Sacramento County restores funding for sheriff’s POP unit after budget fight
After a contentious budget hearing Tuesday, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted to restore funding for the Sheriff’s Office’s Problem-Oriented Policing unit, reversing a decision made just weeks earlier to eliminate the team amid budget constraints.
Despite opposition from Supervisors Phil Serna and Patrick Kennedy, the board voted 3-2 to re-allocate funding to the Sheriff’s Office Problem-Oriented Policing unit, or POP unit, Tuesday afternoon. A “proactive” policing unit, the six-person team aims to address long-term quality-of-life and public safety issues in neighborhoods before they escalate.
The team was slated for elimination under funding cuts for the upcoming fiscal year, following the approbation of a $9 billion budget, outlining $57 million in cuts to general fund departments, through a 4-1 vote on June 10.
The cuts in spending came as the county braced for an anticipated $101 million shortfall — the product of a longstanding structural deficit and costs associated with HR 1, or the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez, the lone vote against approving the tentative budget in June, decried the unit’s elimination, arguing it would impact public safety.
Less than a week after the approbation, Supervisor Pat Hume motioned to revisit the budget in July — an “unorthodox process,” but one he said was warranted given the “real-world situation of the impacts of not having a POP team” during Tuesday’s hearing.
Rodriguez, who led the charge to restore the POP unit’s funding Tuesday, was joined by a flurry of business owners and community members who spoke in favor of funding the team, citing public safety concerns.
“These units do more than they respond to a crime that has occurred. They work to prevent crime, disrupt, organize criminal activity, protect vulnerable residents, and build partnerships that keep our communities safe,” Rebecca Evans, a representative of the Greater North Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, said at the hearing.
But dozens of community members and activists urged supervisors to reject the funding restoration, arguing county dollars should instead be directed towards community-based organizations and social services.
Rebecca Gonzalez, a Curtis Park resident, argued that social service cuts would “greatly increase homelessness, poverty, and instability, which are the very conditions which often become criminalized.”
“It is not fair, and it is unwise to reopen only one section of the budget and not look at the entire picture,” Gonzalez said at the hearing.
Serna and Kennedy opposed reopening the budget altogether, calling the process unnecessary and premature ahead of the board’s regular budget deliberations scheduled for September.
Still, the board moved to restore funding to the POP unit — the approximately $3 million for which would come out of the county’s contingency funds, according to Amanda Thomas, the county’s chief fiscal officer.
