The saga in San Jose continues. The city will be voting next week on an effort to declare a state of emergency to shift 47 detectives back onto regular street patrol due to staff shortages.
Now, the local media discovered that at least a dozen officers are living in RV’s in the parking lot right near the San Jose Police Department’s headquarters.
Mandatory overtime forces them to work up to 17-hour days. Combine those long hours with horrendous traffic, and commutes from as far away as Manteca, Stockton, Tracy and even Reno, these officers are staying in an RV during the week and then driving home on their days off.
It turns out the recreational vehicles are legally parked on city property.
“It’s embarrassing for any city,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
Officer pay and benefits being cut in 2012 triggered a mass exodus of officers leaving the department and the city has not recovered.
Mayor Liccardo said the long term solution is for voters to pass another measure called ‘Measure F’, which would boost officer pay to hire and retain more cops.
“We need to get some support for Measure F so we can restore this police department so we don’t have officers working multiple overtime shifts in the same day in the same week,” Liccardo said.
