During Swing's biannual update to the council, some of the pieces of information that stuck out to several of the council members regarding personnel matters was the seven officer vacancies and the "anticipated attrition of up to 30 officer positions within the next two years," that Swing mentioned.
But even as the department continues to lose officers — such as two who left for other agencies recently — Swing said they are working toward an ambitious goal of being fully staffed by June of 2025.
He explained that the department has been working on recruitment efforts through its Police Academy in Pleasanton, but even with that he said the main issue continues to be the competitive hiring market.
"It's a very competitive marketplace for police officers today, which is why we've interviewed 110 and hired 10," Swing said. "It's competitive to find officers and it's competitive to find qualified candidates that can successfully pass a police hiring process."
Although the department continues to deal with personnel matters, some of the other aspects of the chief's update were positive as he highlighted PPD's 93% clearance rate of violent crimes.
"Overall, the violent crime rate was down, and if you look at the highlighted row of robbery, there were 18 robberies reported in Pleasanton in 2022," Swing said. "You look at the prior years, we were in the 50s, in the 40s and so forth."
And while he added that the department is still working on hitting its 30% clearance rate goal for overall cases, he is proud of his team for the rate on violent crime cases being solved.
"That's meaningful to me, it's meaningful to the men and women in our department because we know that we're making a difference in people's lives," Swing said. "That's something that is really impactful and that we're very passionate about because we know that is making a difference."
Swing also presented crime statistics that showed increases in things like property crime, which was up about 15% from 2021; traffic volume and collisions, which increased about 20% over last year; and catalytic converter thefts continuing to be a problem throughout the region.
Vice Mayor Jack Balch had asked Swing to provide some sort of advice for residents that could help stop catalytic converter thefts. Swing said that apart from parking in well lit areas and trying to secure the catalytic converter, there's not much anyone can do.
"There are a lot of guns out on the street right now being used in crimes and people are being shot at for trying to confront somebody stealing a catalytic converter," Swing said. "What I would say is, it's property. At the end of the day, people can buy a new catalytic converter."
Balch also echoed another worry that was initially brought up by Councilmember Valerie Arkin regarding the non-emergency response times.
According to the report, the average emergency response time in 2022 was 4 minutes 19 seconds — non-emergency response time averaged 23 minutes 03 seconds.
The city's established police response time goals are 4 minutes for emergencies and 20 minutes for non-emergency calls for service. Compared to 2020, emergency response time was 3 minutes and 43 seconds and non emergency response time was 18 minutes and 35 seconds.
While members of the council didn't have much to say about the emergency response times, they were worried about the latter. Swing said there was not much he could do given that a lot of his patrol teams are running at minimum staffing.
Another point that Arkin brought up was that she wanted to see more data in the future regarding drug offenses — particularly on opioids such as methamphetamine and fentanyl, which Swing said PPD sees on a regular basis in Pleasanton, although not as much as other cities.
"(Out of) 6,843 opioid deaths in California, 5,722 are fentanyl," Arkin said, stating data from a California Department of Public Health report from 2021. "It's a real problem in our state. That's almost 80% of the total opioid deaths. Just in the 15- to 19-age group there were 224 deaths in 2021, just related to fentanyl. So it is definitely an issue."
The last main highlight was regarding the amount of 5150 or 5585 involuntary holds in both the city and at the school district.
The number of involuntary, 72-hour holds, dropped significantly in the school district to nine over 2022 compared to the average of four per month in 2015 to 2019 timeframe. In regards to the city overall, the department saw a 50% reduction of those holds —
from 371 in 2021 to 186 in 2022.
"I know that it's a priority of you as the council. It's a priority of me as a chief and of all of our officers to do what we can to limit the number of 5150 or psychiatric commitments, and I'm very proud of my team and very proud of our SROs (school resource officers)," Swing said.
He also mentioned that with clinicians having joined the Alternate Response Unit in January, he hopes that number goes down even more.
In other business:
* Bryan Godbe, president of Godbe Research, presented the results of a police department community survey which showed that, while the majority of Pleasanton residents, business owners and visitors feel safe and trust the PPD, there is still some work to be done regarding younger people.
The survey, according to Godbe, was conducted from Jan. 24 through Jan. 31 via email, text and phone. He said 818 residents, 127 business owners or managers and 115 visitors to the city completed the survey.
The visitors, he said, were from Danville, Dublin Livermore and San Ramon who have visited the city in the last five years.
"I'm super proud and not surprised by these results," said PPD Capt. Kurt Schlehuber. "This is years upon years of building a strong culture with the men and women that serve this community in your police department."
But even with over 90% of the respondents saying that they feel safe in Pleasanton and over 80% of residents saying that they trust the department, one of the key takeaways from the presentation was that younger people do not trust the department as much.
According to the report, 54.3% of this demographic felt the department was trustworthy.
"What we're seeing in other cities as well is that older residents, who are more familiar with the police department, have higher levels of trust than younger residents," Godbe said. "Not that there's a problem there, but it does highlight a communication need to reach out to the younger residents and help gain that trust."
Schlehuber said this was an area that PPD can work on doing more outreach to build that trust.
* PPD Lt. Reginaldo "Roy" Gamez and Capt. Larry Cox presented the department's annual military equipment use report, which included information on the amount of times certain equipment was used and why the department says it continues to need certain tools.
Assembly Bill 481, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2021, requires police departments in California to keep a running list of what is defined as military equipment for oversight by local governing bodies.
Military equipment, as defined by the bill, does not necessarily indicate equipment used by the military. Items deemed by the bill to be "military equipment" include robotic vehicles, armored rescue vehicles, tear gas, less-than-lethal weapons such as beanbag shotguns, 40-millimeter projectiles and noise/flash diversionary devices.
The Pleasanton City Council approved an ordinance last year that continued allowing the city's police department to use military or specialized equipment for regular and promotional use, such as with the Armored Rescue Vehicle (ARV).
According to Gamez, the ARV was utilized a total of 11 times last year.
Other equipment that he touched on were diversionary devices that were utilized twice; drones or robots, which were used 14 times; less lethal launchers, which were utilized twice; less lethal shotguns, which were used twice; and rifles, which were used once.
Gamez highlighted an incident where the ARV was deployed to a local gas station to respond to an individual who was passed out in his car with a loaded gun in plain sight.
"The individual was not complying with commands; he wasn't responding to any commands over the PA. So the ARV was deployed in that incident with the PA and was given multiple commands," he said. "However, still with the PA there, he was not responsive. So the officers utilized the less lethal shotgun to break out the rear window, which got the person's attention. Fortunately, that was a peaceful resolution and the person went to jail for various gun charges and narcotic charges."
The council accepted and renewed the military equipment policy to have the department coincide with state law. As part of that renewed policy report, PPD also had to include its future planned requests for new equipment.
The department intends on purchasing 13 Daniel Defense model MK18 rifles as general replacement for rifles currently in use, two Penn Arms 40 millimeter multi-shot launchers and 40 millimeter impact sponge baton munitions, according to the report.
Councilmember Jeff Nibert, along with Arkin, asked PPD about their practices on assessing their equipment and determining what items to get rid of or which to retain.
"We constantly evaluate the equipment that we have," Cox said after Gamez pointed out a wall breaching item that the department is working on removing from its equipment list.
"Some of these pieces of equipment, honestly, we hope to never use," Cox added. "We hope we have it for extreme circumstances and that we don't need it until we really need it, but we need to be highly trained on those pieces of equipment for when a really bad situation takes place."
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