When UC Berkeley's $100 million budget deficit affects all campus departments, the impact on campus safety is of obvious concern. But having fewer officers or patrol cars may not be as much of a concern for UC Berkeley students and staff if UCPD merges with the UCSF police department, creating a single police chief for both. If the state of the campus's budget necessitates choosing between reducing the size of the administration or having fewer officers protecting the campus community, then we would rather see little, if any, change in the number of officers.

Of course, the number of officers on duty isn't the only factor that determines the quality of a police department-but if a merger goes through, we hope the required changes don't undermine public safety at all.

Given the preliminary nature of the discussion, there are many questions that have so far gone unanswered. For one, UC Berkeley needs to make up $100 million and it's unclear how much money this consolidation would save. Then there's the problem of dealing with two campuses that have different requirements: How would a police chief handle events occurring simultaneously on both sides of the bay?

The sheer size of both campuses could exacerbate that concern-a single chief for two campuses will need to be able to deal with more people than any other chief in the UC system.

With all that in mind, it's clear that a merger will be heavily dependent on selecting the right chief, perhaps more so than for other UC campus departments. Policing UC Berkeley and UCSF isn't an impossible job, but we strongly urge caution in selecting the right chief if the merger goes through.

Merging both UC campus police departments is one of the better ways of saving money-it would presumably cut from the highest levels, which is preferable if given the choice between cutting administrators or cops.