The cuts were made so that we can still maintain our response to calls for service. That staffing level for answering calls for service is a commitment to what the core responsibility of a police dept. Aston the helicopter, Sac unfortunately has substantially higher crime and more violent crime than Davis or Folsom... Is it that bad in Sac...we are number two in violent and property crime in CA

That is an interesting question..."when is too much?" I would rather argue the fact that we took the matter very seriously and took every precaution possible then have to explain if a gun man actually was in the garage and shot an officer or a passing pedestrian. As an officer I would willingly run into a building with a gunman shooting at innocent people but if I have the advantage to tactically go in and take time to give every option a try, given no immediate threat to human life, then I chose to take the extra time to end things as peacefully as possible. It is this patience and thoroughness that our officers display in these critical incidents that help incidents end with all parties as safe as possible. While people were watching SWAT officers surround he parking structure they did not get to see officers behind the scenes investigating other locations the suspect could be if he had made it out of the structure. These officers eventually located the suspect in the 3200 block of Serra where he was taken into custody without incident and the realistic looking pellet rifle was located. There is a cost to keep our community safe...this week alone our SWAT team has had four call outs. So the answer to the question of "when is too much?" is never when it comes to protecting the community's safety.

Update: when the press release was sent we only had 10 of our 12 in custody. Yesterday we were able to find the last two female teenagers involved. This was a tragic killing and unfortunately youth violence continue to rise. We are actively trying to reach our kids with programs such as Cease Fire. Cease Fire targets gang involved youths with enforcment, community based organizations, churches, and businesses to offer youths alternatives to the gang life.

Thank you Ed for your comments. Sacramento Police is way understaffed for a city our size with the crime rate we have but because the community has great officers and innovative managers we still respond quickly to violent crimes like domestic violence calls. You can't have 1.4 officers per 1000 population and expect report calls and other non violent crimes to get addressed as quickly as we all would like. In town is the Deputy Chief of Dallas and they have 2.6 officers per 1000 population and he thought they were understaffed. A protest situation involving large numbers of people surrounding a group of protesters prepared to get arrested can escalate quickly. Through many civil disobedience experiences both locally and throughout the nation, police have learned that if you don't have adequate numbers during civil disobedience things can become violent quickly. In the end our response resulted in the protesters being escorted off the street and processed for citations (except for the organizer who was taken to jail) without issues. I would rather have a large presence to keep the peace than to have fewer officers and lose control of a situation.

We are working with Council Member Kevin McCarty's office they are actually the one doing all the leg work to see if it is feasible and we will provide the staffing necessary to complete a event like gun buy back program. Most of the grant money we got was for technology upgrades and staffing increases. I don't know exactly how much of our budget is directed to the various programs but Sac Pal is a non-profit and does not receive funding from the department but I did eat my share of pancakes to help the cause.

Answers to some of the questions: Mark Johnston- We are working with Sacramento Police Activities League (Sac PAL) to offer youth programs and they just had a pancake breakfast fundraiser. Please take a look at their website at www.sacpal.com to help them out. We also are active in area youths with our Magnet School Programs, Youth Advisory Committee, and School Resource Officers. Gun turn in day is still being worked on but we need to find donations to be able to offer incentives for turning in guns. Rich E.- I think it is important to have a balanced budget and a handle on crime at the same time. The 30 bodies will really just maintain our staffing levels where they currently are since we will lose officers over the course of the three years to retirement and other reasons. We did lost 85 officers positions that we have kept vacant to balance the police reduced budget. What is important is that Council and Mayor recognized the need to plan ahead to keep staffing levels since it is a long process before you have a functioning officer on the street. Steve V- The Police Dept prepared earlier into the economic downturn by reducing costs and looking for saving where we could by stopping most of the overtime where possible, applying for more grants, eliminating certain units in investigations, reducing sizes of certain specialty units, and salary concessions made by the union. William B- Most cities comparable do have larger police officers per 1000 population. It is important to look at other Capitol cities since we need more staffing for things like large protests. Other cities fund through general funds too but some add Public Safety Taxes. Unfortunately, even during properous times our department has been understaffed for years. The positive is that we have very professional and dedicated officers who have worked long hours to make the most with our staffing levels. Every City has a different economic make up which provides a different tax and income base.

