Blue Rising: Walnut Creek Police Form PAC, Push for a Bigger Voice in City Politics

The earth shook in Walnut Creek over the last week, but the event wasn't geological. All of the sworn personnel of the police department—officers, sergeants, lieutenants, captains — united to go public with their concerns about how the city is run.

With a new website, The Future of Public Safety in Walnut Creek, the new Walnut Creek Police Association blasted the city council for decisions ranging from police pay to the perception that public safety takes a back seat to funding for a new library, new pools, and arts and recreation programs.

This united front comes from a group of employees who, by their own accounts, have never liked airing grievances in public. But these grievances are already becoming a hot topic in the upcoming City Council race, with police unrest a major discussion point at a recent candidates' forum.

The Walnut Creek Police Association, a combined force of the Police Management and Police Officers associations, also filed papers this week to form the Walnut Creek Police Association Political Action Committee.

This is the first employee-backed PAC in Walnut Creek's history, according to City Clerk Patrice Olds. The association carried out individual interviews with the three council candidates this week. As of Friday, the association had not yet decided on whether it will endorse any candidates, said Sgt. Steve Gorski, the spokesman for the association.

Police officers and city leaders, who spoke with Walnut Creek Patch over the past few days, all said Walnut Creek police have never—unlike their counterparts in bigger cities—played an active role in city politics. This includes police as a group endorsing council candidates.

One reason police have traditionally kept out of the public spotlight, especially when it comes to city policies or budget issues, is that "the city likes to speak with one voice," Gorski said. "It doesn't like dissent."

By nature of their profession, police also are reluctant to draw attention to themselves.

And, Walnut Creek officers are, Gorski admits, novices at playing politics.

That's one reason, Gorski said, the association hired Burbank business and accounting firm Kinde Durkee to make sure the new police PAC is complying with state laws regarding financial and other filing requirements. The company has worked for four presidential and five gubernatorial campaigns.

The PAC is sponsored by the Police Management and Officers associations, and it has filed as a "general purpose committee," which means it is not formed to support or oppose any one candidate or measure. It can receive contributions totaling $1,000 or more during a calendar year to support or oppose various candidates and measures.

Gorski said the feeling has been growing for some time that police need to play more of  a "checks-and-balances" role in city politics. "Our membership felt we don't have any choice," he said. "We don't have anything to lose."

Or as the The Future of Public Safety in Walnut Creek website says: "Our frustrated membership feels that reaching out directly to Walnut Creek residents is the only alternative left as the public safety situation in Walnut Creek continues to deteriorate. Members of the city council have shown disregard for concerns about public safety issues time and time again."

"Employees have all the rights to organize and express themselves," said City Manager Gary Pokorny, who admits he was surprised by the new website.  "I think most of what is on their website, the details are factually accurate. I respectfully disagree with the conclusion that Walnut Creek isn't a safe place or as safe as it once was."

Actually, many of the complaints on the website — about city priorities, the possibility of declining public safety, the downtown bar scene and supposed council favoritism for the library and arts programs — have become staples on the message boards of Walnut Creek Patch, the Contra Costa Times and the blogs Crazy in Suburbia and Claycord.

What's new is the more public nature of these complaints. But one thing that has city leaders either scratching their heads—or quietly fuming —is that no officer came forward to air these complaints at city council meetings in May and June that were devoted to hammering out the 2010-12 budget.

The fact that police are just now stepping up their public profile definitely shakes up the usual Walnut Creek way of doing business, and it has created aftershocks among city leaders and City Hall watchers.

The big question is: Why are police stepping up now? 

Police detractors say it's all about money, and they note the timing of this move.

A few days before the website became news the city signed off on a contract with the Police Management Association that would freeze salaries and require sergeants, lieutenants and captains to begin contributing into the CalPERS retirement system to the tune of 7 percent. Managers were also asked to begin contributing 10 percent to Kaiser medical premium costs in 2010.

Gorski emphasized that police understand that times are tough for everyone and that officers and managers "want to do our part," such as voluntarily taking a pay freeze. 

Another long-time police manager said he and other officers have generally wanted to cooperate with what the city wants. For him, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was what he and other officers describe as the heavy-handed tactics the city negotiators used—threatening them with a 14-percent cut in pay and benefits—if they didn't agree to the city's offer.

While not wanting to go into any details of the negotiations process, Pokorny said the city bargained "in good faith."

This rupture also takes place as Walnut Creek, like all municipal agencies across the country, continues to work its way out of the budget hole caused by the global financial crisis. Walnut Creek also was hit with revenue losses from declines in property taxes and retail and auto sales taxes.

Tensions are growing everywhere between cash-strapped municipalities and their police and firefighting employees, according to news reports. As a new National Review article says, local governments are trying to balance a "shrunken and stagnant revenue base" with  "decades of metastasizing growth in public-sector labor costs." But as governments take a close look at salary and pension obligations to public safety employees, those employees are not taking it lying down.

Walnut Creek police may in fact be part of this trend. 

Union negotiations have been much more tense in other cities, such as in Oakland, where leaders said they would have to lay off 80 police officers and police could no longer respond to felony burglary calls. The article from the conservative National Review says unions in some cities across the United States are attempting to present the debate as a choice between public safety and layoffs and cuts to public safety employees' "extravagant compensation packages."

Everyone on all sides of the debate in Walnut Creek recognizes that the city is not in the same dire financial straits as its neighbors; or that the city has been overly generous in granting compensation packages to employees. Gorski calls the city "conservative" in these salary compensation matters. 

However, the city council this spring faced the task of bridging a $20 million budget deficit.

Walnut Creek has long prided itself on providing services that make the town a desirable place to live, work and visit: comprehensive arts and recreation programs, open space, a thriving dining scene and nationally renowned shopping opportunities. 

