With staff stretched thin, Stockton Police to stop responding to some calls for service
The Stockton Police Department will no longer dispatch officers to many of the calls it receives reporting hit-and-runs, reckless driving, non-burglary property crimes and other non-emergency incidents, according to an internal department order obtained by The Record.
The two-page order, addressed from Police Chief Stanley McFadden to all department staff and dated July 5, instructs staff to significantly reduce the number and type of calls to which they send an officer to investigate in-person.
The date on the order is one day before a public statement by the department on July 6, instructing residents to report certain crimes — including reckless driving and vehicle burglary — to the police non-emergency line or on the city's online form.
But the public statement did not make it clear that — with few exceptions — the department will no longer dispatch an officer to investigate those reports.
'No longer respond to reports of reckless driving'
The new, scaled-back approach is spelled out in the internal order, however: “In an attempt to reduce the volume of calls Officers and (Community Service Officers) are dispatched to, the Department has reassessed the types of calls we currently respond to.”
Police will “no longer respond to reports of reckless driving,” the order states, with the exception of prolonged incidents such as street races or sideshows.
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Police will stop responding to hit-and-run calls if the caller can't provide any information pointing to a suspect, the order says.
And police will no longer respond to property or financial crimes that have no suspect information, with the exception of home and business burglaries, the order states.
That means many incidents that have long plagued Stockton residents and businesses, but often don't pose an immediate safety threat — such as retail theft, vehicle theft and vandalism — could go unanswered.
Also on the list of calls that won't get a response are animal-control reports — unless they’re about a vicious animal — and calls by parents or others for police assistance with unruly teenagers, unless a violent crime or active threat occurs, according to the order.
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The order appears to codify what many Stockton residents already know from experience: that certain calls to police don't get a prompt response, or any response at all.
"Some of these conversations are hard to have," Omer Edhah, a department spokesman, said in a phone call Tuesday. "But we are all about transparency, and our chief is all about that."
"We do the best we can to get out there and address these things," Edhah said.
'We are stretched thin'
The decision to scale back call responses represents the latest effort by department leaders to triage the tidal wave of calls that come in from across Stockton each day, while working with a skeleton-crew staff, a memo from McFadden addressed to City Manager Harry Black, Mayor Kevin Lincoln and the city council shows.
“We have a great number of dedicated, passionate, honorable yet exhausted employees,” McFadden wrote in the June 27 memo, reviewed by The Record.
“We are stretched thin, however, the one thing that we can’t take away from is our emergency response.”
As of June 27, the department had 364 officers — 121 fewer than the 485 officers it has budgeted for, according to the memo. The number is just 33 more officers than the department had in 2012, when Stockton declared bankruptcy, the memo states.
“Based on current trends, calls for service will continue to increase and aggressively outpace the addition of new officers,” McFadden wrote in the memo.
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The department is using multiple strategies to try to close that gap: it established a full-time recruiting team, streamlined the hiring process and added additional opportunities for potential recruits to take the Police Officer Trainee test, according to the July 6 statement.
But as the department struggles to rebuild its staff, some calls will remain unanswered.
Regarding the memo and order reviewed by The Record, Edhah said in an email, "I don't have a comment on the July 5th document nor the 27th document or anything referring to them in particular as they were not to be released."
Emergency protocol
To ensure emergency calls are still covered, the department uses a strategy called “Condition Blue.”
When 12 or more pending calls are high-priority — such as calls about shootings or potentially life-threatening crimes like battery — lower-priority calls won’t be put on the list to receive an officer response, according to the July 5 order.
Instead, the department will focus all efforts on answering priority calls. During Condition Blue, patrol officers may be dispatched to emergency calls outside their assigned areas, the order states.
The order also advises call-takers to tell residents if the department simply can't spare an officer to send.
"Citizens reporting incidents (that are lower-priority) calls for service should be advised ... that we are currently in Condition Blue and that we will not be able to respond."
Record reporter Aaron Leathley covers public safety. She can be reached at aleathley@recordnet.com or on Twitter @LeathleyAaron. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.
This article originally appeared on The Record: Overstretched Stockton Police to stop responding to some service calls
