As Modesto struggles to keep cops, police union leader cites workload, morale and pay
The Modesto Police Department has had its challenges recruiting and keeping officers in recent years. City officials say officers are overworked and earn less than their peers at comparable agencies.
A police union official said there is more to the story.
“Over the last two to three years, our officers haven’t felt supported, valued or cared about by department and city leadership,” said Sgt. Dan Starr, president of the Modesto Police Officers Association, in an email. The MPOA represents detectives, officers, sergeants and lieutenants.
Starr wrote that some officers face ridicule. “If leadership doesn’t like someone, or they find out someone is leaving, they have been calling them ‘cancers’ of the department and saying ‘good riddance, let them go.’ This has begun to subside very recently due to vocal complaints and discussions about this broad character attack.“
Modesto spokesman Andrew Gonzales said the city has the utmost respect for its officers. “We fully acknowledge and understand that our police officers are overworked,” he said. “We 100% get that. Patrolling Modesto is a difficult and challenging job.”
Gonzales said the issue is Modesto does not have the revenue to adequately fund its police and fire departments and other essential services, such as parks. “We’ve stated that this is not acceptable to us, either.”
Police Chief Brandon Gillespie said that he shares his officers’ frustrations and that he and his command staff are doing what they can to ease their workload.
Gillespie — a 21-year department veteran who became chief about a year ago after serving as interim chief for about nine months — said these are difficult times for police departments and their officers as they come under more public scrutiny, calls for more accountability and changes to how they police their cities.
Gillespie said when he talks with police chiefs throughout California, many also say their departments have challenges in hiring and keeping officers.
His department has been operating with about 28 vacancies among its allotment of 210 sworn officer positions for at least six months, the chief said.
The city provided The Bee with data on Police Department retirements and attrition for its officers and civilian employees since 2017 and through the first week of June of this year. The department also is allocated 104 civilian employees.
Attrition includes someone leaving for another police department, moving out of state, changing careers and not completing probation.
Eighty-five officers have left since 2017, with the trend accelerating. Thirty-seven have left since 2021, including 16 so far this year. Forty-six officers have retired since 2017.
The officers who left because of attrition include an assistant police chief, two captains, one lieutenant, three sergeants, 58 officers and 20 officer trainees.
Fifteen of the officers who have left since 2020 went to work for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, according to Starr. Nine have left the Police Department for the Sheriff’s Department since last year.
“It has been almost unheard of for Modesto PD to lose officers to the Sheriff’s Office,” Starr said in his email. “Historically, deputies leave the Sheriff’s Office to come work for MPD, but that trend has been dramatically bucked in the last three years.
“The county just added 23 additional deputy positions, and we are preparing for the next wave of officers to ... become deputies.”
Starr said 56 of the officers who left went to work for other agencies. The top two agencies for these former Modesto officers are the Sheriff’s Department and the new Lathrop Police Department.
Starr said six former Modesto officers now work in Lathrop. (That city had contracted with the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department for police services before starting its own department.)
“We’ve had more people leave our agency for another agency than have retired from Modesto PD,” Starr said in his email. “This should be a concerning statistic for the city.”
Stanislaus County Sheriff Jeff Dirkse said sheriff’s departments in California typically can offer more opportunities than many police departments.
For instance, he said his department has a dive team, bomb squad and full complement of detectives who work in such areas as human trafficking and undercover in special investigations. Detectives also can work in the Coroner’s Office.
Patrol deputies can work in rural settings or more urban ones in cities including Patterson and Riverbank, which contract with the department for police services.
He said his department also has become more attractive with the creation four years ago of the position called deputy sheriff II. Dirkse said the position pays 10% more than deputy and has brought the Sheriff’s Department’s compensation in line with other law enforcement agencies in the county.
Yoga for deputies
Dirkse said the Sheriff’s Department also focuses on the well-being of its deputies by offering them yoga classes, a CrossFit trainer, nutritionist and athletic trainer.
“We’ve really created a really good, positive environment for deputies’ well-being and their career growth,” he said. “That environment makes the Sheriff’s Department a really positive place.”
Dirkse, who was elected sheriff in 2018, said that during his tenure, four deputies have left for other law enforcement jobs.
Starr said that while some officers traditionally have gone to Bay Area agencies to make more money, Modesto officers also are leaving to work for neighboring agencies in the Northern San Joaquin Valley and foothills for roughly the same or less money.
He said the workload at these other agencies is substantially less than Modesto’s.
The Police Department talks about being affected by the Great Resignation, in which many employees nationwide have left their jobs during the pandemic, Starr said. But if that is true, he questions why Modesto officers are going to work for nearby agencies.
“About half of those who have left for another agency since 2017, with the majority being since 2020, have disliked working at Modesto PD so much that they were willing to make the same amount of money or even take a pay cut to leave,” Starr wrote.
