Essay About San Jose Police Department

688 Words3 Pages

The San Jose Police Department (SJPD) is located in San Jose, CA and is the main metropolitan police department in the city. This department’s mission is to serve and protect the approximate one million residents of the City of San Jose, and in order to do so, an adequate budget is a necessity. After looking at the previous year’s budget, some adjustments can be made to properly address the concerns the department is currently facing. The adopted budget for fiscal year 2022-2023 was for a total of $505,873,327, which was an approximate increase of $2,000,000 from the prior year. The recommendation for the next fiscal year budget is to increase the overall budget by another $2,000,000 to make a total of $507,873,327. The department divides …show more content…

The City of San Jose continues to face high crime rates as their crime rates are 6.21% higher than the State of California, and 16.85% higher than the nation. The violent crime rate is 9.58% higher than the nation (Home Snacks, 2022) To combat these rates, it is recommended that the funds under the core service crime prevention and community education be increased by $618,524. Included in this core service is also school safety and police activities league, which hasn’t funded in the past few years. Increasing this core fund will assist the department in participating in programs to help reduce crime and build public relations as school safety and police activities league involves community …show more content…

The SJPD has 1,153 sworn officers but compared to San Francisco, who has 2,100 sworn officers for their population of 875,000, their numbers are very low (Kadah, 2022). The budget for fiscal year 2022-2023 included 16 police officer positions to the patrol support and a one time fund of $150,000 to support a lateral sworn officer hiring incentive (Office of the City Manager, 2022). Although this is a start, it is recommended that the core services, respond to calls for service and patrol support, as well as strategic support- public safety funds be increased. The funds increase for responding to calls for service and patrol support will assist the additional officers with their duties and can hopefully assist with creating more positions down the line. Included in the strategic support- public safety is the human resources and training departments. Increasing this fund will allow for the lateral sworn officer hiring incentive to continue, and also allow for the additional officers to receive proper training while ensuring all other personnel continue their on-the-job training