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Nichelini Speaks
7/27/10--The recent policy implementation of two Vallejo police officers per patrol car has been the source of some discussion and confusion. Is this really a needed safety measure? or merely an implementation of further “Pay or Die” tactics by Vallejo Police designed to reduce the number of patrols? Of course Vallejo's police would like to see citizens vote for a tax increase that will support their services and the raises promised them in the current contract. This fact gives rise to all sorts of suspicions as to motivations etc.
Rather than jump to conclusions VIB contributor Bob Schussel went to the source. Below is a brief exchange between Vallejo Police Chief Nichelini and Schussel (published with permission) that will hopefully give the reader some insight and allow them to better draw their own conclusions.
Marc Garman—Editor VIB
To Robert Nichelini--Police Chief
According to my calculations it would take about 42 officers to have 10 officers per shift for patrol work.Is this correct ?
My other question is what number of officers would you need on a shift to have them go out by themselves rather than putting two per car ?
thanks
To Bob Schussel from Chief Nichelini
Its not quite that simple. First of all when we had 158 officers, we were 40 officers short if [sic] what is needed for Vallejo - compare to Berkeley or Richmond.
A general rule of thumb is that it takes 5 officers to fill one 24 hour per day, 7 day per week position. That number can be found in most books on police administration. But that number assumes everyone shows up and no one is sick, injured, on vacation, in court, etc. So the actual number of officers needed to have 10 officers per shift is 60. But we don't staff like that. We try to have more officers on duty when the need is the greatest. At one time we were able to deploy from 14 to 18 officers during the busiest times at night and on the weekends. When supervisors were added we got by fairly well with a total Patrol compliment of 71 officers of all ranks. The total staff assigned to Patrol is now only 59 (and dropping). Generally, police departments put 50% of the total sworn staff in patrol: In Vallejo 65% of the sworn staff is assigned to Patrol and that number will increase further as more officers leave for other departments (at least 4 this month).
But that's only part of the picture. We were able to get by with only 71 patrol officers because backup was provided by other field officers - especially school resource, traffic, crime suppression and detectives. With major cuts in those functions (Traffic from 13 officers to 5, Crime Suppression from 12 officers to 6, Detectives from 11 to 6 and School Resource from 6 to 0) we no longer have any reasonable level of patrol backup. Captain Jackson and I had to cover the arrest of two robbery suspects because no one else was available.
So, until we get the Department back to at least 110 officers, one-officer cars are just too dangerous. How would you like to come upon a gun battle in progress (like on Springs Road last Saturday) by yourself and not be able to get any help or help was too far away.
Also, don't forget that we have an enormous workload - over 70,000 911 calls, compared to 17,000 for Vacaville. Our violent crime workload is twice that of Fairfield.
The direct answer to your question is we need 19 more officers before we can go back to one-officer cars. We will be at 91 by the middle of August, 19 short of the 110 minimum. The reason for the change from one-officer to two-officer cars now is that in addition to decreasing staff, we no longer have any overtime to back fill for absences. Just about all overtime goes to pay for court appearances
No one would try to police a city like Vallejo with less than 1 officer per 1,000 population. That means for us, minimum staffing is 120 to maintain any reasonable service level.
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