By Bob Walsh
Vallejo is a pleasant bedroom
community (mostly) right on the edge of San Francisco Bay. They have
about 125,000 residents. And they have a serious problem. They are
running out of cops.
The
city government is preparing to declare a "state of emergency" which
gives the City Manger more power, and more responsibility, towards
keeping the P D running.
There
are currently only 34 uniform officers and nine supervisors in the
police department. They are now pulling one detective per day back into
uniform and have shut down their traffic unit completely.
Five
cops have left in the last three months. Three more are scheduled to
leave next month. The cops are seriously thinking about not responding
to some calls at all. They are preparing to move to 12 hour shifts and
looking at the legal ramifications of not responding to burglar alarms
(almost all of which are false). There is a significant amount of
forced overtime within the ranks. Police response times for the
"average" call is 85 minutes.
The
city is at least considering asking the Solano County S O to take over
police duties within the city. Presumably that would involve a lot of
other problems that may not bring about wonderful results.
Tonite's City Council meeting should be interesting.
Strange how when you treat your cops like shit they become unenthused about working for you.
1 comment:
Shut it down. Doing a half-assed job is sometimes worse than not doing anything.
Post a Comment