Vallejo officials emphasize federal backup in new public safety strategy

VALLEJO - Vallejo officials this week said they’re leaning heavily on state and federal partnerships to crack down on entrenched crime.

Mayor Andrea Sorce and Police Chief Jason Ta convened a press conference Thursday alongside partners from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

They say they’ve settled on a new three-piece strategy, called Vallejo VISION, to address violent crime in Vallejo, relying on the Department of Justice program Public Safety Partnerships. Members of multiple community organizations and the NAACP attended the conference in support.

The new plan arrives following a violent shooting which injured a child last month, after which some city and county leaders called for improved community safety measures and several other recent incidents of gun violence. However, data from the Vallejo Police Department shows that most crime categories declined in 2024 compared to previous years.

Ta emphasized the need to work with community organizations like Project Hope, the police department’s program coordinating strategies to reduce crime in heavily impacted neighborhoods, to address systemic factors driving local crime. “We cannot arrest our way out of the violence that has erupted in our city,” he said.

For example, he said, Vallejo has benefited from the IHART program which rolled out last year, a mobile crisis team that works with people experiencing mental and behavioral health crises, using  trauma-informed, evidence-based approaches to reduce the reliance on law enforcement officers.

“We have to work side by side with our community, day in and day out,” Ta said. 

The Vallejo VISION plan has three parts, Ta said: earning and maintaining community trust, strategic crime suppression and enforcement, and improving technology. For example, a newly formed team of officers named POP will identify community problems, from drug crime to quality of life issues, to connect residents with local services. Ta said that team will also carry out “crime suppression techniques” which he didn’t elaborate on. 

He added that Vallejo will seek to improve technologies that have already proven “extremely successful” such as license plate readers used to apprehend suspects and programs used to notify officers of suspected gunshots in communities.

Sorce, flanked by City Manager Andrew Murray, said the City Council is unanimously aligned around the issue after having held a public safety workshop earlier this month. 

“We have a duty to keep our city safe and to build up law enforcement capacity in Vallejo, and to do that in a way that aligns with the community’s needs,” Sorce said. While she emphasized the need to carry out long-requested criminal justice reforms within Vallejo’s police department, she insisted the city is pressing on the known “criminal element.” 

“The days of thinking you can come to our city and commit crimes with impunity are over,” Sorce said.

Michele Beckwith, acting U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of California, said that the Vallejo Police Department is in its first year of a three-year program partnering on certain cases. 

She said that her team this week executed search warrants and arrested several gang members in Vallejo on charges of drug trafficking and firearms possession across multiple cities, including in Fairfield. The district executed four federal warrants and four state warrants, including a mother and son arrested during a raid of a downtown Vallejo daycare on Thursday morning.

Sid Patel, the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Sacramento field office, said hundreds of hours were spent investigating suspected members of a particularly large gang operating in the city, which he said faces various accusations of crimes including murder, drug and firearms trafficking, burglary and witness intimidation. He said many pounds of drugs including fentanyl and cocaine, and weapons including firearms and explosives, were seized this week during this investigation. 

A special City Council meeting will take place next week to delve further into the city’s VISION plan and the community’s involvement, Sorce said.

The city’s announcement comes following the Trump administration’s announcements of sweeping cuts or structural changes at federal agencies, including at the FBI, calling for “efficiency.” It is currently unclear how much these cuts could start to impact the regional offices involved with supporting cities like Vallejo.