From: Tommy Isachsen
To: CityCouncilListPublic; Smith, Maraskeshia
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Additional Police Cuts WILL Affect US and the COMMUNITY Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2025 2:03:18 PM
City Council Members,
I have been a public servant for Santa Rosa for more than two decades. My family and I have a vested interest in Santa Rosa. We live here, we play here, we coach here, and we attend school here.
In addition to writing on behalf of my community, I am writing for myself, my family, our police officers, our detectives, and the Santa Rosa Police Management Association.
The police department has been a team player in everything it has been asked to do, even to the point of our own operational demise. We constantly do more with less.
Our
previous staffing studies have outlined this.
You are faced with a difficult decision tonight. The police department is slated to lose eight police officers, possibly a ninth police officer. These cuts cannot all be absorbed in patrol by those officers answering calls for service and responding to in-progress calls.
These cuts will affect our investigations division, also known as our detectives. With the cut of eight officers, I will lose a detective. That detective will likely come from the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Team, which is already one of the busiest detective teams in terms of callouts and volume of investigations.
Should the police department be asked to cut the ninth police officer, I will have no other option but to collapse our proactive Special Enforcement Team (SET), which has already eclipsed the number of firearms it seized last year, and it is only June.
Due to team sizes and supervision, making cuts elsewhere is not safe or efficient.
Our community is safer with these investigative teams, including the Special Enforcement Team.
As mentioned, SET has already exceeded the number of guns seized last year, and the statistics for 2024 reaffirm their success:
69% crackdown on illegal "ghost guns," with a 129% rise in seizures. 59% reduction in shooting events
71% decrease in homicides overall, with ZERO gang-related homicides 55% increase in firearms seized from juveniles
56% reduction in calls for service involving shootings
Please do not cut the additional 9th Police Officer. Let us be team players and stick with the agreed-upon original proposal of 8 Police Officers and 4 Professional Staff.