Vallejo considers declaring state of emergency on police staffing

VALLEJO – The city of Vallejo will seek to allow City Manager Mike Malone to “take all necessary actions to address the emergency” of a depleted Vallejo Police Department that cannot adequately respond to calls at its meeting Tuesday.

Following up on a presentation by interim police Chief Jason Ta in March, Ta told the council in a written recommendation that he has nearly taken all the steps he can to keep Vallejo police officers patrolling the streets.

Ta said the department has already sought to stop responding to alarm calls and collapsed the traffic and detective divisions. Next, Ta wrote that he will make patrol shifts 12-hour shifts or another staffing model.

Ta wrote that as last week, there are 34 officers assigned to patrol, not including supervisors.

In March, Ta said that a next step could be to seek help from the Solano County Sheriff’s Office to shore up the staffing in the agency.

Ta said the situation was grim. He said that 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.

Things have only deteriorated since then, with five officers leaving for other agencies since March, according to Ta.

Many residents of Vallejo have voiced frustration at a lack of police response. Local business owners have said that they struggle to get police to respond at all after burglaries. A veterinarian said that she would leave town after she was attacked by a client, a dispatcher hung up on her, and an officer shrugged off her complaint.

Solano Sheriff's deputies responded to a call a year ago after Vallejo police did not respond for two hours, which resulted in a deputy shooting and killing Jason Thompson.

The Vallejo Police Officers Association, which has complained bitterly about the staffing shortage, criticized the city in a statement Monday for not including the union in discussions about the staffing emergency.

“It is unconscionable that the Vallejo City Council would attempt to change working conditions for Vallejo police officers by unlawfully declaring a local emergency,” the VPOA said in a statement. “The councilmembers’ refusal to engage in meaningful and productive labor negotiations with the VPOA has reached a point from which we may never recover.”

The council is also scheduled to discuss contract negotiations with the VPOA – which have been going on for the last 15 months – in a closed session meeting prior to its regular meeting Tuesday.

The VPOA complained that it only learned of the emergency declaration from the city’s website when the meeting agenda was posted.

The VPOA has also been holding up the city’s efforts to reform the police department. It submitted a grievance in 2021 to block the city’s attempt to hire an interim police auditor, which the city never did, and negotiations with the union over an ordinance that would establish a police oversight commission have gone on for seven months.

The council meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Council Chambers at 555 Santa Clara St. Members of the Public can participate in-person or remotely via Zoom or phone at (669) 900-6833.