Salinas Police Department restructuring to manage Measure G funds

The Salinas Police Department said it will undergo a restructuring process to make sure Measure G funding and other revenue sources are spent effectively.

Measure G is a one-cent sales tax passed in November by Salinas voters.

On Wednesday, Chief Kelly McMillin sent an open letter to all department staff, explaining the reasoning behind these changes. That letter was shared with NewsChannel 5 below:

Subject: Police Department Rebuild

Dear Colleagues,

At the risk of stating the obvious, SPD has been functioning at unacceptable staffing levels since the onset of the Great Recession. These staffing challenges have most adversely affected patrol, but has bled over to virtually every other unit in the form of order-ins and backfills. I cannot thank you all enough for the ongoing sacrifices you have made to keep SPD afloat.

We have spent two long days here at our Team Building Workshop trying to map our way to the future in light of Measure G funding and a new Police building on the horizon; still, it has been nearly impossible to consider the future knowing our staffing situation continues to deteriorate.

It became apparent that our “old” PD structure could not sustain the addition of new personnel, and that the only way to begin thinking about how to move the Department forward would be to solve the patrol staffing issue permanently. We concluded that the basic, core services any police agency must provide is patrol and investigations, and that any other service provided beyond that, however important, is provided at the expense of these two units.

In order to build the Salinas Police Department of the future, to be good stewards of the generous funding the people of Salinas saw fit to provide for us, we now understand that we must flatten the organization to provide us a clear horizon, a “clean slate” on which to build for the future.

We will accomplish this by eliminating all special assignment positions in the Police Department effective July 1, 2015. All personnel will be returned to patrol, with the exception of a few who will be reassigned to Personnel and Training. We anticipate that 19 Officers and four Sergeants will be returning to patrol. This reallocation of personnel will effectively eliminate the structural personnel deficit in patrol and should eliminate the order-ins and holdovers you have all suffered for so long.

With additional personnel in P&T we will accelerate our hiring processes and, as we begin adding personnel we so desperately need, we will begin to re-establish special units in a way that best serves the City. Some of the old units will come back, some may not. New units may be created that serve us better than those they replace, some may be modified, but there will be no sacred cows.

In the short term this means we will be able to provide superior patrol services, the kind the people we serve expect and deserve. In the longer term this means you will all have a voice in the future of the PD, and how to best assign the new personnel we will gain with Measure G funding.

This is arguably the largest structural change SPD has ever undertaken, and I know there will be many, many questions and a great deal of anxiety over these changes. There will be questions about who will do the work our current special units handle now, how personnel will be allocated in consideration of seniority and assignment, what happens with premium pay, how a return to patrol from special units affects one’s ability to return to a special unit…the list goes on and on. We have formed a working group of staff and line personnel to address these questions, and they will begin the task of designing the transition as soon as Team Building ends. The working group will consist of DCs Gerhardstein and Perez, Services Administrator Burnham, Commanders Cooper and Groves and Sergeants Robinson and Lazzarini. Two representatives from the SPOA will also be invited to attend.

In the meantime, I ask you to do a few things:

1: Don’t panic. This is a temporary fix that will benefit all of us with a massive reduction in overtime and the stress on you and your families that overtime causes.

2: Write your questions down and save them for the working group. Very little is set in stone and we know we cannot possibly consider all the ramifications of this change, so your input will be vital.

3: Understand that this is not punitive in any way, but merely a recognition that we must operate from a firm foundation, the foundation of Patrol and Investigations, and that we will build on that.

I will meet with as many of you as I can as soon as we return, but wanted to get this out to you so you can start thinking about your questions and concerns. There is 100% support for this idea among staff and we are sure the pros far outweigh the cons. I am sure you will feel the same way once you think it through.

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for your commitment to our Department.

Kelly

NewsChannel 5 will have more information on this story.