General law enforcement

General law enforcement in El Dorado Hills

Position paper paper #07-07 of the El Dorado Hills Citizens Alliance
Preliminary draft, 2/25/2006

Summary

It is reasonable to predict that El Dorado Hills will have significantly increasing needs for general law enforcement as its growth continues. The County Sheriff probably needs to increase staffing devoted to EDH at a faster rate than currently planned.

Factual basis:

The CFA for the 2005 EDH incorporation project reported a level of service in EDH (Beat 21) equivalent to about 0.4 sworn officers per thousand population. This is about 1/3 of the level simultaneously reported for police in the adjacent City of Folsom.
Our most recent check of Elk Grove police staffing corresponds to 0.93 sworn officers per 1,000 population, more than double the CFA findings for EDH.
The Sacramento Bee reported a history of significantly increased violent crime accompanying growth in Elk Grove. (2/10/2007, "Elk Grove sees a bumper crop of new homes and schools -- and crime") The article cited violent crime reports having tripled between 2000 and 2006, with the crime rate per 1,000 residents increasing by about 30%.
The Sheriff's office has reported plans to increase staffing levels by about 1 sworn officer per year for EDH (Beat 21).
The Sheriff's office has reported that a long lead time, up to two years, is necessary to fully train newly recruited officers.

Discussion

In seeking a cause for Elk Grove's increase in crime the Bee said "... most put the blame on poor planning, especially by the county, that attracted waves of people without ensuring good jobs in town, adequate youth services for latchkey teens or an appropriate police presence for the city."

To avoid the problem of insufficient police staffing reported for Elk Grove it appears that the Sheriff's Office should increase EDH staffing at a higher rate, to anticipate need for urban staffing ratios. One officer added in calendar year 2006 would have corresponded to a ratio of about 0.75 per 1,000 new population because of that year's significantly lower growth in new housing. Considering growth rates seen in the prior years and start of sales in Blackstone later this year, it is reasonable to forecast a return to about 3 times as much annual growth by 2008.

A reasonable annual staffing increase to meet EDH needs in the immediate future probably would be in the range of 3 to 5 officers per year.

A second issue is operational management of patrol to assure good response time to calls.

As EDH grows it will become more important to station patrols in particular local areas within EDH. Dispatch time from a central office well become problematical for quick response to emergency calls, especially for crimes in progress. In addition to the emerging size of EDH, road access to many if not most residential locations is hindered by low connectivitiy in the EDH surface street network and scarcity of arterials.