While coping with city-wide budget cuts, a host of injured
officers and a history of understaffing, the Hollister Police
Department is operating with staffing levels almost 50 percent
under the national average for local law enforcement agencies.
While coping with city-wide budget cuts, a host of injured officers and a history of understaffing, the Hollister Police Department is operating with staffing levels almost 50 percent under the national average for local law enforcement agencies.
The state Peace Officer Standards and Training organization recommends cities have 1.5 officers for every 1,000 people. The Hollister Police Department is operating at about .8 officers per 1,000 people, according to Police Chief Jeff Miller.
With a population of approximately 37,000 people, Hollister would need about 50 sworn police officers to meet the standard, Miller said. The police department has 32 sworn officers, including Miller, two captains and six officers on the injured list, the chief said.
“While we’ve never maintained 1.5, we’ve never been as critical as .8,” Miller said.
To cover the lack in officers, the police department is asking the city for a $300,000 overtime budget and has over back log of about 1,000 cases in the detective’s bureau.
While it is difficult to say definitively whether fewer officers correlates directly to increased crime in Hollister, it does mean the department has trouble preventing crimes, conducting full investigations and responding to every call that comes in, Miller said.
“We’re not catching as many bad guys and they’re free to do more crimes…. Criminals are slipping through the cracks,” he said. “And a lack in officers directly impacts our ability to address the two biggest issues – gangs and traffic.”
By comparison, the Gilroy Police Department has almost double the staffing that Hollister does, with 60 sworn officers – about 1.3 officers per 1,000 people, Gilroy Crime Analyst Phyllis Ward said.
“Typically we like to keep it at 1.5… but that’s close,” she said.
Gilroy has an average of six officers patrolling the streets at one time, Ward said, while Hollister’s average is three.
Last year the Hollister police department recorded two homicides and 14 rapes, Miller said. By comparison, the Gilroy Police Department recorded one homicide and 14 rapes in a city with almost 10,000 more people, according to Ward. In 2003 Hollister, saw 171 aggravated assaults and 296 burglaries. Gilroy’s aggravated assaults were slightly higher at 212, but had 72 fewer burglaries, Ward said.
A lack in police officers not only creates problems for a community that has to contend with an increase in crime, but also increases the risk for officer safety when responding to an incident, Miller said.
The incident at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital Tuesday afternoon, where an armed man inside the hospital attempted to goad police into shooting him is a good example, Miller said.
Because the incident occurred during a shift change, six officers responded to the scene. At a different time of day, however, there could have been only two officers and a sergeant responding to a potentially fatal situation, Miller said.
“If it had been one hour earlier there wouldn’t have been additional officers to respond from the swing shift,” he said. “It could have been bad – we were very fortunate it didn’t end up like that.”
Besides officer and public safety, the police department’s lack of personnel creates staffing issues for the department’s records bureau, crime prevention programs, training programs and parking enforcement, Miller said.
“There’s so many things and officers are spread thin,” he said. “But I want to stress that, in Hollister, if you call 911 with an emergency situation, the police will respond.”
Erin Musgrave can be reached at 637-5566, ext. 336 or at
em*******@fr***********.com
.
