In tough fiscal times, it appears not even popularity and success can save a crime-fighting program.

So cash-strapped is the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, its leaders say, that they've sacrificed one of the agency's most beloved, and effective, features: problemoriented policing, or POP.

Faced with a historic budget crisis – $48 million in cuts to date – officials said they had no choice but to prioritize patrol over POP.

"It's universally popular," Sheriff John McGinness acknowledged. To eliminate it "was a decision that was not made lightly. And it was a painful decision. Painful, yet clear."

The sheriff's POP program has been in a state of flux since August, when the department laid off 122 deputies and cut the POP budget, shifting roughly two dozen officers back into the patrol force.

But in the field, leaders maintained some semblance of the program by having patrol deputies conduct some POP work, said Chief Deputy R.C. Smith, who oversees field and investigative services. That helped, until more cuts came down the line.

When the county Board of Supervisors approved a final budget – slashing another $1 million from the department's budget – that "tipped the scales," Smith said.

"We simply do not have the capacity" to staff a full-fledged POP program, he said. Now, patrol deputies, with the help of four POP sergeants, are asked to do POP work around their daily duties.

Problem-oriented policing, sometimes referred to as communityoriented policing, dates to the 1970s but became a law enforcement standard over the past two decades.

Free from the responsibility of responding to 911 calls, POP officers meet with neighborhood activists and local politicians and target nuisances from prostitution to drug dealing to vandalism.

Residents often heralded POP officers as their personal connections to law enforcement. They know the officers by name, have their phone numbers and see the results.

The program is popular within police agencies, too, lauded as a prevention-minded complement to the reactionary nature of standard patrols.

Officers recognize their colleagues in POP have the time to analyze problems, look for root causes and gather various agencies to find solutions.

"That's the idea, and it works – beautifully," Smith said. "We have a long history of success with our POP team. The challenge is we are in an unprecedented financial situation that none of us could have envisioned."

Department leaders say they are mandated to run the county's two jails – a costly venture even when both facilities are regarded as overcrowded and understaffed – and can't cut services they are paid to provide: security at the courthouse, airport and Folsom Dam, and staff for the Rancho Cordova Police Department.

Already, the department has drastically reduced the number of detectives, pared leadership ranks, grounded the helicopter and rolled K9 and SWAT officers into patrol. The cuts have been devastating, Smith said, leaving vulnerable such luxuries as POP.

The loss also may leave the Sheriff's Department as one of the few metropolitan law enforcement agencies without a POP program. The cut appears to have been a necessary evil, said professor William Vizzard, head of criminal justice studies at California State University, Sacramento.

"They're mandated to run the jail, mandated to run the courts. With what's left over, the political pressure is to respond to calls and follow-up investigation," he said. "I don't know that they had a whole lot of choice."

Vizzard said he expects other law enforcement agencies to go the same route.

"Everybody in the state's strapped," he said. "My guess is (POP) is going to be one of the first things on the chopping block" elsewhere.

At the street level, people like Dan Conner of Fair Oaks will suffer.

Conner came to rely on his Fair Oaks neighborhood's POP officers to deal with a drug den next door. Thanks to the deputies' focus, he's happy to report, the users are in jail and the home's locks are changed.

Conner, 34, said he was one of dozens of residents to attend a Board of Supervisors meeting last summer and plead for the sheriff's funding to be protected. Everybody, he said, talked about POP.

Knowing that POP was disbanded, he said, is disheartening.

McGinness said the problem-oriented policing concept isn't dead within his department; patrol officers are being encouraged to carry out the work when they can. But he acknowledged it's a far cry from the POP program valued by residents.

"It's the best we can do," he said.

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