By Ray Wood
As the president for the Hollister Police Officer’s Association,
I felt it was necessary to address the misinformation being
expressed in recent letters to the editor dealing with the
Hollister Police Department and the financial problems plaguing the
city.
As the president for the Hollister Police Officer’s Association, I felt it was necessary to address the misinformation being expressed in recent letters to the editor dealing with the Hollister Police Department and the financial problems plaguing the city.
Our officers are upset at the reduction in services that were recently adopted by the city.
However, we know that due to budget cuts; we do not have the resources to provide the level of service that the citizens of Hollister deserve.
We know the recent spike in burglaries is due to truant youth as well as the drug users looking for a quick buck for another hit of meth.
The police department does not have enough personnel to patrol the streets adequately. The officers working are responding from call to call instead of driving through neighborhoods looking for suspicious persons.
Most people have heard we are understaffed by four officers. The fact is that the police department is understaffed by more than 30 officers, according the recommended 1.5 officers per 1,000 population. That means we should have more than 58 officers and we currently have 12 patrol officers. The four officers mentioned are only the vacant positions that the city has budgeted for and it doesn’t count all of the positions that were cut in recent years.
Some citizens have also called on the city manager to make changes to the police department’s administration.
The Hollister Police Department strives to be more professional, innovative and accountable to the citizens.
Chief Jeff Miller shares the commitment and has led the department very well considering the hard times we are currently in. His leadership has brought us very far where others would have failed. Chief Miller is part of the solution not part of the problem. We are lucky to have him as the head of the department.
Recent letters to the editor have also mentioned several officers that have left Hollister Police Department to go to the sheriff’s office. The letters mention they left because of bad morale at the police department. The morale at the Hollister Police Department might be low but it has more to do with the working conditions (understaffed) rather than our leadership.
For years the police officers have been asked to do more with less resources. It’s no wonder why officers would want to go to another agency that does less than half the work. For instance, the Hollister Police Department documented 4,700 reports during 2006. The sheriff’s office documented only 1,917 during the same period.
Some people ask why the city doesn’t contract with the sheriff’s office for police services. In actuality, the trend in California is for cities to go back to or start up their own police departments (i.e. Elk Grove, West Sacramento, Citrus Heights). The cities have realized that contracting with an outside agency does not make sense when the costs are negligible.
Having our own police department also gives the city council the authority to decide how the agency will be run.
Once you contract with an elected official (the sheriff) you can only suggest what you want enforced.
For instance, right now if the city council asked the police chief for some extra patrol in a certain neighborhood or some extra attention to a particular problem, the chief would meet with them, advise them what the department can do and then put the plan into action.
If the sheriff is posed with the same problem, he could simply tell them that isn’t in the budget and refuse to do anything else. There would be nothing the city council could do about it. Contracting with the sheriff’s office would reduce the services, the quality of services and the accountability that the citizens of Hollister deserve.
We understand that the citizens of Hollister are unhappy with the police services in Hollister.
Hollister’s police officers are unhappy with it as well. We would like to do more but we lack the resources to do more. We need more personnel and we need the resources to attract more officers to our city.
Hollister police officers are currently making less salary than the local sheriff’s deputies and are making thousands less than agencies within commuting distances from Hollister.
No doubt we are in hard times but the Hollister Police Officer’s Association is committed, along with the City of Hollister, to finding a resolution to these problems.
We want to give the citizens of Hollister the level of protection and service that they deserve.
Ray Wood is a sergeant with the Hollister Police Department and is president of the Hollister Police Officer’s Association.
