Two police officers with the Pasadena Police Officers Association warned the City Council that the Department is reaching critical levels on staffing issues. The officers spoke on different causes regarding the issues, including lateral transfers and continued verbal and social media attacks on police officers.
The Department is budgeted for 235 officers but currently has only 222, with 17 on injury leave. That leaves 205 active officers, and the Department is in danger of falling below 200 sworn officers within three months for the first time in two decades.
According to Aaron Villacana, of the Pasadena Police Officers Association, the Department’s staffing issues are reaching a critical point. Villacana attributed the exits to attrition, competitive benefit packages, and higher wages offered by neighboring agencies. Since 2021, 17 officers have left the Department. Seven of those departures have occurred in the past four months.
“Currently, several officers are actively seeking employment elsewhere or already in the background check process with other agencies,” Villacana said. “It should be noted that neighboring police departments offer more competitive benefit packages and higher hourly wages than Pasadena. These benefit packages are meant to retain their officers and attract new and lateral officers as well. We’re also required to work every Rose Bowl event, which is 25 weekends out of 52 a year.”
This isn’t the first time the Department has taken its concerns directly to the City Council. In 2015, then-Chief Phillip Sanchez said staffing levels had fallen from 240 to 215 due to lateral transfers to other Departments for better pay. At that time, officers had not received a pay raise in seven years, and some began complaining about the way officers were treated by City Hall. Officers rallied before a City Council meeting.
Recruitment efforts by the Department fell flat as a call for lateral transfers into Pasadena resulted in just two applications. At the same time, a similar call by the Anaheim Police Department led to 400 applications. But it’s not just staffing; Villacana also said that equipment in the Department is becoming problematic.
“The condition of our equipment has deteriorated rapidly due to the city’s late procurement process, which delays the acquisition of essential items such as vehicles for our fleet. This causes our personnel to look at cities where equipment purchases aren’t an issue,” Villacana said.
The Pasadena Police Officers Association called on the City Council to carefully consider the Department’s challenges and take proactive measures to ensure that the Department remains strong and fully capable of serving the City.
“The safety of the people of Pasadena is the top priority,” said Mayor Victor Gordo. “In my view, that means having a police Department that is staffed at the appropriate level with the very best police officers that we can recruit. Our city has grown increasingly complex, and I do believe it is healthy for us to analyze carefully current staffing levels and needed staffing levels.”
In an email to Pasadena Now, Public Information Officer Lisa Derderian said the City values the highly specialized skills and experience of its sworn law enforcement officers.
“We recognize that the law enforcement field is highly competitive and that the demand for qualified individuals to fill law enforcement roles often exceeds the pool of qualified candidates,” Derderian said. “Over the last several years, we’ve been deliberate in our efforts to support hiring and retention. We’ve partnered with Human Resources to aggressively recruit and fill vacancies, and we’ve made investments in our personnel in the form of multi-year labor contracts with the Pasadena Police Officers Association, and most recently, with the newly established Pasadena Police Lieutenants Association.”
Those contracts include competitive across-the-board wage increases in addition to increases in POST certification premiums designed to support the retention of our experienced officers. Derderian said as a result of those efforts, 97% of the sworn positions are currently filled.
“We are fortunate to have nearly all sworn positions either filled or in the pipeline to be filled, and we will continue robust recruitment and retention efforts to ensure staffing levels fully support all of the City’s public safety needs.”
Since January 2023, eight lateral officers from other law enforcement agencies have come to the Department along with 13 police officer trainees.
“During that same time, we’ve seen nine officers resign to accept roles with other law enforcement agencies,” Derderian said. “Some of these resignations are the result of natural cyclical attrition for reasons that are beyond our control. However, we know there are things within our control that can be done to encourage recruitment and retention.
“We believe that the Pasadena Police Department is a premier law enforcement agency and a great place to work, and we are committed to using data-driven approaches to drive well-informed decision-making in how we recruit and retain officers that embody the values of the Pasadena Police Department and the community we serve. We value our officers and our labor union partners, and we look forward to continued dialogue on all issues of mutual concern.”
Pasadena Police Chief Eugene Harris told Pasadena Now last year that he did an analysis on pending and expected retirements in the Department when he first came to town and discovered that in the next two or three years, 20 police officers with adequate years of service will be at retirement age.
The in-depth look also revealed there will be a lot of new officers in the front end of the Department that will have been with the Department for two to five years and a limited number of post-20-year veterans higher up in the Department. Harris has instituted a recruitment policy calling on officers to visit their alumni institutions to find the next generation of Pasadena police officers.
But other officers see more problems outside of City Hall. On Monday, Kyle Hazen, a member of the Pasadena Police Officers Association Board of Directors, said the City’s oversight commission is a problem.
“Pasadena is one of the few Departments with civilian oversight. While oversight is often viewed as a positive measure, it can become a deterrent when discourse from the oversight committee is perceived as hurtful, inflammatory, or even dangerous. This level of scrutiny drives officers to seek employment with agencies that do not subject their every action and intention to such intense examination, scrutiny, and bias.”
Earlier this year, one commissioner received a cease and desist letter from lawyers working for the Pasadena Police Officers Association for referring to officers involved in the fatal shooting of Anthony McClain as murderers. McClain was shot and killed by a Pasadena police officer on Aug. 15, 2020, during a traffic stop. Officers said McClain had a gun, but some people say they don’t see it in camera footage of the incident. According to police, a gun with McClain’s DNA was found at the scene. The District Attorney found the officer within the law at the time of the shooting. He was never charged with murder.
“…Your continued statements and reference to the officer-involved shooting as ‘the murder of Anthony McClain’ by Officer Dumaguindin, or referring to him as a ‘murderer,’ are entirely false and thus made with malice and reckless disregard for the truth,” the letter stated. Several commissioners did not respond when Pasadena Now sought comment on the letter in June.
In 2023, the Pasadena Police Department conducted over 14,617 traffic stops resulting in zero instances of force, according to Hazen. These stops led to the recovery of 39 firearms. Additionally, approximately 108,000 incidents were generated during that same year, with force being used in less than 1% of these cases.
“Despite these positive outcomes, the Community Police Oversight Commission continues to criticize and undermine the Department, which contributes to the departure of personnel from our ranks. The Community Police Oversight Commission was created to build trust between the community and the Police Department, yet several members do the exact opposite, dividing the community and seeding distrust towards the Pasadena Police Department,” Hazen said on Monday.
According to one police officer, if the Department falls below 200 officers, it could become even harder to staff patrol, which could increase response times to calls for service.
“Currently, every day, officers are hired on an overtime basis to meet minimum staffing for patrol,” David Llanes told Pasadena Now. “Most of it is voluntary. Going under 200 will mean officers will more often be forced to work longer shifts for coverage, and others will be ordered to work overtime shifts.
“Below 200 is scary,” said one former Pasadena police officer, who did not wish to be named. “Those extra 25 to 30 officers mean better response times, more backup, and higher morale. Under 200 means fewer officers on the street, fewer detectives, fewer motor officers, and it means we are seen less. No matter what the statistics say, if you are a victim, crime is up.”
To make matters worse for local police officers, the City Council on Monday granted the Rose Bowl Operating Company authority to hold even more huge events. While that’s good for the stadium, it could mean beleaguered officers are forced to work even more overtime.
“Morale is suffering because of all the forced overtime, and cops are looking to work elsewhere for more base pay and less forced overtime,” Llanes said.
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