The day after police applied for highly competitive federal
grant money to hire seven new officers, a man was shot and killed
in downtown Gilroy, improving the city’s chances of getting
financial help.
The day after police applied for highly competitive federal grant money to hire seven new officers, a man was shot and killed in downtown Gilroy, improving the city’s chances of getting financial help.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced last month it will dole out $1 billion to law enforcement agencies nationwide starting this summer. The money comes from President Obama’s mammoth economic stimulus plan and is intended to add 5,500 sworn officers to a body of about 730,000 sworn personnel already employed by state and local departments across the country, according to a 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, the latest year for which data was available. The Gilroy Police Department is one of 17,876 agencies eligible to apply for the Community Oriented Policing Hiring Recovery Program Grant, but the odds stretch beyond simple arithmetic and incorporate local socio-economic factors and Gilroy’s crime rate, which shot up Tuesday night with the city’s fourth murder in 13 months.
“If we can add these officers to our schools and traffic and patrol operations, then we’ll have more time on the streets to actually solve problems,” Gilroy Police Chief Denise Turner said Monday. “This money is perfect for us to try and get back up to normal staffing levels” after layoffs earlier this year sacked a handful of supporting officer positions and other non-sworn personnel.
Chasing the grant
Turner has asked for a $2.8 million chunk of the national pie to partially pay for two traffic cops, a school resources officer at the new high school, a drug education police officer and three patrol cops. That would bump Gilroy up to 65 sworn officers, but after the federal money runs out June 30, 2013, the grant’s conditions still require that agencies retain the newly hired officers for at least one more year unless Gilroy repays the grant or can prove excessive financial hardship. The council voted 6-1 April 6 to allow the application, with Councilwoman Cat Tucker voting no, but the body also agreed to vote for final approval at a later date when the council can discuss in detail how to deal with the new officers’ costs after the grant money runs out.
To help the city with the potential resource and drug officers, the Gilroy Unified School District voted earlier this month to pledge $165,000 between 2012 and 2014, according to Turner. Taken together, the seven officers could cost $5,000 to $470,000 a year above what is provided by the annual grant money, which means Gilroy could end up paying nearly $1.1 million to cover the difference through 2014. But the city expects to raise nearly all of that back through the traffic cops, who Turner estimates could generate nearly $870,000 in ticket fines by June 30, 2014. Plus, she said, salary savings from an unfilled officer position will also offset costs, making the city’s total potential expenditures throughout the next four years only $53,000.
That’s a modest price for seven additional officers, Turner said, but in case the council had felt otherwise, she also suggested two other staffing scenarios: hiring six officers – two school, two traffic, one patrol officer and a captain – saving the city $119,355 by 2014, or hiring seven officers – two school, three traffic, one patrol officer and a captain – saving the city $380,000. Turner prefers the first option because it’s reasonable and puts more uniforms on the streets, she said.
“Community policing and corrective policing are very helpful, but right now officers are going from call to call to call, and there’s no time to do productive policing,” she said.
To get a sense of the department’s proactive actions – such as officers cruising neighborhoods and contacting residents in an effort prevent rather than react to crime – Turner relied on data from officers who reported what percentage of their shifts they spent doing such work. Law enforcement experts recommend a 45 percent ration of proactive policing, Turner said. See a breakdown of proactive policing by shifts.
Gilroy’s average comes out to about 32 percent, “but we don’t want to use an average,” Turner said as she looked at the numbers that are difficult to generate without the city’s crime analyst, who became a dispatcher after layoffs occurred Jan. 31, leaving behind a part-time analyst position the department has yet to fill.
Cuts hurting department, helping chances
None of the departments 58 sworn officers were laid off earlier this year, but across-the-board cuts removed a Santa Clara County probation officer the city paid since 1998 to register gang members here and know them and their crews by name – a valuable crime prevention technique, Turner said. A public records technician was also let go, and one part-time and two full-time community service officers who dealt with graffiti, animal control and neighborhood issues also received pink slips, leaving the remaining three community service officers to pick up the slack. None of the department’s four multi-service officers, who run arrestees to jail and serve subpoenas, were let go, but budget cuts also assumed the uncertain retirements of three high-ranking sworn officers next year.
