Vallejo police accuse media, union of misinformation related to staffing
(Image: The Vallejo Police Department’s headquarters are seen in an image captured by Google’ Street View. Photo courtesy Google Street View, Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
The Vallejo Police Department on Tuesday issued a public statement denouncing “several” news media reports that contained “inaccurate reporting” about staffing concerns within the agency.
The statement appeared to be related to a blog post published by the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association (VPOA), the trade union representing non-command officers within the agency, that criticized the police department for facilitating an environment that allegedly enticed nearly a half-dozen officers to recently leave Vallejo for similar positions in nearby communities.
In the statement, a VPOA spokesperson said the police department had 93 sworn officers to patrol the city, one of the lowest staff counts in recent years. The number did not include administrative staff, command staff or police trainees.
The union placed most of the blame on Shawny Williams, the town’s police chief and a frequent target of the VPOA. A spokesperson said Williams “has made the decision to shut down several units within the department that provide critical services to the people who live and work within the city of Vallejo.”
Specifically, Williams was accused by the union of shuttering the town’s Traffic Division, a patrol group that is focused on eliminating traffic-related incidents, and the Community Services Section, which coordinates with Neighborhood Watch groups to prevent and respond to quality-of-life crimes.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Vallejo Police Department said the union’s allegations were wrong with respect to the two police units, which had not been shut down. It also said the agency was working with recruiters to attract new candidates to the police department to fill vacancies as quickly as possible.
“Our number one priority is to be the best department we can be for our community, and our chief and city leadership are fully committed to that promise,” the agency spokesperson said.
The police union’s statement last week was fodder for at least one local news report that profiled Lieutenant Herm Robinson, a veteran Vallejo police officer who was abruptly placed on paid administrative leave for unknown reasons.
The article, published by the Vallejo Times Herald on Tuesday, cited an unnamed source who claimed the agency’s decision to place Robinson on leave was in advance of an impending decision to fire the officer, who has been with the agency for 19 years.
The newspaper said it contacted the Vallejo Police Department for comment, but an agency spokesperson said they could not provide additional information on the matter because of “labor law protections” and other employee privacy rights.
The article went on to cite the VPOA’s statement last week and inferred Robinson’s administrative leave was somehow connected to recent decisions made by at least six Vallejo police officers to depart the city for other law enforcement agencies. That apparently drew the ire of officials at the Vallejo Police Department, who issued their own statement with a strong condemnation of reporters at “several news agencies” who allegedly repeated “misinformation” related to staffing levels and other agency matters. (Other than the newspaper story, Solano NewsNet was unable to find any other recent articles published by local news agencies that contained the VPOA’s statement.)
“We hope our media partners will contact the public information officer…to obtain the official facts and ensure accurate reporting in the future,” the statement said.
Those “official facts,” according to the police department, is that officers “leave agencies for a variety of reasons,” not simply because of a tough work environment. And this particular agency is subject to a strenuous set of reforms and other measures following several officer-involved shootings that have led to community distrust, protests and sizable settlements over the last few years.
As for the staffing shortages, the Vallejo Police Department didn’t dispute their agency has seen a constriction in recent years. In fact, officials within the department have expressed similar concerns about the shrinking number of police officers committed to the city. But officials with the police department said they’re doing as much as they can to increase staffing levels: Last year, it hired two more recruiters to “attract a diverse group of peace officers with unique backgrounds and skills.”
Those efforts have started to pay off: The police department said it added six new officers last year and hired another two who started just this month.
In addition to those hirings, the agency said it re-assigned officers to more solo beats, which “[yields] greater visibility and more officers in patrol cars in our neighborhoods.” In other words, instead of assigning two officers to a patrol car, officers patrol neighborhoods by themselves. This allows for the agency to deploy more police cars. The number of police vehicles on Vallejo’s streets is supposed to have a deterring effect on crime there.
In terms of actual crime deterrence, the agency doesn’t have much to show for its efforts: Last October, the Vallejo City Council declared a public state of emergency after the police chief reported the city had experienced a 300 percent increase in criminal offenses.
The VPOA criticized the declaration at the time, saying it would do nothing to solve the city’s rising crime rate. Two weeks later, the union filed a legal challenge seeking to overturn the declaration, claiming it was unlawful because it did not address an immediate emergency in the city. A judge refused the union’s request.
Vallejo ended the year with 28 homicides, just two murders short of a record set in 1994.
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