West Sacramento police fund new internal community outreach department

The West Sacramento Police Department will create a new internal department for “community outreach,” a move that involves reallocating some funds within the department but falls short of meeting activists’ calls to shift money away from the police and toward other crisis-intervention programs.

The new department will include two non-sworn personnel to handle situations such as substance abuse disorders, mental health crises and issues related to homelessness, according to a report delivered to the West Sacramento City Council for its July 15 meeting, where a proposal to create the new department was approved.

The West Sacramento Police Department proposed funding the new positions by not hiring for five vacant police officer positions that were planned in the budget.

West Sacramento mayor Christopher Cabaldon described the decision as a proactive step toward addressing community members’ concerns about policing.

“How might we actually do this, not just spend six months having a task force or talking about it or reflecting on principles?” Cabaldon said. “We wanted to act quickly because of the need and also because to be frank, issues around policing get very political very fast and we wanted to move expeditiously in order to, to the extent that we could, insulate it from that kind of politics and do the right thing.”

But Niki Jones, a peer crisis counselor at MH First, a Sacramento volunteer organization that responds to mental health crises as part of the Anti Police-Terror Project Sacramento, called shifting funds around within the police department “a slap in the face to a community that’s been asking for a real alternative.”

“Any genuine effort to create a non-law enforcement response to crisis should not be held within a law enforcement agency,” Jones said.

Jones said communities and volunteer organizations like the one to which she belongs don’t currently have the resources to respond to all of the city’s mental health crises, but she said they could do more if given the funding.

“The community has the willingness,” Jones said. “What it lacks is the infrastructure.”

West Sacramento’s decision comes amid a flurry of activity aimed at substituting community-led interventions for a police response in certain cases. A California State Senate bill called the C.R.I.S.E.S. Act (AB 2054) passed on the Assembly floor in June and, if enacted, would become a pilot grant program for community-based alternatives to policing.

Mayor Cabaldon said meetings with community members as part of former President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance generated ideas for the proposal. The group’s experiences with law enforcement and ideas for reform prompted him to support taking action via the new proposal, he said.

Cabaldon said the WSPD is currently writing job descriptions and beginning the hiring process for the new positions.

The West Sacramento City Council approved the proposal with four of five council members voting in favor of the change. Council member Martha Guerrero abstained from voting and said she wanted to hear more community perspectives before approving the measure. Guerrero was endorsed by the West Sacramento Police Officers’ Association in 2018, but the group is not backing her current run.

The five vacant police officer positions still “remain on the authorized position list and may be funded again in the future,” the West Sacramento Police Department wrote in a message to The Sacramento Bee.

This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 3:11 PM.