in less than two years, should seriously consider any proposal that allows them to resign in return for something, perhaps pleading to an infraction. It’s what Aguirre has suggested all along.

Unfortunately, this problem is not new. This is hardly the first time taxpayers have had to foot the bill, in one way or another, for mayors and city officials and their involvement with criminal investigations or charges involving actions while in office. In the last 20 years: Roger Hedgecock, Uvaldo Martinez, Jess Haro, John Hartley, Valerie Stallings, Susan Golding, Michael Zucchet, Ralph Inzunza, Charles Lewis, Jim Madaffer, Toni Atkins, Brian Maienschein, Scott Peters, Dick Murphy and Casey Gwinn. Does any other city have such a shameful record?

If voters keep the strong-mayor form of government, we should give the strong mayor his or her own Office of General Counsel, just like other major cities. And the City Council should have its own Office of Counsel to the Council. The attorneys in that office would give advice to the council on its decisions. This office would also assist councilmembers charged with office-related crimes.

The city needs to make the City Attorney’s Office a separate entity from the City Council, with its budget guaranteed by a formula determined by the City Charter.

The city attorney cannot freely investigate councilmembers and other high-ranking city officials when the council ultimately determines the budget for the office.

The council should adopt a policy regarding legal fees paid when councilmembers are investigated and/or charged with criminal wrongdoing, perhaps resulting in imprisonment. That policy should place limits on those fees.