In his annual “State of the City” address on Tuesday Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez defended the city’s emphasis on crime prevention while police Chief Bisa French’s plan to ask the council for money to recruit officers was postponed.
Just days after it was announced that French planned to ask the city council for $500,000 for a police officer recruitment program, the city decided to postpone discussing the matter until February.
City Manager Shasa Curl told Richmondside Wednesday that French’s proposal was dropped from the council agenda in the interest of time because there was also a Richmond Housing Authority meeting that night to select a developer for Nystrom Village.
“As such, we clearly couldn’t complete all agenda items last night. We will return this item for the council’s consideration in early 2025,” Curl said.
Mayor Eduardo Martinez discussed police officer hiring and the city’s approach to public safety, among other topics, during his annual address at the final council meeting of 2024.
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“We focus not just on holding people accountable but also on addressing root causes of crime.“
— Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez in his “State of the City” address
Martinez shared that the overall number of reported crime incidents in Richmond increased slightly from January to November of 2024 — by 1%. This year there have been 4,282 crime reports, up from 4,256 incidents in 2023 during the same time period. Homicides, for example, increased from eight in 2023 to 11 this year as of November.
“(The 1% increase) doesn’t sound good, but Richmond is dedicated to reducing crime and violence through various public safety initiatives,” he said. “We focus not just on holding people accountable but also on addressing root causes of crime. Our goal is to prevent violence through community-centered programs to create a greater community for everyone.”
He lauded the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) and programs like the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship — an 18-month program that works with residents who are deemed “high-risk” for gun violence. He also celebrated the creation of ROCK (formerly the Community Crisis Response Program).
“ONS received White House recognition for their gun violence prevention work,” he said, adding that the program was visited by White House Office of Violence Prevention staff and also received two invitations to the nation’s capital.
Martinez said the goal of programs such as ROCK is to free up officers from having to respond to non-violent police calls — like noise complaints, referrals to services and wellness checks.
According to the mayor’s presentation, the program is still developing policies and procedures with dispatchers, and other community stakeholders, including the police union.
Sources close to the program’s development told Richmondside last summer that ROCK would be responding to about 30% of the city’s calls for service.
“The impact on reducing the burden of police and improving community health relations is the purpose of the Community Crisis Response Program,” he said.
Additionally, Martinez said that the Richmond Police Department had a net gain of five sworn officer positions in 2024 and had a fully staffed traffic parking enforcement unit, adding that two additional positions were created in that unit.
However, according to Martinez’ presentation, the launch of ROCK during the summer was a “soft” launch with the newly formed crisis response group led by Director Michael Romero responding to about 60 calls from August to November. Romero was hired in May.
In a video presentation outlining his wishlist for 2025, Martinez said he hopes that ROCK can begin taking calls full time.
When asked by Richmondside for comment on when residents can expect ROCK to be fully operational, Martinez’ office said there are currently no updates.
Police chief says officers feel ‘devalued’
A spokesperson for the Richmond Police Department did not immediately respond to Richmondside on whether the department was made aware the chief’s proposal was going to be pulled from Tuesday meeting. Council member Soheila Bana had emailed her supporters on Saturday to ask them to attend the meeting in support of French.
French’s proposal asks for $500,000 to incentivize current officers who help recruit up to 10 experienced officers. (Candidates who end up joining Richmond’s force would also be eligible for an incentive bonus.) The incentives, according to the department, would be similar to those offered by other police departments in Alameda, Berkeley and Antioch.
The Richmond Police Department has a staff of 121 sworn officers and 54 non-sworn staff, according to department statistics that Martinez cited during his presentation. Additionally, in 2024 24 officers left the department voluntarily or were fired.
The police department is currently budgeted at 146 officers — down from nearly 200 before the city decided in 2021 to divert police salary money to alternatives like ROCK.
