Sacramento is last in flood protection and now last in police protection…not a real good trend line.
Understaffed police force affecting city, officials say
Sacramento ranks last in uniformed officers per capita among 50 largest cities in U.S.
By Ryan Lillis - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, February 4, 2007
As the Sacramento Police Department declared a 93-day crackdown on gang violence last year, several officers were moved from low-crime beats to assignments aimed at combating the region's growing street gang population. The result was a significant drop in gang-related killings and volumes of street intelligence gathered through dozens of arrests, officials said.
But the crackdown also had an adverse effect on the city's crime rate. Property crimes -- incidents like burglaries and car thefts -- spiked, a trend that has only started to taper off, according to police officials.
Officials said the jump was the clear consequence of having an understaffed police force. And a review of national police department staffing shows just how undermanned Sacramento is.
Of the 50 largest cities in the country, Sacramento has the fewest uniformed police officers per capita, according to figures compiled by the FBI.
Based on staffing numbers and census population estimates for 2005, there are 1.46 uniformed police officers in Sacramento for every 1,000 residents. That's roughly half the national average for large cities and is also well below the rate for the rest of the state, which is about 2.0, figures show.
