Vallejo police could seek sheriff’s help to shore up staffing

VALLEJO – Interim Vallejo Police Chief Jason Ta told the Vallejo City Council on Tuesday that a trend of officer departures could lead the department to seek intervention from the Solano County Sheriff’s Office to shore up the depleted police force.

Ta provided the council with a presentation on officer staffing and response times Tuesday and he said the situation was grim. He said that the department has seen an increase in officer departures to nearby departments since 2020 and that currently the department has 67 full duty sworn officers with 46 vacant officer positions.

According to Ta, adequate staffing is crucial for dispatch response times. The 2022 average response time for top priority calls – when a person is at immediate risk of physical harm or a property crime is in progress – was just over 11 minutes from the time a 911 call goes to dispatch to the time an officer arrives on scene. Ta said that an adequate response time is six minutes.

Ta said to manage the staffing problem, the department will rely more on an on-line portal to address community needs and transfer as much work as possible to civilian staff.

If the number of officers declines to 65, Ta said he plans to begin intermittently rotating officers to patrol shifts, which would reduce the time that those officers are available for detective work and traffic enforcement. If the number of officers falls to 60, Ta said that the traffic and detective department will no longer be able to function.

“I need to reiterate here, if we lose 11 officers then we have to do something very drastic,” Ta said.

A loss of 11 officers, or a reduction to 56 total officers, would require the department to move to 12-hour shifts in the day and night. This schedule contradicts a union agreement and in order to break that agreement the city would have to declare a state of emergency.

In addition, the loss of 11 officers would also trigger the county to take over some of Vallejo’s police services.  In this case, the city could be required to pay for services provided through the sheriff's office, Ta said.

The department conducted a survey to understand some of the reasons why officers are leaving and it indicated that morale played a large role in employee dissatisfaction. Ta said the survey pointed to lack of community and council support as a leading reason for departures, followed by the slow progress on finding a new police headquarters, the lack of a union contract and unachievable expectations placed on limited staff.

At the end of the report, Ta said that the department is making progress toward meeting the goals of the collective agreement with the California Department of Justice. The agreement was the result of state intervention after a series of controversial use of force incidents between 2016 and 2019 and the fatal shooting of Sean Monterrosa in 2020.

The agreement required the department to follow a 45-point plan laid out by the OIR Group, an independent auditor hired by the city to review the VPD’s policies to address the department’s high rate of force used.

The agreement is set to wrap up on June 5, but Ta said that he hopes that the DOJ will consider the department’s progress on the recommendations and grant an extension for meeting the required reforms. As of December, only two of the recommendations had been completed.

Mayor Robert McConnell said that he was saddened by the request to extend the timeline for the reforms. “We have been playing with this for years and it's time to get this thing wrapped up.” he said.

Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz noted that departments across the country are facing the same staffing challenges. She reiterated her support for finding a new building for the police headquarters and expressed interest in establishing bonuses structured to encourage officers to remain with the department.

“There are staffing issues for different reasons,” Loera-Diaz said. “But you also have to consider that the relationship between the department and the community is damaged. You have to earn the community’s support.”

Councilmember Charles Palmares asked Ta if he could describe some of the conditions in the building that currently houses the police department headquarters.

Ta said that in recent heavy rains that the power to some portions of the building has been going out and they have had to use a generator. He described water damage from previous years that has led to mold growth and he said that no one put’s their gym bags on the floor because the sewer frequently backs up.

But, he said, the most serious problem is lead contamination that requires parts of the building to be sealed off. The usable areas are constantly monitored for lead because the toxic particles can seep into the HVAC system.

City Manager Mike Malone said that the building issue will come before the board on April 11 and city staff will present options for temporarily relocating some of the police department workers as well as options for a permanent location.

Several councilmembers referred to negotiations underway with the Vallejo Police Officers Association (VPOA). McConnell said that if the city is going to take steps to improve officer retention with pay or benefits he would like to see some reciprocity from the union.

“We are being asked by the VPOA to pay more and more and we are looking at surveys from other cities and we see [officer salaries] increasing like a ping pong ball,” McConnell said. “Yet we have to be mindful that what led the city to bankruptcy in 2008 was a structural deficit created through labor negotiations.”

Councilmember Peter Bregenzer made a motion to bring back the VPOA side agreement for another council vote, which was defeated last month. The side agreement could allow for an increase in officers’ pensions. Bregenzer said he hoped it could serve as an “olive branch” in support of negotiation efforts between the city and the VPOA.