The Recipe for A Fully Staffed  Department 
with High Morale

by ALADS Board of Directors
The recent comments by SDPD Chief Shelly Zimmerman acknowledging the critical issue of pay and benefits in retaining and attracting officers are spot on. Her comments to her City Council as to why there has been a continual loss of officers applies not only to San Diego's understaffed department but understaffed agencies such as our Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.  This is an issue we highlighted in a previous blog .  
 
Likewise, the Chief's comments regarding the difficult atmosphere for law enforcement and the subsequent decline in active policing were also highlighted recently by the FBI.  In an important report titled "Assailant Study - Mindsets and Behaviors" regarding the killing of police officers, the FBI noted that "Departments - and individual officers - have increasingly made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing."
 
This "de-policing" as the FBI termed it , in face of lack of community support and prosecution or calls for prosecution without waiting for all the facts is also no surprise to readers of the ALADS blogs .  As we have commented before , there is a connection between the second guessing of law enforcement and the decline in arrests in the face of an increasing crime rate.  
 
Next, you can add in criminal justice "reform" efforts like AB 109 and Prop 47 .  AB 109 dumps state prison inmates into county jails to serve shorter sentences, then essentially abolishes parole and replaces it with meaningless 10-day " flash incarcerations ."  If that wasn't enough to embolden criminals, Prop 47 gives them a free pass to  commit property and drug crimes  by making them inconsequential misdemeanors.  A population of criminals emboldened by these "reforms" only exacerbates the crime problem.
 
Crime rates decrease when departments are fully staffed, well trained and supported by a community and leadership that waits for facts to be known before issuing judgments on high profile incidents and those who are convicted of crimes face real consequences.
 
The comments of Chief Zimmerman and the FBI in the past few days reinforce those truisms.

The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS) is the collective bargaining agent representing more than 7,900 deputy sheriffs and district attorney investigators working in Los Angeles County.  Like our Facebook page www.facebook.com/aladsonline 

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