Petaluma Police Chief Addresses Crime Response, Officer Shortages

PETALUMA, CA — In a statement from the Petaluma Police Department, Chief of Police Ken Savano discusses staff shortages, officer response times and online crime reporting.

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From Ken Savano, Chief of Police:

We wanted to address some of the comments specific to our current response policies to certain property crimes.

In 2018, due to staffing levels, we had to unfortunately makes some significant changes to our response to specific crimes. At that time we announced those changes in the Nixle message found here.

While these reductions in services were difficult and not consistent with our public service model, they were necessary to ensure timely response to more serious and higher priority calls for service. Some of those changes shifted certain crime reports that would have previously generated an officer response to online crime reporting.

Crimes such as thefts with no identifiable evidence or suspect leads were one such crime type referred to online crime reporting.

While we continue to work to provide the highest level of public safety customer service to our community, we continue to face significant staffing challenges since the recession when we lost 15 police officer positions.

The reduction in staffing, along with a 95-percent increase in emergency calls for service, has resulted in delayed response times and almost no available time for officers to proactively patrol neighborhoods and business areas to prevent crime and apprehend criminals before crime occurs.

In the current model, we are reactive to crime and traffic issues instead of being proactive in efforts to increase public safety in the City.

Our reduction in service levels is directly related to our lack of available resources to be able to respond differently. We currently have 15 fully trained police officer positions that are not filled, which equals an entire platoon that provides 24/7 coverage on one side of the week.

These shortages create significant overtime and impact our ability to staff properly for routine calls for service, let alone for special events and planned demonstrations.

We are diligently working to maintain our staffing levels and are also working to increase the number of Community Service Officers (CSO) who would assist in responding to these types of investigations.

We remain committed to serving and protecting our community to the best of our ability with the resources we have. We realize that the long-term solution to police staffing issues requires new revenues sources for the City.

To ensure that we provide the proper response to crime reports we would ask reporting parties to inform our dispatchers if there is any suspect information, possible surveillance footage in the area, identifiable evidence, or fingerprints visible.

We understand the frustration this must cause, especially if you have been a victim of a property crime in our City.

Thank you for your understanding in these challenging times. We look forward to restoring all of the services our community has enjoyed and deserves in the near future.

Thank you, - Ken Savano, Chief of Police

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