Core services are crashing
Have you tried calling 911 lately? Or 311. The hold time is excruciating if you are in an emergency.
Reality check
San Jose has 1,153 sworn officers for 1million people, barely one officer for 1,000 residents. San Francisco has 2.4 officers per thousand residents; even Oakland has 1.7. San Jose continues to have the lowest police-to-resident ratio of any large city in the United States. San Jose should have nearly 2,400 police officers just to get us up to the national average.
This is why your 911 call is so slow to get a response, and why 311 calls go completely unanswered.
My opponent appears to be embracing public safety policies that would weaken, decentralize, and make our police less accountable.
This dangerous police understaffing is why a 911 call regarding a nighttime backyard intruder at a single woman’s home recently went without a response for 40 minutes. The few officers on duty that night had to prioritize an all-hands on deck call regarding a sawed-off shotgun and a hostage situation.
What do we need to do if we want to recover the Safest Big City in the USA designation we once had? First, we will need more police. We have three police academies which can max out at training 45 cadets each for six months. At full capacity (assuming only 10% drop out rate) the academies could graduate 250 fully trained cadets per year. These 250 cadets then need another year of intense supervision.
We need an additional 1,000 officers to answer all 911 and 311 calls with the urgency they require. Even with an additional 1,000 officers, San Jose would still be under the number in San Francisco and below the national average per resident. To add 1,000 officers, we can add 250 cadets each year. If we started that process today, it would take four years plus an additional year to account for supervision. In five years, we would have the police capacity we need. Most likely if we were to act quickly, we could get to an additional 1,000 officers by 2028.
However, we may have to wait even longer as current information indicates over 200 officers will retire or are planning to leave in the next 36 months. Leaving San Jose residents with a bigger hole in core services than ever before. https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-police-department-expected-to-lose-hundreds-of-cops-officers-law-enforcement-sjpd-union-sjpoa/
As a result of not having enough officers, we are paying incredible amounts for mandatory overtime, impacting both our city budget and the quality of life for officers.
My question is, are we all willing to wait that long for core services to be restored?
What are our alternatives
For decades other cities in California and the US have tempted our trained officers away with better pay, convenient hours, and more community support. While we wait for the academies to come through with new recruits, we can attract and target some of the same officers who left San Jose, and attract others from cities such as Santa Clara, Stockton, and San Francisco.
Core services are a priority for San Jose residents and the single greatest responsibility of city council. We can work to find ways to attract officers now and relieve the immediate pressure on our overworked and understaffed police officers.
Modernized policing
We can also continue to modernize our police force and find new ways of addressing community needs. In San Jose we already have MCAT, foot patrol, and community policing. We can increase these types of policing to supplement the officers themselves, making sure that officers can respond to 911 calls while foot patrol deals with someone blocking a storefront, MCAT de-escalates a mental health situation, and community policing deals with parking and minor vehicle infractions. Adding to these programs can supplement the police officers with other resources they need to make the city safer, and at the same time modernize the way San Jose maintains order.
Other San Jose departments
San Jose residents have also become used to calling the police for almost every issue. Why? Because other core service departments are falling down on the job and the police are left holding the bag. Vehicle abatement and code enforcement must step up to take back their share of the workload and free the police to do the jobs they were meant to do for the community.
Money
All this costs money. If we do not get out in front of the issue of a continually decreasing police force, we will be left to accept limited response times to every crisis, even higher crime rates, and increasing lawlessness. We will also need to prepare differently for other catastrophes where first responders are required — this will take a different amount of money. Bottom line no matter how we want to solve these problems, core services will cost money.
Better pay will entice both experienced officers and new officers. More officers will eliminate expensive mandatory overtime once we reach proper staffing and will dramatically improve work/family life for officers. Improving work/life experience for officers will in turn attract more experienced officers.
Bottom Line
San Jose needs to audit all departments and verify that each department is achieving its proper goals and assess if each department is providing core services. Core services are what we expect and need from our city. Without core services, without a safe city — nothing else matters.