French wants to give newly hired officers who have at least three years of experience a $45,000 signing bonus to be paid in three installments: after the hiring process is completed; after their field training is completed; and after their probationary period.
This approach, according to the department, is $81,228 less expensive than hiring officers with no experience because experienced officers don’t have to be sent to a police academy.
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My concerns fell on deaf ears, and the officers were left feeling devalued and unsupported.“
— Richmond Police Chief Bisa French
The staffing picture French painted, in a letter shared by Bana, was considerably less optimistic than the scenario outlined by Martinez. She wrote, referring to what she says is the “defunding” of the department:
“We no longer have a stand alone traffic unit to address traffic safety issues. We no longer have a foot and bike patrol unit to proactively patrol and engage the business districts. We no longer have a narcotics unit to deal with illegal drug sales. We no longer have a regulatory unit, yet we are again tasked with the enforcement of smoke shops because they’ve been unregulated.
“We no longer have a violence suppression unit so when shootings and homicides occurred we force officers to work overtime to impact the areas to prevent additional shootings. We no longer have a parole or probation unit to make sure the people entering our community after incarceration are abiding by the terms of their release.
“We no longer have a school resource unit so beat officers are forced to respond to school issues. We no longer have a mental health response team to preventatively work with our community members with mental health challenges and prevent mental health crisis.’ Our investigations unit is less than half of what it used to be.”
All told, she said, things are as she had warned: There would be negative impacts to our response times and our ability to respond to calls for service.
The individual in the picture with Superintendent Thurmond and Mayor Martinez is Battalion Chief Rico Rincon of the Richmond Fire Department.
Thank you for letting us know! We have made the correction.
Remember what Alfred Hitchcock said: “I’m not against the police. I’m just afraid of them”
Richmond resident Peddy Perez would have shared that sentiment, but he was murdered by a patrol officer on duty.
It’s going to be a long while before Richmond police is re-valued.
Thanks Juan, one of the RPA founders. Maybe next time you can get Pedie’s name right. I mean with all the poltical exploitation your organization has done with that shooting, you could at least do that.
So..you have no arguments against the statements I made, so you point to a misspelled name?
In any event, thank you for the correction.
Touche!
‘reported’ crimes down, why is that, Eddie? Because people give up after waiting for 15/20 minutes and still can’t get dispatcher. If adequately staffed, statistics from these victims of crime would paint a much different picture. Chief French is doing a magnificent job despite RPA opposition, who make it difficult to retain officers when they are not supported and exhausted from working 3 double shifts a week. This flagrant, repeated, throttling of RPD’s relevance, and Chief French’s concerns/requests, to further their agenda does not represent all constituents. It is reprehensible and relentless. We are fed up.
You are never going to have a city counsel that”represents all constituents”, but this counsel was voted in by the people of Richmond. And they have the majority, meaning the majority of Richmond wants these folks to represent them.
Martinez wasn’t voted in by the majority of the population, he actually only had around 34% of the vote. That’s why there were two measures on the ballot to change the way voting is done in Richmond: to ENSURE that the winner is voted in by the MAJORITY.
No-one complained for years until they lost power and then tried to make this change. If you can’t beat’em, move the goalpost! SMDH
Thank you for reporting on the State of the City address. I’m curious about the use of the word “defend” in the headline. It seems like the Richmondside is taking a stance on the important project allocating city funding to support programs that are designed to not only relieved the police department of the majority of calls (noise complaints) but remove police involvement from situations where armed response all too often results in escalation, injury and death. The choice to include certain metrics and photos in the article is interesting. If there wasn’t an attack that the mayor needed to “defend,” I suppose this article might be trying to fit the bill. Hope I’m wrong about that! I really appreciate having local news coverage and just hope it isn’t going for controversy and bias over responsible reporting.
I wonder how much higher crime rates would be if there were enough officers to actually show up to all the calls for service and actually write those reports
Chief French’s request seems reasonable to me. I’m glad it is scheduled to be discussed early next year.