- Staffing and retention are at a critical point. Nearly half the department now commutes from higher-paying regions, and about a dozen officers in a
department of fewer than fifty are preparing to leave. These are highly
trained, experienced, and tenured personnel, not new hires,
representing a major loss of institutional knowledge.
- Recent labor negotiations have been mishandled. The
police bargaining group has faced canceled meetings, net-zero raise
offers, and sudden reversals in the city's negotiation priorities. This
contradicts the City Manager and City Council’s earlier public
commitment to raise public safety salaries to the seventy-fifth
percentile, despite their subsequent offer falling dramatically
short.
- Minimum staffing is already affecting service. Most shifts
are running at minimum levels (one supervisor and three officers)
instead of the appropriate four to five officers plus a supervisor. At
least four retirements are expected soon, and combined with anticipated
departures, this will worsen service levels and increase overtime for
already overworked officers, and lead to reassigning/ freezing
positions such as the school resource officer, community services
officer, detectives, etc. Minimum staffing leads to fewer officers
available to respond to emergencies, investigate cases, etc. One
domestic violence call requires at least two officers, for example,
sometimes more. Very quickly, our resources become overwhelmed when we
have multiple dynamic calls at once.
- Losing officers will drastically increase costs. Training
a new officer costs upward of $200k, an expense the city has largely
avoided due to the police department's positive reputation that has
attracted lateral officers over the last few years. Without competitive
compensation, the city will be forced to hire lower-quality candidates,
thereby lowering the quality of productivity, investigations, and
overall service to our residents. It also creates a revolving door,
where the city continually spends money training officers who quickly
leave for better-paying agencies.
- City spending priorities raise concerns. Despite
claims of limited funds, the city recently approved or pursued items
such as a spur-of-the-moment $25k floor purchase for the city employee
Christmas party, "executive suite" renovations at City Hall, an
increase in the City Manager’s salary from $320k to $380k and several
hundred thousand dollars annually for illegal dumping initiatives every
year, among other expenditures.
- Measure G funding is not being used as voters intended. Measure
G clearly lists maintaining neighborhood police patrols as a priority.
According to the city’s own website, the last allocation toward police
salaries was only to avoid cuts in the 2020-2021 period, despite major
development projects and increased service demands over the last
several years.
We
need help from the residents of San Bruno to express to the City
Council that they do not want to lose their police department. San
Bruno is facing a public-safety crisis that can no longer be ignored.
While our officers are being asked to do more with fewer resources
(staffing has remained the same since the 1980s, but expectations are
astronomically different), the city has completely put fair
compensation on the back burner. Rather than addressing urgent
policing/ public safety needs, promises made to the community—such as
those under Measure G—have not been fulfilled, creating a growing gap
between what residents were told and what is actually happening. Our
goal is simple: to ensure San Bruno remains a safe, stable, and
well-protected community.
We are
quickly approaching the point of no return – we do not want to see our
police department collapse due to a severe lack of compensation that
will lead to even higher costs in hiring and training new employees
versus keeping the highly trained and experienced men and women we have
now. The city is on track to create a revolving door where new officers
are hired and immediately leave after passing their training, like
other cities, which directly leads to increased overtime and hiring
costs. At the same time, the quality of policing and investigations
falls dramatically, OR even at a higher financial cost and cost of
tailored service, contracting with the Sheriff’s Office or another
police department.
We
have a unique group of men and women that work here that love working
for and providing some of the best police service around to the
residents of San Bruno. None of us wants to leave; however, many might be pushed out due to the state of affairs. I hope some of this information helps the cause
Riechel
Reports - Events
- City
of San Bruno CA and of Interest to San Bruno Residents