Santa Ana’s police officers have had enough of their Police Chief, Carlos Rojas. They requested a vote of no confidence during the Oct. 8 meeting of the city’s police officers association, according to the Voice of OC.
Rojas claims to not know why his police officers are upset – which underscores how out of touch he is.
One of the big reasons the local police officers are unhappy is the chronic understaffing at the SAPD. The Voice of OC also reports that the officers “are also upset over what they call overzealous attempts at holding them accountable for misconduct.”
We are not fans of Rojas – it bothers us that he became our Chief of Police with zero executive experience (besides being a temp Chief here in Santa Ana for two years). But we hope the police union is not mad about the investigation into the behavior of the cops who raided a medical marijuana dispensary a few months ago and while wrecking it apparently stopped to eat the pot edibles. Those cops should all be fired!
Gang violence in our city is out of control – and our City Manager, David Cavazos, seems to only care about getting paid huge bonuses and snuggling up with city employees.
The City Council is also asleep at the wheel. We really need to clean house at City Hall.
The pot raid incident has nothing to do with this. The problem started a long time ago as he is out of touch with the officers that work patrol way understaffed…He said that he only has 100 officers in the patrol division,,,well in part because he keeps taking officers away from it to special details like the useless pot dispensary team, computers services etc…..SAPD used to be 400 strong back in the early 90s, but the city council froze hiring to “save money”…..and now they are way behind ( it takes along time to put an officer out there…..(hiring process can take several months, academy is 6 months,,,field training is like 4 months)….But the sapd still have 260+ officers,,so why not put more of them out in patrol where the need is critical to the community when it comes to response time? Last year Rojas told officers at a roll call that LEADERSHIP was not his responsibility, and if that officers were not happy they could leave…And they did,,,to Anaheim PD and the DA;s office……SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good info. Thanks!
right on!!
So they are unhappy in part because they don’t want to be held accountable for the abuses they commit, that’s funny.
“.. we hope the police union is not mad about the investigation into the behavior of the cops who raided a medical marijuana dispensary a few months ago and while wrecking it apparently stopped to eat the pot edibles.”
Ya think????? The SAPOA and the individual officers involved are suing the City.
The police understaffing in Santa Ana issue is not only eroding public safety, it also impacts officer safety and job satisfaction (causing experienced officers to leave the department). Combine this with the fact that over 50% of their time is spent on calls involving the hundreds of homeless/drug addicted/mentally-ill who are now catered to by the City Council and City Manager. I agree that we need to clean house, but Chief Rojas is not the problem. We need a new City Council and new City Manager that will stop spending money to help the homeless. (They need to leave homeless assistance to the churches and charities and let them use their own property, not city property to feed and attract them from all over the US). The City needs to focus its spending on public safety and needs to restore the number of police necessary to keep our quality of life at a decent level. In 2010 Santa Ana had 353 sworn officer. In 2012, it dropped to 319. Now, in 2015, it is down to 247 (as of 11/3/15). The City Council and City Manager should provide the funds necessary to hire more officers and get rid of the homeless by putting an end to the illegal feeding. These are the two most urgent issues with the City of Santa Ana which affect the quality of life for its citizens and businesses. Dear Editor: Get on board with these issues if you want to help our city!!!
You make some great points..!!! The city council decided to save money by not hiring sufficient officers for a long time. They thought that less officers could handle the same work load plus community policing while pocketing money. They can have all the money needed for hiring now but they are way behind. You just can’t hire someone and have them out there the next week. From the time an officer starts the process and is finally ready to be on his/her own it might be a year and half or more later. By then officers that reach retirement age will retire instead of staying a couple of extra years…And Rojas is part of the problem trust me. If you work in bad conditions, you want a boss that recognizes your hardships and the situation at hand.