Two California cities have made the decision over the past week to essentially fire all their police officers and contract with other agencies.
One city, Maywood, went as far as to fire all their city workers and contract them out, according to Publicceo.com. You can also read about it at Publicceo.com.
And the city of San Carlos, in the Silicon Valley, recently made a move (4-1 by the Council) to contract out its police force. The move will eliminate the jobs of 32 officers and save the city $2.5 million a year, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
The City of Santa Ana has quietly outsourced a lot of jobs over the past two years, because of our own budget crisis. But no one at City Hall wants to consider outsourcing our police department to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. But it makes a lot of sense. We are critically shorthanded in our police department.
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Maywood had lots of problems with lawsuits against their police department. They pretty much could no afford the lawsuits so they fired everyone and outsourced. Santa Ana is not in that situation. If the city of SA outsourced its police that would be the dumbest move for our council members. Why not reduce the salaries of our police officers first? Why not just out source the fire department? Why don’t we outsource our court system? We could have “Patrol One” security officers policing our streets and when there’s actually a gang uproar they can find a pay phone and call the actual police. It will save money! There’s nothing like calling “Patrol One” when your house is being broken into.
Trex,
Are you saying that O.C. Sheriff’s Deputies cannot do the same job as the SAPD? Seriously?
If our city can save money and put more uniformed cops on the street by contracting with the Sheriff’s Dept., then we ought to look at that option.
As for security guards, they have their place in the scheme of things. They are being used in the Downtown area to great effect.
Art, the problem is, you can’t put more cops on the street for less money with the Sheriff’s Department. It’s just not possible. You might be able to put the same amount of green uniforms on the street as blue ones but contracting with the Sheriff is only marginally cheaper. The only way it could work – really work is to put the entire county under one policing agency. There’s no need for multiple police departments within the same county and much of the rest of industrialized world uses national or regional police forces so why can’t we? Imagine being able to spread the full cost of policing for Orange County across 3 million people and the tremendous cost savings you could realize by pooling and consolidating all those resources. It would certainly be big boon to the smaller towns. Don’t forget, OCFA already services approximately 1.3 million Orange County residents.
Hector,
A countywide police department? That sounds good to me! Makes a lot of sense.
That said, how do we know there would be no cost savings in contracting the Sheriff’s Department here in Santa Ana? Shouldn’t our city leaders at least look into it?
Why don’t we just police the streets with the military? I mean that would be cheap too right? Get ride of SAPD and the sheriffs department and just put military on the streets. Wouldn’t that be fun to see armored vehicles patrolling the streets of SA.
Art, I was just saying that if you really want policing to be cheap then hire “Patrol One” security guards. So when you actually have a disturbance Patrol One can bust in and pepper spray intruders.
Our city leaders haven’t made the best decisions. There is a small majority being represented in this city. A few businesses men have their hands in the pot and control Santa Ana. Real Santa Ana residents are not in control of the city.
Also contracting will probably end up costing us more in the long run. I don’t know how but a change like this will be abused. The short term gains will not outweigh the longer term loses. If it ends up costing more what will be the cost to put SAPD together again? If crime goes up because of this, how much will it cost to put a local police department back together? Once we choose to go one way, its sometimes more costly to go back. In almost all cases it will end up costing us more.
The economy is bad, but why should the police suffer? We need police. Cut teacher salaries. Cut the libraries. Cut street sweeping to once a month.
Trex,
How do you know? Can you quantify that? I don’t think so.
Compare our crime figures to those in the OCSD’s service areas. They are doing just fine. Us? Not so good.
Cutting our social services is what led to this mess in the first place. Cities that focus only on cops and not on libraries and schools pay the price in the long run. That is where we are now.
As Francisco pointed out, the cops are eating up most of our budget. Do you think we are getting an appropriate return on our dollar?
If we can save money by contracting out then we need to look at that option.
Hey Art,
Dan seems to make it seem that the ball is back in your court. Is that true? How about a post from you answering this.
http://www.theliberaloc.com/2010/06/30/what-blog-war/
If we as O.J. readers want to give money to help with your legal defense is there a way to do it? Do you have a web site or fund set up for that purpose? Let us know what we can do.
Based on a quick read of the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report – the Audited Financial statements) for the City of Santa Ana as of end of June 30th, 2009, the Police Dept is by FAR the dept with the GREATEST expenses.
Police dept Expenses increased by about $13 million from $112 million (in 2008) to $125 million (in 2009).
please see greater details at page 22, and the GRAPH for comparison to other expenses at page 23.
http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/finance/cafr/documents/2009_cafr.pdf#page=18
Francisco J. Barragan
Santa Ana, CA