Even our Sheriff says our local law enforcement is inadequate
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors met today to consider the county budget for the upcoming fiscal year. In a nutshell, things look grim because of some changes in federal and state laws and funding arrangements. County Department Heads were instructed to cut, slice, dice and pare expenses from their departmental budgets. They were given opportunities today to make presentations to the Supervisors about how they would do that and what doing so would mean for their departments. The Supervisors, kindly souls that they are, had focused the budget cuts on not filling vacancies in the departments, rather than laying people off. Our Newsroom Elves were in the room to gather receipts.
The Couty's budget lady started off with a detailed PowerPoint presentation, a VERY DETAILED PowerPoint presentation. It went on for almost two hours - 'way down in the weeds - all to make the points that, yes, the county's funds are constrained in many ways and there is very little discretion in what the Supervisors can do with the revenues. As a result, she said, spending has to be reduced or the future will be very grim. Later in the day Supervisor Hume summed things up by saying the County was circling the drain.
After a brief presentation by the head of the In-Home Support Services chief saying she was OK with the budget proposals, it was time for other departments to speak up.
The first Department Head up was DA Thien Ho, fresh from his unsuccesful try at running for Congress. He said he needed, really needed, to not have his department's budget cut because he typically hires recent law school graduates for cheap and then, if they pass the bar, he has to use "vacancies" to pay them lawyer-level salaries or they will go work somewhere else. On reflection, our Newsroom Elves thought that those are the kinds of things that usually get worked out in staff meetings with the Budget Shop, rather than in front of the public. Ah, but our DA was elected and today's meeting was his soapbox opportunity. Would the situation have been the same if the DA wasn't an elected county officer?
Next up was Sheriff Cooper, another elected soapboxer. He brought along a bunch of high-level staff people. There were also Sheriff's people seated in the audience and a whole bunch of Sheriff's people - armed to the teeth - standing in the back of the room. There Supervisors' chambers were thus perhaps the safest place for anyone to be within Sacramento County, except maybe the Supervisors themselves, who were peppered with facts from the Sheriff and his peeps about how his Department does the best it can, but it isn't good enough and would get worse if the Department had to make budget cuts. The Newsroom Elves thought it was a pretty cool performance, especially because each Supervisor responded enthusiastically about how important public safety is and how grateful they were that the Sheriff and his peeps were on the job.
Let's take a moment to look at the Sheriff's data, focusing on "Field Services", your basic cop-on-the-beat stuff that doesn't involving running the jail or working under contract to, say, the court system. "Field Services" is who you call when some bad guy shows up at your door or in your face. Priority 1 calls are for the nastiest of crimes: home invasion in progress, kidnapping in progress, assault with a deadly weapon, shots fired - that kind of stuff. In fiscal year 24/25, the average response time for Priority 1 calls was {drum roll} 14 minutes, 21 seconds! Good luck with that, victims, because other jurisdictions tend to respond in 6 minutes, 1.8 seconds. The Supervisors asked if the comparisons were fair. Our Newsroom Elves doubt the victims care about that. People want to be safe, to not become victims. The Sheriff said response times will get worse if the budget cuts are made.
He then said the cuts would result in elimination of his community response programs: Problem-oriented Policing (POP), Homeless Outreach (HOT), Gang Suppression, ID Theft and Marine Enforcement Details (water safety). He talked about how effective those programs were and said the cuts would wipe them out. Check out his PowerPoint slides:
Then the Sheriff talked about his department being understaffed. It wasn't a pretty picture. Sacramento County's unincorporated areas are far below average in terms of officers per 10,000 people and officers per territory covered. A study by the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC) found that California has nearly half the rate of officers per 1,000 residents as the national average of 3.5. Sheriff Cooper told the Supervisors today that his Department has less than .8 officers per 1,000 residents, a figure that would decrease to .725 if the budget cuts were imposed. He added that Sacramento County's large size puts the number of officers per square mile at less than .5, a number the budget cuts would drop to .44. While you might think that's pretty bad, the comparable numbers for incorporated cities are far better. Both the cities of Galt and Sacramento have nearly 1.4 officers per 1,000. The Sacramento Police Department has .77 officers per square mile. The PORAC study also reported that each additional law enforcement officer results in 1.3 fewer violent crimes and 4.2 fewer property crimes per year. Staffing levels, it said, are the strongest predictor of call response times. Which is to say, having more officers means shorter response times to emergency calls.
So, basically, we have to give credit to Sheriff Cooper. Our readers may have noticed that, from time to time, we mention that Supervisor Desmond says "The County is not up to the job" of providing municipal services. We congratulate him for being honest about that. Now comes our Sheriff with actual data showing that law enforcement is much better in incorporated municipalities. If you are someone concerned about local crime, that's a pretty strong argument for cityhood, isn't it? Maybe you have heard us talk about that, but now here is our Sheriff with actual data. Our Newsroom Elves were kind of encouraged to see him present those facts and to hear both Supervisors Desmond and Rodriguez chime in supportively.
The presentations asked a lot of the attendees in terms of time, patience and comfort. So it was something of a relief to have the final three presentations go smoothly and efficiently. Presentations by the heads of the Public Defenders Office, Regional Parks and Human Services showed that those departments were being responsive to the budget situation and were seeking innovative solutions in the form of partnerships, efficiencies and increased revenues. By the time they were done, our Newsroom Elves were completely worn out. So they left. Keep in mind, though, that not every department was considered today and the budget adoption process still has a long way to go. There are uncertainties about the state budget and its trailer bills and some possibilities that grants or other revenues are yet to come. In other words, stay tuned. The rest of the story about the County's nearly $9B budget remains to be told. In the meantime, though, do feel free to email Supervisor Desmond with your thoughts.