Costa Mesa and Public Safety
Public safety is a big issue for Costa Mesa residents. You can check out the city’s crime statistics on the City’s web site, under the City Hall tab. Costa Mesa once had a full police department that had 165 sworn officers. The City currently has 103 active sworn police officers, but has a budget for the 136 police officers that an independent consultant deemed necessary. The police department has been on a major hiring spree to make up that difference, aiming to send five recruits to each academy class. However, the city has sent an average of three recruits. So why has it been difficult for the city to hire police officers?
Other nearby cities, such as Huntington Beach, have been successful at hiring experienced officers from other cities, but the City of Costa Mesa has not been able to – because of animosity coming from the city council to the police department, as well as overall more competitive employment packages offered by other cities.
First, how did the number of police officers drop so low? When the Republicans became a majority in the City Council in 2010, they put a 2-year freeze on hiring in the police department and came up with plans to slash officer pay and pensions to save the city money. During the hiring freeze, pension contributions were adjusted (higher retirement age and a lower pension), and many experienced police officers took lateral transfers to other cities. Although the city has gone through great efforts to re-hire, the success of the hiring efforts have not been as successful as hoped.
One of the reasons for the less-than-stellar success in hiring has been the animosity between the city council and the police department. In addition to the animosity generated by the 2012 attempt to slash wages and pensions, the mayor and the mayor pro tem are suing the police department. The backstory is that the police had reason to believe that city council member and mayor Steve Mensinger and mayor pro tem Jim Righeimer were violating the Brown Act, a California law that guarantees the public’s right to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies. The police’s insurance company hired a private investigator, who, unknown to any member of the police department, installed a tracking device on Steve Mensinger’s car. Mr. Mensinger filed a lawsuit against the police department, and has refused to settle.
To add insult to injury, members of the police department have to pay out of their own pockets to defend themselves against the suit from the city.
Some of this information is summarized in this article dated January 6 from the Orange County Register: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/officers-698859-department-police.html
And that’s not all – some members of the City Council have been attacking the fire department, saying that their salaries are way too high from overtime. However, members of the fire department are required to work overtime because there are six fire stations in the city, but staff enough to man five stations. Thus, one of the fire stations is routinely manned by firemen working overtime. And the city has a freeze on hiring additional firemen.
The Costa Mesa Democratic Club takes the position that among the improvements to the city that must be made to improve public safety is to elect different city council members, who will listen to the citizens and put an end to the animosity between our public safety officers and the city.