Saturday night was worse and took longer to gain some semblance of control!

It's hard to follow the unlimited time given to city staff to tout statistics that may be confusing at best or deceptive at worst. Hard to refute issues in three minutes when numbers are thrown out at random. Who are we to question authority? Were we treated to that tonight?  In my opinion yes!  In the next few days we'll fine tune the case we've presented to Sacramento City Council on February 8, 2005.  We've heard their side and it conflicts with ours.  Lets have a level playing field. We didn't make up our information... it was dished up by the very officers and their supervisors as the incident unfolded.  If we're wrong, so is the radio log, so are the calls pending and so is the record you can read below.  That record is generated by Sacramento Police Communications.

Ms. Sheedy saw the facts:  4 police units on a weekday morning shift for the entire area North of the American River.  Mr. Cohn saw the facts:  3 police units for an area bound by the Sacramento River on the West, American River on the North, Watt Avenue (County line) to the East and highway 50 on the South. Again, not our numbers but those typed on official police documents.

Why the silence?  Why the reluctance to give us an accurate head count of actual filled positions on our police force?  The Chief knows we support hiring the officers we need to live up to the image of a world class city. But it starts with communicating the facts and building trust from there.

So, now what?  Some numbers and statements were placed on the table tonight.  We take issue with them.  Taxpayers paid a lot of money for one of the most leading edge Records Management and Computer Aided Dispatch systems around.  Print out the entire call chief and show us where the radio traffic is wrong.

I don't know what troubles us more; thugs coming into our downtown area, holding our city hostage and spilling out into our neighborhoods or the questionable statements made about how it was handled.

Lets examine what we perceive as just one conflict with the statements made on the public record by the Deputy Chief and the City Manager.  They said calls for service city wide were light Saturday night.  They said there were 102 patrol officers working city-wide, with only 30 officers involved downtown.  That means we should be able to find 72 patrol officers in other sectors.  We offer three audio files as evidence:

The question remains unanswered:  Where were those 72 officers if none were available in Sector 3 or 6 when needed? We were told calls for service that night were light.  The Daily Activity Summary filed by the Sector 3 Swing Shift supervisor reads, "Steady high volume of calls for service" and appears in conflict with the public statement.

As a matter of fact, the Deputy Chief, by coincidence, picked the exact same time Victor 36 is asking for help to provide the City Council with a "snapshot" of calls pending (in cue) at 11:30 PM.  He cites 16 calls pending city-wide with 5 of those in the Central City. 

What kind of calls were going out to police when problems began in Old Sacramento and Downtown.  We just happened to pass that data along to our members as it was happening.

----- Original Message -----

From: SCCW webmaster

To: Crimewatch List

Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 8:01 PM

Subject: Coming to your neighborhood!

 

It's only 7:30 PM on Saturday night:

 

Three adults just held up the Subway on J Street. The downtown sergeant bagged the two female suspects but the male black suspect with the weapon is headed toward Blvd. Park on 21st.  He's wearing dark clothes, a beanie cap and carrying two Subway bags. He has three tear drop tattoos on his face.  That's the chopper you may have heard overhead until that air unit was diverted on a LoJack hit (stolen Lexus SUV)

 

At the same time as our robbery, a car jacking occurred at Howe and College Town. Male suspect beat driver to the ground at a convenience store and drove off with her car.

 

At the same as the car jacking another late model Lexus sedan was involved in a minor accident.  While exchanging information with the other driver, a third person jumped into the victim's car and drove off. Vehicle seen headed toward downtown from El Camino.

 

At the same time as the car theft,  North Area units scampered to cover these calls, a 911 call came in from Aden Mall reporting an armed robbery somewhere in the Mall. 
 

Just after the car theft, Downtown Plaza security calling for police backup over 200 juveniles and adults in a gang fight on the mall. (7th & K) Bike cops are enroute along with an East Sac area patrol officer. Short of a homicide in progress, expect long response times our East for the next hour.  Mall security has three in custody and says there's 200 more roaming the mall headed to 9th and K causing havoc along the way.  RT police are being called in because Bike 1 believes they all arrived on the trains before the near riot broke out.

 

Update: The Air unit is tracking the LoJack in the neighborhood of Richards Blvd. North B and 12th Street.  They lost the car.

 

It's early... and this is only our part of town and our neighbors to the north.

Quoting again from the Sector 3 Swing Shift Sergeant's Activity report: "Took 36 officers till 0200 to control the crowd."  As you'll see from the following details, we're making every effort to account for the actual number of officers involved and where they came from.  We can account for 25 officers, the Deputy Chief cites 26 and the patrol supervisor, 36. 

This is a rough draft of the key elements of the Downtown/Old Sac incident.

The log numbers are in minutes, seconds and tenths

Who, where what and when:

The Deputy Chief reported that 26 officers, two sergeants and a watch commander were deployed downtown and Old Sacramento.  The units we've identified by police radio traffic seems to come close to that number.  The impression that these deployments were planned and may have been added resources to normal city-wide staffing levels is where we part company.  Clearly, the vast majority of officers working at various times from 8:00 PM to 2:30 AM carried unit identifiers from the regular Sector and District assignments.  That suggests to us, those units were not replaced in their home districts.