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The Pleasanton Police Department recently updated the City Council on last year’s crime rates, staffing and internal operations – and while most of the news was positive, topics such as de-escalation, emergency response time and even immigration arrests became prominent discussion points.
Every year, the PPD staff routinely check in with the council to provide updates on these key areas. The last update was in early December.
PPD was set to provide its latest update in May, but the item was continued to June 3 due to crowded meetings last month.
Since then, first-year Police Chief Tracy Avelar said there have been some developments including the retirement of two officers, which has left two vacancies, and the retirement of a captain.
“We are recruiting for one of those based on the current budget discussions,” Avelar said in regard to the officer vacancies.
Staffing at the PPD has been an ongoing issue for the past few years.
“I know since I worked there that more than 50% of the staff has turned over in the last four and a half years, which is significant,” Councilmember Craig Eicher, a retired PPD captain. “That is a significant impact to an organization and it requires a tremendous amount of relearning by all the new staff to get (them) to a higher level.”
According to Avelar, there are seven sworn officers on medical leave and that the city isn’t as focused on recruitment as intently as before. She said PPD anticipates the percentage of deployable sworn officers for the second quarter of 2025 to be 91% given the three officers in the field training program and the four officers who are in or are about to start the police academy.
The city’s current percentage of deployable officers is 80%, Avelar said.
Apart from Eicher’s point of the department being able to maintain its crime clearance rates, which are crimes that have been solved, Avelar said that with more staffing coming into the department, more officers are also able to be proactive with self-initiated stops rather than reacting to calls.
Avelar said before 2024, self-initiated stops by officers were decreasing due to staffing challenges.
Regarding crime data, the numbers were too different from the PPD’s biannual update last December. Rape cases did jump up from four to six in 2024, but it is still lower than the 20 cases that were listed in 2023.
There was also one homicide listed in 2024, which was less than the three reported in 2023.
But according to the police chief, the main takeaway is similar to the last update: crimes committed against people — assaults, homicide — is down 10% compared to previous years. She also said property crime — burglary, arson, stolen vehicles — is down 15%.
However, Avelar said robberies continue to show an increase in the PPD’s data, which were mainly attributed to retail theft.
She said the PPD is also continuing to focus its efforts on crime prevention through the addition of a crime prevention officer, a crime analyst and the use of technology.
The police chief briefly touched on the department’s use-of-force data — the department used force during 87 incidents from 2021 to 2024. The most common use of force was control holds, which a PPD captain later clarified meant when officers had to forcibly hold someone after the suspect began resisting.
Avelar and PPD Capt. Kurt Schlehuber also spent some time responding to questions about de-escalation in which Schlehuber said people should look at the tactic as a noun rather than a verb and that people need to want to also de-escalate situations. Even though it is required by state law, the two PPD leaders said communication and the desire for de-escalation are important in order to actually achieve desired results.
On the topic of de-escalation, Pleasanton resident Todd Nelson brought up recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests that have been making national headlines and even local news after a Livermore man was arrested by the federal agency while he was reporting to an immigration office in San Francisco last month.
Nelson pointed out one of the city’s policies regarding requesting assistance with ICE and asked PPD if they could get involved in de-escalating instances with ICE agents pulling up in unmarked vans and not wearing uniforms while drawing weapons in the community.
Councilmember Julie Testa also mentioned the Livermore man who was arrested and asked Avelar what role the PPD has if community members begin alleging that they are being taken by these non-uniformed agents.
Avelar said she believes all ICE agents are uniformed — even though they typically do wear civilian clothing — and that the only real advice she has is for residents to call PPD if they see any incidents that might show people who are pretending to be federal agents, which she said is a real concern for her.
“It’s my understanding that any sort of enforcement will not be in anything but a uniform,” Avelar said. “So if there were men jumping out in camouflage and guns and masks I would call the police and just ensure that they are actually who they say they are.”
For Mayor Jack Balch, one of his main concerns circled back to what he typically brings up during these PPD updates — emergency response time.
According to Avelar, the PPD’s average response time to emergencies is five minutes and 16 seconds while its response time to non-emergencies is 19 minutes and 34 seconds, which is lower than what it used to be in previous years.
Avelar further explained how the data largely focused on priority one calls and not priority three calls, the latter of which are the calls that require police vehicle lights and sirens. She said that affects the response times because priority one calls — and even to an extent the other higher priority calls — require officers to follow traffic laws as much as possible.
“If we’re talking about only code three response situations — lights and sirens — which in these numbers we are not, we would have a different response time average,” Avelar said.
Balch brought up the city’s policy regarding response time goal of four minutes and agreed with City Manager Gerry Beaudin’s comment of updating the policy in the near future. Balch said his main concern was to find a way to reconcile the response time and get a community understanding of what the times should be moving forward.
“A four-minute response time in 2005 may not be appropriate in 2025 with 20,000 more people,” Avelar said.
Avelar also went over the success of the city’s alternate response unit, which responded to a total of 1,268 calls in 2024. She said with the addition of a new officer to the unit, it continues to provide significant help and outreach to those in need.
For personnel investigations, Avelar said there were a total of 19 last year — seven of those complaints were sustained while the rest were not. Three cases are also currently pending.
Avelar noted that there seems to be a lot of complaints because citizens who might not have all of the evidence or information such as body camera footage submit more complaints and she added that one person in particular submitted the bulk of complaints. However, she said she has not found any organizational issues causing these complaints.
