SANTA ANA CITY COUNCILMAN JOSE SOLORIO ISSUES STATEMENT REGARDING HIGH NUMBER OF VIOLENT SHOOTINGS ON JANUARY 14-15, 2017
He Calls for Immediate Filling of Vacant Positions in Santa Ana Police Department, Development of Comprehensive Gang Prevention, Intervention & Suppression Strategy
Between the evening of January 14, 2017 and early morning of January 15, 2017, there were at least six reported shootings in Santa Ana. The Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) is reporting that the incidents resulted in six victims being wounded, and that the incidents are likely to be gang related.
“That night was an unprecedented violent night in Santa Ana. At least six victims – and by extension their families – were hurt, and the perpetuators of those crimes remain at large. A sad night indeed.
At this same time, due in part to wanting to create the appearance of a strong City budget, 95 positions in the SAPD remain vacant. They remain vacant even though the positions are budgeted and authorized. They were essentially promised to the voters, but purposefully not being filled.
Also, the size of the City’s gang unit, community-oriented police program, and staffing for neighborhood patrol cops are all operating at levels lower than previous years.
The time is now for the City of Santa Ana to immediately address its known gang problem, involving approximately 86 gangs and 3,000 individual gang members, by staffing up the police department.
The time is for now for the City of Santa Ana to develop and implement a new comprehensive program involving evidence-based gang prevention, intervention and suppression strategies. Prevention strategies focused on youth and young adults should include an increase of City parks and recreation programs, summer job and internship programs, as well as new City-School partnerships.
And I believe the time is now for Open Data on crime statistics, accountability and change in the SAPD. Just too many violent crimes under the status quo (e.g., nearly 400 more violent crimes in 2015 compared to 2014 according to the most recent FBI Crime Report, an increase of more than 50% in the homicide rate in 2016 compared to 2015 according to the SAPD’s most recent report, and an increase of more than 300% in shootings in 2016 compared to 2013 according to the SAPD’s most recent report, etc.) in a community that should wait no longer. There is no more time for empty words, or biased charts justifying the status quo. It’s time for smart, bold and decisive action in Santa Ana.”
You want to get your staffing up, Increase the cops pay. Make it attractive for other officers to come to Santa Ana. Officer’s who are already trained. I read somewhere that it takes about 2 1/2 years from the application process to hire and train one officer off the street, where it takes about a year for a lateral. How many officer’s has SAPD lost to other agencies? He wants to get more people to come and work in Santa Ana, then make it more attractive. It’s not the Chief’s fault, I put more blame on the council then the Chief. They all can’t get on the same page. According to this article, they want to hire 95 officers to fill current vacancies, what about future? Why not hire 120 officers? You know people are going to be retiring this year and next year too. They city should be proactive not reactive when it comes to hiring. Aren’t we in the “black” now?!
Santa Ana is now an Excessive, Gang, Drug, Murder Infested City, I have friends that refuse to come into Santa Ana and I don’t blame them! We need more Policemen and a Bad Mad Chief of Police to clean this city up! All that ridiculous excess amount of money that was used to pay Cavasos, should have been used to secure this city, instead. He is no dummy, he lives outside of Santa Ana! Thank you, Jose Solorio, for addressing what needed to be addressed.
In fact, lateral transfers are the only way to solve this shortage of officers. If we try to rely on recruiting new, green, officers to be our only solution to this issue, there is not a resident currently residing in Santa Ana that will still be alive when and if we ever catch up.
In the mid 1970’s we took the bull by the horns, established a hiring program, recruiting almost exclusively lateral transfers and in one year, added approximately 100 new officers to our department going from about 250 sworn officers up to approximately 350. In addition, we removed sworn officers from many jobs that could just as weel be done by non sworn “PSO’s”. Through this method, we were able to put even more sworn officers on our streets.
Over the ensuing 40 plus years, our Police Department has been allowed wither away to only a shadow of the mid 70’September. While the total number of officers is still in the low 300’s, it is important to realize that today’s population is roughly three times what was then. In that time frame, we have gone from a town to mid 100,000 population to we’ll over the mid 300,000’September and we now have fewer officers on the street than we had then.
The point of this is that it is not time to think about a solution, it is in fact time to think we’ll out of the box, get off our butts as a city and solve this issue now.
No more kicking the can down the road by the Council. It is your job set policy so set it and if the staff that we presently is not up to the task, kick their butt’s out and hire some that are.
David Brandt, former Member of the City Council