Staffing plays a role in how the Feds will allocate money. They will also look at current entry-level salaries and associated benefits costs, which, in Gilroy, means about $138,000 a year for a first-year sworn officer, according to city figures. But perhaps more important are the following factors: the local crime rate, which is hard to pinpoint without a crime analyst, though Turner said it is “on the rise”; how quickly officers respond to the nearly 45,000 calls dispatchers pass on to them each year; declining city revenues; the likelihood of future layoffs; and local unemployment, poverty and foreclosure rates. The latter statistics generally portray Gilroy as more deserving of federal money than, say, Morgan Hill, where police have applied for $2.5 million in grant money to hire five officers, Morgan Hill Police Commander David Swing said.
“The application looked at the community as a whole, as well as the city’s finances,” Swing said. “Comparing Gilroy to Morgan Hill, Gilroy has higher poverty and foreclosure rates, and if you look at those objective indicators, Gilroy probably has a pretty good chance of getting funding, but hopefully Morgan Hill will receive some of that funding, as well.” See a comparison of Gilroy’s socio-economic indicators compared to nearby communities.
Morgan Hill and at least six other agencies throughout the county have applied, according to Turner and Sgt. Jim Gillio. Officials at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., could not be reached Tuesday afternoon to talk about how many applications they had received.
“All of us are out looking for grants because we realize with the downturn in the economy, we’re going to have to be creative to keep staffing up,” Turner said.
The Morgan Hill City Council has laid off five city workers and is still dealing with a $1.1 million deficit this fiscal year. Gilroy is coping with a $3.8 million deficit this fiscal year because of declining sales tax revenue and fee-generating development. Tumbling property values will likely knock $1.1 million off next year’s budget, which was running about $900,000 in the black thanks to layoffs and other cuts before the county assessor delivered the bad property tax news earlier this month. The 2009-2010 fiscal year begins July 1, and both councils will start discussing their budgets in detail soon.
Doing more with less
For a community with a population between 25,000 and 49,999, the average ratio of full-time sworn officers per 1,000 residents is 1.8 officers, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
While Gilroy’s ratio, 1.13, already outshines Morgan Hill and Hollister, every town is different – just look at graffiti incidents, Turner said. Gilroy police logged more than 1,000 tags alone during the first quarter of this year compared to 3,000 during all of 2008.
“Everyone’s noticing what’s going on,” Turner said of the community’s general perception that crime is inching upward.
In addition to the Community Oriented Policing Hiring Recovery Program Grant, Sgt. Kurt Ashley also worked to secure more than $90,000 in stimulus funds for the purchase of equipment and the continuation of DARE anti-drug programming through the next fiscal year that would have otherwise expired June 30 due to budget cuts.
The grant money also came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and it came through the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistant Grant Program. The original grant was for $108,000, but Santa Clara County, as the grant recipient, and San Jose, as the grant manager, together took 17 percent, or $18,510.
Gilroy will spend $20,000 to develop its the electronic filing system that stores videos from police cruisers and another $16,151 for additional surveillance equipment. The rest of the money – plus nearly $33,000 from the school district – will pay for a community service officer who would have otherwise lost her job this June due to layoffs. The officer, who earns a $64,572 salary and an additional $22,596 in benefits, teaches the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or “DARE” program, to fifth graders enrolled in public schools.
Aside from the $1 billion for the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $2.7 billion to the Office of Justice Programs, $225 million to the Office on Violence Against Women, and $10 million to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. President Obama also signed into law the Omnibus Appropriations Act last month, providing additional funding this year for the COPS office to spend on community policing development, Native American services, methamphetamine programs, law enforcement technology, Secure Our Schools, and Child Sexual Predator Elimination, according to the Department of Justice Web site.
Turner is also working on a third grant for programs aimed at reducing violent crime and improving community policing efforts. With one already under her belt, she appeared cautiously optimistic this week, but she said she realized she could be back at the drawing board again this summer.
“We may have to continue doing more with less,” she said.
Proactive policing by the hours
-23.6% – 8 a.m. to noon
-2.9% – Noon to 4 p.m.
-14% – 4 to 8 p.m.
-33% – 8 p.m. to midnight
-63% – Midnight to 4 a.m.
-80% – 4 to 8 a.m.
Source: Gilroy Police Department
Local Economic indicators:
Family poverty rate ($25,790 or below for a family of five)
-9.8% – U.S.
-7.8% – Gilroy
-7.6% – Hollister
-5.3% – Morgan Hill
Source: 2005-07 U.S. Census Bureau estimates
Unemployment, Feb. ’09
-8.5% – U.S.
-14.7% – Gilroy
-17.6% – Hollister
-12.7% – Morgan Hill
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
Officers per 1,000 residents
-1.13 – Gilroy
-0.83 – Hollister
-0.95 – Morgan Hill
Sources: Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister police departments; U.S. Census Bureau estimates