The title of your article is very misleading and not fair to all the men and women of the Sacramento Police Department. Your whole article refers to an incident in Sacramento County not in the City of Sacramento. Your article has some valid points of notifying law enforcement that someone may have a mental issue however, if someone is violent regardless of mental issues, alcohol, drugs, or other issues then the Officer must protect any victims and themselves. Officers always try to resolve conflicts non-violently but the unfortunate part of the job is that sometimes through the best of efforts it is not possible. Even the best of trained mental health professionals will at times call the police on a mental ill patient who is acting out violently.

If a person is booked into jail they are being charged with a crime. The mental state may be noted in the medical clearance that a nurse gives but is not separately recorded on any individualized form. Many stats would be nice to track for a variety of reasons and we do track a lot of data but not every data can nor is tracked.

Fox 40 did a piece that was not balanced on cops and weight. They asked for all the height and weight of our officers for the police department and the sheriff's department. They then used the body mass index to decide whether officers were obese or not. The body mass index does not account for muscle mass. For instance, I am 5'4", 165 lb...I am certainly not in the shape I was at age 21 but I would not say I am even close to obese. In addition, the data provided to Fox 40 is based on what is on our ID cards which is only renewed every 5 years so the data was not even current. Fox 40 did not even get the info right on getting paid to workout. Our officers will start in July to get 2 hours a week on duty work out time but Fox 40 made it appear that we had been getting paid all this time to workout and we still weren't in shape. Fox 40 did say only 13% of those officers they received data from were out of shape but once again that is not accurate as we have many officers who lift weights and have hight muscle mass which makes them in a BMI level that appears on paper as being out of shape. What Fox40 failed to report is that officers are just like everyone else in society who based on genetics, shift work, poor eating habits, stress, injuries etc do get overweight at times but we also have a lot of officers who participate in marathons, avid bicyclists, and running groups. The majority of our work force are in great shape. Of course we have a few officers out of shape but that's one of the reasons when we gave up our raise due to budget issues that we fought for on duty work out time starting in July. Many officers like myself work 60 plus hour weeks, find it difficult with 10 hour shifts and family obligations to fit in workouts. With two hours of on duty workout we hope that more officers will be able to get back into a constant routine of working out. For many years officers have been taking a basic physical agility test but many officers have argued and we now will finally have some time to workout which is fair given that the community has an expectation that we stay in shape. The entire piece that Fox40 did was based on a foot pursuit that an officer got into and lost the suspect. A witness stated the officer should have caught him. The factors Fox 40 and the witness did not consider was that an officer runs with a full duty belt that adds weight, has boots on not tennis shoes, is taught to slow down to clear corners, fences, and clear the car prior to running past the suspect vehicle which all slows down an officer chasing a suspect. By the way a gun magazine was found in the car so the officer has to slow his pursuilt a bit so he is not caught rounding a corner only to be shot by the suspect. As far as comments regarding physical standards...those officers chosing to workout on duty will be taking a yearly physical agility test still. Our department encourages participation in various 5k fun runs and we always have a good showing for the CIM marathon. Just last year we had a 2 hours training on healthier eating and you will find the gyms at our police facilities utilized by a good amount of people. Hope the info helps to clarify some of the quesitons posed.

The cameras will be visible to the public and our hope is that they will be a deterrent to crime. In addition, the cameras will allow for images of suspects from crimes which will give us investigative leads and result in taking more bad people off the streets.

I think keeping your elected leaders aware that the community wants and values more police officers is important. Unfortuantely right now we are all aware that there is no money in the budget for more officers. The officers that work for this police department are here because they love working in this city and for this agency amd as such we have been doing a lot of great police work despite being understaffed. We are currently 98 officers down from our full staffing and even when fully staffed at 804 officers we are lowest per capita compared to other Capital cities with similar population. We appreciate your continued support.

