officers and another 154 professional staff, and that has absolutely had an impact on the service we provide to this community.”
Given these significant reductions, the police department identified three core priorities – providing service (when a call from the public comes in), handling criminal investigations, and homeland security. Explaining how criminal investigations have changed, Chief Luna says, “Because we lost so many people, when I talk about criminal investigations, we were unable to achieve the level of proactive work that we once did. We still investigate burglaries but we didn't have additional proactive detectives going out and making arrests in the field like we once did. It still happens, but not at the same level.”
Offsetting the reduction in the number of sworn officers is just one of the challenges currently facing the department. Chief Luna points out, “The people went away, but the workload never went away. What we're seeing in the last several years is that the workload is now increasing. For example, the “California is changing right before our eyes, and I'm wondering and praying that the victims aren't getting lost in everything that's being proposed and done.”
volume of calls for service is up approximately 10%. Fatalities are up. Our injury traffic accidents are up.”
At the same time, there are numerous mandates for increased police training in areas ranging from bias-based police training to procedural justice to body cameras. Unfortunately, these mandates do not come with budget increases attached, so the money must be found from within the existing budget. This is where the increased funding from the sales tax increase could have an impact within the police department. Chief Luna explains, “Any additional funding that this police department would get would be (applied to) three specific areas. We would be looking at increasing some staffing, we would be looking at technology and