Increasing Patrol Staffing in Neighborhoods

By Bret Daniels

My philosophy of Community Policing begins with police in your community; something sorely missing from the department.

By comparison, as a City Councilmember and the Mayor of Citrus Heights, I made sure we put out an adequate number of officers by deploying about 60 officers in just our 14 square mile city.

As pointed out in the recently released audit of the Sheriff's Department, the department is very top heavy. I will increase patrol staffing by reclassifying many of the more than 100 lieutenants and captains in the department (and save about $25,000 with each reclassification), eliminating many of the more than 450 take-home cars (these are not patrol cars), and civilianizing many of the positions currently filled by highly paid and overly qualified officers.

Despite having a recruiting division, the Sheriff's Department only hired eleven officers between October 2005 and April 2006, while having nearly 150 vacancies.

You deserve to see an officer in your neighborhood each day and I will work to make sure you do.