September 5, 2022

Dear Community Members,
 
I just wanted to take a moment to call out the amazing work of the Police Department over the last few weeks. Both were great examples of our Police Department’s commitment to their foundational ‘pillars of policing’, namely ‘relentlessness in the pursuit of justice for our community’.
 
In the first example, the Police Department had investigated six residential burglaries where the suspect had entered into attached garages of homes, while the homeowners were sleeping and stole their property. Clear to say, these types of incidents are potentially very dangerous and frightening for our community members. Using the Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR - thank you Council and Community!) the Police Department was able to develop a lead. They followed this lead to the car that still contained stolen property from the Benicia crimes. While the owner of the car was not the suspect, they obtained additional leads that allowed them to locate the suspect in Vallejo. After a brief chase and crash, he was captured.
 
In the second example, we had a sideshow on August 26th. Sideshows are “illegal gatherings in which groups of drivers take over intersections, city streets, stretches of busy freeways and/or parking lots to do tricks with their cars, including burnouts and doughnuts”. These sideshows are dangerous and terrorize communities. They are also very difficult to enforce. Generally speaking, the outcome is usually they get chased off to go to their next target location. Now I know I’ve seen a lot of comments about how our Police Department should have just arrested them, blocked them in, towed all of their cars, etc. Unfortunately, that’s just not generally an option. A typical shift here is 2-3 officers at night. Covering the entire City. When a sideshow breaks out, one car might be close, several some 10 minutes or so away. Assuming they coordinate their response exactly right, they still couldn’t shut down all of the arteries to the intersection. If they held back (allowing the sideshow to continue) and called for mutual aid, that response could take more than half an hour (Vallejo, our closest agency, has serious staffing issues). Assume somehow we could block them in on all sides. You would then face a hostile crowd with a history of assaulting police, damaging police cars, etc. Without a large number of officers to go in and affect arrests, your officers and cars are just targets for violence, which might very well end up escalating to a serious police use of force, potentially even a lethal use of force. The idea that these groups would just sit idly by and line up for their arrests and citations is just simply not realistic. That said, our Police Department takes this VERY seriously. And so, we used technology, time and our relentlessness to investigate every lead and ultimately we were able to seize two cars. I’m sure many departments would have been content to simply move them along. Not in Benicia. Our officers believe in, and are supported in, being relentless in the pursuit of justice for this community.
 
I would like to thank Council and the Community for their support of the Police Department’s initiatives to improve their technology. This has helped them achieve their vision and make this community a safer place.

If you are not already following the Benicia Police Department on Facebook, I encourage you to do so, as it is a great source of information. You may find their Facebook page here.

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Erik Upson
City Manager