Vallejo council reconsiders waterfront building for dispatch as police report more officer departures

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Council suggested on Tuesday that they would make a decision on moving police dispatch services to a controversial waterfront police building after receiving a report detailing further decline in police staffing levels that led the city to declare a state of emergency last month.

During Tuesday’s council meeting, interim police Chief Jason Ta detailed a plan of service reductions and schedule changes to manage the officer staffing shortage.

Human resources director Stephanie Sinfuentes said there was an increase in applications last month after the department expanded recruitment efforts. The department received 106 applications from the latter part of July to mid-August, Sinfuentes said, and of those applicants the department has initiated background checks for 25 candidates.

“We do receive a number of applications for people who don’t meet the minimum qualification,” Sinfuentes said. “We have also seen an influx of lateral candidates but unfortunately they are lateral candidates with not necessarily positive things in their background with other agencies.”

Tuesday’s council meeting was the first monthly report to monitor the department during the public safety staffing emergency that was passed last month. The declaration allows the chief and the city manager broader leeway to address scheduling and other issues related to staffing without the approval of the police union.  

Ta reported that in July the department collapsed the traffic division and began using officers from the detective division to fill patrol vacancies. The department now has a total of 76 sworn officers after one officer recently left for another department. Ta said that there are five more officers in the process of transferring to other agencies.

According to Ta, his next step to address the staffing problems will be to schedule officers for 12-hour shifts throughout the week. Currently officers are working 10-hour shifts on weekdays and 12-hour shifts on weekends.

In addition to the scheduling changes, Ta said that he has been reaching out to other agencies to see if they can provide support for the department. He said that he has spoken with the California Highway Patrol, Oakland police, the U.S. Marshals Service and all Solano county law enforcement agencies.

Ta said that one option is to request that state officials declare a state of emergency in Vallejo in which they would provide immediate state funded support, but this is usually for a limited time period. The other option is to make an agreement with outside agencies to pay for the support service they provide. This would allow for more local control of how the services are administered, he said.

Councilmember Cristina Arriola said that she is in support of CHP doing regular patrols through the center of Vallejo and she asked how U.S. Marshals would assist the department.

The U.S. Marshals would be able to assist in apprehending suspects who have a warrant for their arrest, said Ta. “We wouldn't just ask them to come out for one or two warrants. But if we wanted to do a mutual larger operation like a sweep, then I would say that we would have to have a handful of warrants ready to go,” he said.

But Ta said that a warrant requires a significant amount of investigation before they are issued and with so many of the department's detectives taking on patrol shifts due to the staff shortage the progress on investigations has slowed down.

Vallejo resident Miriam Duncan said during the public comment period that she has worked as a dispatcher in the area for over ten years and was considering working in Vallejo until she went on a “sit along” with dispatchers working at the police headquarters at 111 Amador St. She said that she was so appalled by the working conditions and the understaffing of the call center that she withdrew her application.

Sinfuentes said that dispatch includes a total of 16 positions and only three are vacant. The department does have qualified applicants for those open positions, she said, one of whom is currently undergoing the background check process.

Several councilmembers responded to Duncan’s concerns and advocated for moving the dispatchers to another location as soon as possible. City staff said in June that the dispatch center would be moved to 400 Mare Island Way, a city-owned office building that was intended to be the department’s new headquarters until community outcry led the council to change course.

But Vallejo resident Anne Carr wrote a letter calling for the city to withdraw the decision alleging that it violated California’s Brown Act because the decision was not made in a public meeting. City staff then withdrew the resolution but did not specify a location.

The department’s detective division, the professional standards division and a special victims unit already operate out of 400 Mare Island Way.

On Tuesday the council seemed receptive to moving the dispatch center there. “I am going to throw this out there,” councilmember Rozzana Verder-Aloga said, “and I know this is not going to be popular but to me 400 Mare Island Way is the most conducive place for [dispatch] to move temporarily but we don’t have a majority vote to move that forward.”  

Councilmember Cristina Arriola said that she would support a motion to move the dispatch center to the waterfront police building and asked city manager Mike Malone to place the item on the agenda in September.

“I was always against any police activity in 400 Mare Island Way since 2020 but I think that because we are in a state of emergency we can placate that scenario and get them in there with that new equipment,” Arriola said.

“I cannot support the move of the dispatchers to 400 Mare Island Way,” said Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz. “I’ll agree to agendize it but I also want to agendize, that same day, two to three alternative locations to be brought back to us so that we can compare and at that point make a decision.”