Modesto has one of the busiest police departments in the state, according to city officials, and Starr said officers are burned out.
The city has reduced the number of officer positions as part of its effort to balance the city’s general fund. It’s also made reductions in parks and recreation and other departments. The fund makes up about a third of the city’s $508 million operating budget, and about 80% of the fund is spent on the police and fire departments.
Modesto has eliminated 77 officer positions since the Great Recession of about a dozen years ago.
Modesto officials say the general fund has a structural deficit and without more revenue the city will continue to have to make reductions. The City Council in June voted to put a 1% sales tax on the November ballot. If approved by voters, the tax would bring in $39 million annually to the general fund, which is $171.4 million.
Efforts to ease workload
The Police Department has taken steps to ease the workload for its officers through technology and by having civilian employees take on duties that don’t require sworn officers.
For instance, the department has outreach specialists to work with homeless people and others in crisis who don’t require an officer. It also just started a pilot program in which rangers patrol the city’s problem parks. The rangers are not police officers.
Gillespie said the department also applied for a wellness grant for its officers last year, which it did not receive but reapplied for this year. He said the department has done what it can within its budget constraints.
Gillespie said that includes letting officers wear beards if they want to and no longer requiring them to cover their tattoos. He said officers can wear short sleeves and show their tattoos, providing them some relief during hot summers.
He said he is reassigning a sergeant to work full time as a recruiter. Gillespie said the department has not had a full-time recruiter for several years. A lieutenant now is responsible for recruitment, among his other duties.
Gillespie said one of the first things he did as interim chief was return patrol officers’ work schedule to four 11-hour days followed by four days off. The department had stopped using that schedule several years ago.
“It was clear that officers prefer this schedule,” Gillespie said.
$23.8M spent on overtime
Starr said he appreciates these efforts.
He said officers have had fewer opportunities, and more overtime, as the department has reduced staffing for its specialty units, including gangs and traffic safety.
The department has spent $2.4 million on overtime so far this this year for its sworn officers, according to the city. Only detectives, officers and sergeants are paid overtime. The department spent $4.2 million in overtime in 2021, and averaged $4.3 million in annual overtime from 2017 to 2020 for its sworn officers.
Starr said the department needs to find a way to reduce the workload as well as restore hope and opportunities for professional development for its officers. He said improving the pay and benefits so Modesto can do a better job attracting and keeping officers would help.
“Right now, retention is our biggest concern,” he wrote. “If we can’t retain our current employees, why should we believe that anyone we hire today won’t just leave in the next two years?”
Starr said in an interview that he is speaking up because he wants the Police Department to improve and the MPOA wants to work with the city to make that happen.
“I want us to get back to where MPD was amazing, back to the agency that every cop wanted to work at,” said Starr, who has been with the department for 18 years.
Gillespie said that is his goal, too, but the city’s finances make that challenging. He said a city’s finances are one of the factors officers consider when they decide to go work for a police department or leave one.
The chief said he remains optimistic and believes that by the end of this year, his department will have filled all of its vacant officer positions. He said some officers and civilian employees who left for other agencies have come back.
Gillespie said the department has a “history of producing amazing people” and meeting its challenges and he fully expects it will do so now. And despite the challenges, he said Modesto officers continue to excel.
For instance, he cited the May arrest of three people in connection with thefts at the Sunglass Hut at Vintage Faire Mall.
He said several Bay Area law enforcement agencies had arrest warrants for one of the suspects but it was Modesto police who arrested him. A news release at the time of his arrest claimed the suspect was responsible for stealing about $2 million in merchandise from across the state.
Ex-officers declined to comment
The salary range for police officers is $80,956 to $98,376, and it’s $98,091 to $119,212 for sergeants, according to information on Modesto’s website. But officers earn a lot more.
The California State Controller tracks public employee compensation on its website. It reported that 57 Modesto police officers and sergeants earned at least $140,000 in 2021, which included their base salaries, overtime and other compensation. It does not include benefits. The number includes six officers and 10 sergeants who earned more than $180,000.
The Bee made a request through the Sheriff’s Department for comment from former Modesto officers. They declined or did not respond to the request. The Lathrop Police Department did not respond to two requests for comment.
The Bee obtained the information on employees leaving the Police Department through filing a California Public Records Act request.
Eighty civilian or nonsworn employees — including clerks, evidence and property technicians, and community service officers — have left or retired since 2017. That includes 11 who have left through the first week of June of this year.
But the number of departures is inflated because it includes 21 police cadets. The city created the part-time position several years ago to provide young people attending college the opportunity to learn more about police work before embarking on careers in law enforcement or in other fields.
This story was originally published July 18, 2022 at 6:35 AM.
