The recent court ruling that gutted San Jose’s Measure B was a huge blow to the city’s efforts to simply write off the rights of its employees. And it was a big win for all city employees, but it won’t stop police officers from leaving the City of San Jose.
Although I do believe it will slow what could have been a mass exodus had Measure B been fully upheld, to stop our officers from fleeing to other cities is going to take more than just returning pay and maintaining benefits. In theory it should be a simple task, but for whatever reason it has been difficult for the majority of our current leaders to accomplish.
To retain our dedicated and experienced officers means much more to us as a city than it does to the individual officers. It means keeping our streets safe and reversing the current violent and criminal trends that keep moving us further and further away from the “Safest Big City” we once were. So what then is the simple solution? It’s value and respect. San Jose needs to value its employees enough to be able to sit down and negotiate through tough times. It also needs to respect the current contracts already in place and not make illegal or costly attempts to bypass them.
According to the annual report by city auditor Sharon Winslow Erickson, San Jose’s crime rate is now three percent above the state average and 1 percent above the U.S. average. The report also noted that the average response time for Priority 2 emergency calls (those that involve injury or property damage) has been steadily rising since 2007, from 11.4 minutes to 20.3 minutes last year. Since this steady rise in crime we have seen a corresponding and steady decline in staffing levels. It’s no coincidence, fewer officers means less resources to respond to, investigate and solve crimes.
Over the past few years our public employees, including police officers, firefighters, librarians, park rangers and many more, were blamed for the city’s financial shortfalls. In turn our city leaders pitted voters against them, and falsely led them to support an expensive and ultimately illegal pension reform measure. Their unwillingness to negotiate, topped with this attack, showed a blatant lack of value and respect for all public employees. Because of this, not only have police officers fled, but public employees throughout the city have decided they too have had enough and a great amount of experience has now been lost to the benefit of other cities.
Changing the atmosphere in San Jose to one that values and respects its public employees will not only help to restore our police force and our public safety, it will also help restore the vital city services that make San Jose great.
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