Walnut Creek also prides itself on community safety and on employing a professional, educated police force—in which, for example, starting officers are expected to have bachelor's degrees and sergeants and ranks above are expected to have advanced degrees.

To close this $20 million gap, Walnut Creek laid off more than 30 employees and decided not to fill more than 30 positions. Council members also voted to cut budgets for some departments and raise fees for city services. The council, right or wrong, also wrestled with what to do about beloved programs: the free downtown trolley, the Walnut Creek Concert Band, school crossing guards and kids summer camps.

The police department is to receive a 1 percent increase in the 2011-12 budget, taking it up to $22.6 million. Thirty-five percent of the city's general fund expenditures for the 2010-12 budget cycle go to police services.

The city likes to say that none of the laid-off employees come from the police ranks. Rather, nine police department positions were "frozen" and won't be filled over the next two years.

Gorski and other officers say that frozen positions still mean that the department has fewer bodies to do police work. The department currently has 76 officers on staff; the lowest its been in the past 10 years. That number was as high as 81 in 2007 and 2008.

The city also spends less on police services that "most cities of a similar size," the Future of Public Safety in Walnut Creek website says.

"City leaders are also imposing significant cuts to police salaries and benefits that will impact the current and future face of public safety in our community," the website says.

"These cuts are being forced on employees as city leaders try to convince both employees and the public that we are in a budget crisis," the site states. "The truth is current and former council members created this crisis. At the same time city leaders are blaming the police department for budget woes, they are spending freely on new projects, buildings and programs. They also continue to subsidize numerous groups and organizations while making only token cuts."

In a May interview with the blog Crazy in Suburbia (of which I'm the publisher), Police Chief Joel Bryden said he believed that public safety is the No. 1 priority in the city.

Bryden acknowledged that the department could always use more money and more officers. But in crafting the police department's portion of the 2010-12 budget, which included leaving those nine positions unfilled, he said he worked with members of his staff. The plan they came up with is what "we could afford to lose while keeping the city safe and maintain the level of service that we have now," Bryden said.

City Council members said they relied on Bryden's assessment on whether the budget they adopted would be adequate to ensure public safety.

"The question is: Is this a safe community? Absolutely," said Cindy Silva, the mayor pro tem who, in running for re-election this November, is one of three council candidates. "The police budget we approved is the one presented to us. I trust the chief to bring to us issues that we need to address to assure the readiness of the police department and the safety of the community."

But one of Silva's fellow candidates in the November race, Justin Wedel, said he believes that the city's priorities are "off track." He said: "I'm in complete agreement with police officers: The city needs to fund the police department before it funds city niceties."

Wedel was referring to a sore point for police: Walnut Creek spends a higher percentage—20 percent in the 2010-12 budget—on arts, community and recreation services than do neighboring cities.

Then again, said council member Gary Skrel, there can be more to public safety than the amount of money that goes to the police department.

"To me, a safe community is all the other things we offer. If we didn't have open space, the new library and opportunities, you'd have more kids on the streets, a lower quality of life," said Skrel, who noted that he was the only council member who voted against spending the money to build the new library. "Public safety is the whole fabric of the community."

If Concord, Martinez, and Pittsburg spend a higher percentage of their budgets on police services, it could in large part be because they have more serious crimes than Walnut Creek, city officials said. 

Crime statistics and city and police department reports offer mostly reassuring pictures of Walnut Creek's level of safety.

A 2007 city survey of residents showed that of 443 respondents, 85 percent felt "somewhat" or "very safe" from violent crimes in Walnut Creek. In their neighborhood after dark, 83 percent of respondents said they felt "somewhat" or "very safe."

A 2007 City of Walnut Creek Police Department Strategic Plan, and the latest FBI statistics from 2008, show that the number of calls for service and the number of reported crimes, has fluctuated or declined in categories, including in violent and property crimes. In 2006, the police logged 32,058 calls for service, an average of about 89 a day, which indicates that the department is busy serving citizens.

However, the total number of reported crimes in 2008 was 2,851, which was the lowest number since 2001. 

Gorski said these reports don't take into account the way the city has evolved from a bedroom community into an urban center, with a large number of visitors coming into town during the day and at night to shop, eat or hit the bar scene.  He also said the nature of crimes that Walnut Creek officers deal with has changed. Patrol officers, who responded to about two-thirds of all calls, handle some of the identity theft cases that citizens report as well as the scams that sometimes ensnare Walnut Creek's vulnerable elderly residents.

When a patrol officer gets tied up dealing with drunks spilling out of a bar at closing time or investigating an identity theft case, that means one less officer available to handle citizens' calls. Identity theft cases and financial scams are incredibly complex and time consuming to investigate, Gorski said.

Dealing with such cases cuts into "available patrol time," Gorski said. According to the strategic plan, "available patrol time" is another measure, used by urban economists, to measure a department's ability to maintain public safety.

It is noteworthy that the department's strategic plan, now three years old, speaks of how it will become critical for the police department to play a greater role in the city's planning process" as the city continues to develop.

Perhaps, officers in 2010 are taking that recommendation to heart. 

Council members said they would favor bridging any communication gaps between the city and police.

"At a minimum, it's clear to me that we should build better channels of communication between the community and the police department as a whole," said Kish Rajan. 

Candidate Kristina Lawson, who went on a police ride-along Friday night and observed first-hand a "high level of collaboration and teamwork among officers," admits that public safety is not her area of expertise, but that she's willing to learn and to listen to what police have to say. She told Patch: "I believe very strongly in the power of talking and listening and having a dialogue." 

See "Walnut Creek's PACs: Who are They?" for a rundown on other committees currently operating in town to raise money to support or oppose candidates or measures.