I would caution that pepper spray does not work on everyone so the most important thing to do after spraying an attacker is to run and begin yelling for help. Don't assume pepper spray will disable an attacker everytime. Nothing is more important than to be aware of your surroundings and try to walk with another person if possible.

You are right we are understaffed as a police agency and even more so considering that we are the Capitol of a very large state with events such as large protests. We were understaffed even when we were fully staffed at 804 officers. We are currently down 98 officer position and around 114 civilian jobs that include CSO, Dispatchers, and Records staff. The camera's are a good way to be a force multiplyer and will alllow us to better manage large events and natural disasters. The camera's are not a substitute for officers on the street since you still need them to respond when something is seen on surveillance camera's but it will be of assistance. Thanks for the support.

Hello, this is Sergeant Norm Leong. There are alot of questions so let me start with Dan's questions. 1. We do not have the technical specs yet since the bidding process still needs to be done on the camera's. We intend for the camera's to be able to be moved to various locations within the city as needed based on crime trends or special events. 2. The cost for the system will be paid off from the grant. The main costs after that will be maintenance and the staffing to adjust and move the camera's as necessary. The main costs of these systems is really the storage place for the information rather than the camera's themselves. 3. The 32 surveillance camera's will probably not have audio but we will see based on the camera's we get. The mobile trailers may but I am not positive. Response to John Boyer: There are investments that we do need to make in education, family, after school programs, parks and rec etc...that are important to keep people ever from entering the criminal justice system. Response to Ryan Sharp: 1) The video will be fed to storage, but officers will be able to get real time feed of the camera's as they respond somewhere or if there is a need such as the surveillance of a narcotics transaction by someone we are investigating. The camera's are also being used for critical incidents, natural disasters, large events so they will be monitored during those times also. 2) The video will be considered evidence if a crime has been reported and we go back and locate something that will be necessary for court or if we are actively monitoring and capture evidence of a crime that will be needed for court later. 3) Don't know yet how granular video storage will be since we have to bid still for the system that we will use. 4) I was not part of the discussion with ACLU but we have digitally covered up private residences that our current cameras would record. 5) Public spaces being streets, businesses, sidewalks, open strip malls, etc...the law defines open places vs. what is private...your driveway could be private or public depending on how much you do to keep it private ( a wall, a fence, does the mailman have access, does ups driver have access..etc...) We digitally obscure private residences before the recording based on where the camera can capture images. 6) identity recognition is not a part of the current system we are looking at and has not been discussed as an option right now. 7) The cameras really shouldn't be zooming in close enough for that information to be captured unless we are manually zooming in for an investigative purpose like trying to see if you have a gun in your waistband.

We do not generate running statistic on whether criminals are from outlying areas in the region but if we had to the data is in our system.

Dave, bicyclist are not allowed to ride on the sidewalk or on K street. I realize it sometimes feels scary to ride on the road but that is the law. Also to clarify on the article a bicyclists must have a light visible at night from 300' and a bike must have some form of a brake (hand brake or pedal brake). If you need more info on bike lights required look under california vehicle code 21201 (d).

Thank you for the question. Horses are still used for a variety of reasons still in 2009. While officers are on horses they are higher up and can see a further distance. They are used for riot or protest situations and are a force enhancer. They have the same mobility and many of the advantages that bike officers are afforded. They are a good community relations tool for the out of town guests that visit old sacramento, convention center, and K St mall.

Mona, the Police Department normally does not dispatch on a vandalism call unless it is in progress. You can also call if it is a neighbor dispute and characterize it as an in progress dispute. You should however file an online report by going to www.sacpd.org. Make sure you list the witness' contact information.

Hello, I am Sergeant Leong with Sac Police. The old methods of reporting are still in place and the new text tipping is not necessarily more secure but another option for reporting crime tips.