Sheriff, CHP withhold staffing support pending Vallejo police union contract

VALLEJO – The Solano County Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol have agreed to provide support to the Vallejo Police Department on the condition that the city signs a contract with Vallejo Police Officers Association first, according to reports at Tuesday's City Council meeting. 

Interim Chief Jason Ta said that the police department is ready to enter into an agreement to reimburse the sheriff’s office for providing law enforcement assistance in Vallejo but “that’s  with the expectation that we are able to get past the labor agreement,” he said.

Mayor Robert McConnell said that he had been working with state Sen. Bill Dodd’s office on getting support from California Highway Patrol and if the council approves the labor contract with the VPOA, the CHP will increase patrols on Highway 29 from I-80 to American Canyon. 

Ta welcomed the commitment to increase CHP patrols, saying that any increased law enforcement presence would be helpful. But he said without more information on how often the CHP would patrol and what kind of enforcement they would do it is difficult for him to say how the support will impact the current crisis.

Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz said that she gets a lot of calls asking why the city is not bringing in the help of outside agencies. “I want to be very clear,” she said. “The council has done its part and agreed to our portion of the contract. We are waiting for the VPOA to present it to their officers so it can be finalized.”

She said assuring that the contract process moves quickly and smoothly is important because the lack of a contract is preventing assistance from outside agencies that is needed to address the department’s staffing crisis.

VPOA’s current contract expired in March 2022, and staffing has plummeted by more than 20 officers since then.

A Vallejo Sun investigation from last week detailed the VPOA’s role in contributing to the staffing crisis as officers interfered with the work of two veteran recruiters brought in by former police Chief Shawny Williams.

The recruiters instituted reforms that were designed to diversify the department and increase new hires from colleges and universities. But VPOA resistance blocked the efforts to reshape the department’s culture and instead reinforced ineffective and deficient staffing policies where new recruits were hand-picked by Vallejo police officers without input from the city’s human resources department. 

The recruiters pushing those reforms left the department around the time that Williams resigned in November 2022 after three years as police Chief. 

On Tuesday, McConnell questioned HR director Stephanie Sinfuentes about the degree that HR is involved with selecting new recruits. She said that the decision to move officers forward from the initial screening process to background checks is currently made by a panel that includes a sworn officer, a non-sworn member of the department, a member of the community and a member of the HR department who facilitates the process.

“So, there is an HR person always present, I hope?” McConnell said in an apparent reference to the prior attempts by recruiters to reform the hiring process.

“I hate to say always,”  Sifuentes said. “But yeah for the most part, I think she is always present. I can’t think of a time when she is not.”

Sifuentes said that the department’s recent recruitment drive is yielding results. In late September and early October, she said the department received nine applications from new recruits who would go through the academy training, two applications for entry-level officer positions and two applications from officers transferring from other agencies.

As part of the police staffing report, Sifuentes noted that the department is now accepting applications for two recruiter positions that would replace the two veteran recruiters who left. 

Loera-Diaz, who was supportive of Williams’ recruitment reforms as an interview panelist, said that she is happy to hear that the department is hiring two new recruiters. 

“I think that we should have never let the two that we had go,” Loera-Diaz said, referring to recruiting experts hired under Williams. “They were doing a wonderful job so it’s good to see that we are going back to what we had before.”

Loera-Diaz said that she would like the department’s recruitment advertising to include images of women and Black and brown people. 

“Vallejo is very diverse, she said. “And we would like to have a very diverse police department serve us. It’s important that people feel welcomed and it’s important that people apply and if we don’t have that we might be missing some really good candidates that might want to apply but don’t."