Thursday, July 9, 2009

Nightmare On My Street

By Beat Cop

Part one of a three part series

Picture this...

You are returning home after a long day at work. While driving down your street you discover your garage door is open. “Hmmm, I must have left it open when I left this morning”, you think to yourself. This self talk provides a few moments of comfort as you pull in the driveway.

Scanning the front of the house, you notice the side gate is open. This is not getting any better. A quick phone call to your spouse confirms nobody has been home all day. You walk into the garage and notice the door leading into the house is partially open. Reality sets in. Someone has broken into your home...

The Reality

In our city, with a population of almost 1 million, the San Jose Police Department investigates over 4,000 burglaries a year with only 7 detectives assigned to the burglary unit. Eight consecutive years of cuts to the public safety budget are bound to affect you as a victim of this type of crime.

In 1986, with a population of approximately 700,000, San Jose Police had 13 burglary detectives and a 16-person burglary suppression unit. Since that time, the city has eliminated the entire burglary suppression unit and cut investigators almost in half.

The city projects that by the year 2020 the population will have increased to 1,150,000. More people and more housing will undoubtedly lead to a rise in burglaries. There does not however, seem to be any plan to increase the amount of burglary investigators.

The case load of every burglary detective does not even come close to making a dent in the amount of cases going through the unit. The lack of adequate personnel prevents most burglaries from even being investigated. With the public safety budget getting cut every year, non-violent property crimes receive less attention. Understandably violent crimes continue to take priority with investigators. For the victims of home burglaries, this is of little consolation.

The Good News

On the bright side, SJPD takes great pride in our professionalism. An overly-abundant case load will not make a detective care for your case any less. There does, however, exist the undeniable reality that an impossible workload reduces the time allotted for each incident.

Thankfully, Chief Davis understands our staffing shortfalls and is working with the City Council to staff SJPD at appropriate levels for a city of this size. Until that happens, we will do the best with what we have. As always, call us, we will be there.

As members of your San Jose Police Department, we want to get involved. We want to catch the person or persons responsible just as badly as you do. With your help, and our expertise, we have a good chance.

Most importantly, let us go inside first to make sure no one is still there — this is why we have guns. Once inside, we will start the collection and preservation of evidence for future prosecution. All patrol officers are trained in evidence collection. You are welcome to watch although don’t expect the process to look like an episode of CSI. It’s actually slow and meticulous, not glamorous, but very important.

Finally, we will work with you and your neighbors to offer our expertise in burglary prevention. There are steps members of the community can take to help protect themselves from burglaries and help the police catch the crooks.

Working together, we can reduce the number of burglaries that occur and arrest more of the people responsible for them.

I’ll tell you more about this in future articles.

Proudly serving you,
Your Beat Cop

6 comments:

  1. Most cities spend 50-60% of their operating budget on public safety. Cities such as Oakland in upwards of 70%. The proposed San Jose 2009-2010 budget has only 38% set for public safety. This makes you wonder where is all the money going?

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  2. Very well-written and informative article, never realized that our City's budget shortfall had us down to seven detectives for the entire burglary unit. Thanks for the info!

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  3. Officer,
    Thank you for your service to our city. Your article is well written, very informative, and very much appreciated. I look forward to your remaining columns. Stay safe our there!

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  4. Thank you for your service officer. It is all about teamwork!
    I'm a member of a Neighborhood Watch. It is really helpful. You've got to get to know your neighbors and keep an eye out for one another.

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  5. You think 7 burglary detectives for a city of a million is understaffed? San Jose has only 3 detectives to investigate both child AND elder abuse and neglect cases. That is ridiculous especially since these are very sensitive, time intensive, and serious investigations.

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  6. Victim of governmentJuly 12, 2009 at 11:49 AM

    Yes these are hard times but you must understand that the city has friends that need to be taken care of and needs that are more important. 6.4 million for our former Mayor then of course he will need another right wing for his team. Then we need to bring soccer back that will cost. Liccardo needs to make his friends happy. The southbay Newsom feels their pain. They need money to free other money for his future in government. Way to go Sam

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