SAN JOSE — A plan to bring back horse-riding police officers to downtown San Jose will remain in the stable after a City Council committee quietly shelved it, amid fierce pushback from a police union about the city’s idea to staff it with overtime.
The proposal was set to be heard by Tuesday, centered around a request to accept a donation from the San Jose Police Foundation to cover the $390,000 in startup costs for buying six horses and funding accompanying equipment and officer training. But last Wednesday, the council’s Rules Committee unanimously agreed to an “indefinite deferral” of the item.
Councilmember David Cohen pitched the deferral at the committee meeting, mentioning “a lot of uncertainty in the police department budget, and at this time it’s better to wait than to add other police department services.”
In a follow-up statement to the Bay Area News Group, Cohen echoed his budget concern and said the uncertainty also involves “the ongoing impacts of federal disinvestment,” presumably the Trump Administration’s cutting of Department of Justice grants for California law enforcement agencies.
“While the proposal was presented as an acceptance of a donation, it carries more complexity, including ongoing costs, and requires further evaluation before consideration,” Cohen said.
Those “ongoing costs” were a focus of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, which is in contentious contract negotiations with the city. The talks garnered public profile recently when the union decried a city and police department plan to cut overtime work for patrol officers performing supplemental investigative work. The union characterized it as retaliation against the backdrop of negotiations, while the city and police brass called it called a temporary move to get ahead of serial cost overruns with overtime spending.
Under the proposal, the city would eventually take on about $120,000 in annual expenses for upkeep of the horses, but the officers riding them would be paid through voluntary overtime shifts. That did not sit well with the union, which upon finding out about the proposal had its attorney send a letter to the city and police department, objecting to the plan advancing without officials speaking to the union about the possible changes.
“We learn of it for the first time less than two weeks before the vote, and — brace yourself — it will run on voluntary overtime,” the letter reads.
In its proposal memo and in follow-up remarks to this news organization, the police department contends that staffing the prospective unit would not have incurred new costs and would draw from existing council funding restricted to use for downtown walking patrols that have been “underutilized” and “unused.”
The police department touted the mounted unit revival as a boon for increasing police visibility downtown, bolstering deterrence of quality-of-life crimes, being “a force multiplier in community policing and special event coverage,” providing “crowd control and incident response at events, protests, or areas with transient congregation,” and serving as a “unique and effective tool for positive community engagement.”
While the plan is now in legislative limbo, SJPD is not putting it out to pasture, saying in a statement that “the department plans to continue to pursue this worthwhile project.”
SJPOA President Steve Slack employed his own string of equine-inflected terms after the council item was shelved.
“Pulling the reins on this proposal was the right thing for the council to do and we look forward to a robust dialogue with the city and department about what the best use of scarce police overtime resources ought to be used for,” Slack said in a statement. “We all want a stable police department and we are encouraged that the council removed the blinders to ensure a transparent process moving forward.”
Still, the overtime rift prompted several detectives to speak to this news organization under condition of anonymity — for fear of department retaliation — to detail the tangible impacts that the recent overtime changes have had on investigative units since they were implemented about a month ago.
The department restricted discretionary overtime, notably decreasing or eliminating the support detectives got from patrol officers working low-level cases or assisting in larger cases in their off-time, affecting all but the department’s most critical investigations.
One detective said they have had to triage cases more heavily, and that officer burnout is “getting to a breaking point.”
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“We can’t solve cases the way we like to, or put the effort we want to. There are only so many hours in the day,” the detective said. “We’re swamped, and we’re doing more with less. There are really good people in department who work hard, and are just told, ‘Work harder.’ ”
Furthermore, the detective and several department veterans, including supervisors, said the restrictions have iced an informal training ground for patrol officers aspiring to become detectives, by allowing them to learn investigative techniques. The dynamic was mutually beneficial, they said, leveling up patrol officers’ baseline skills and giving those who successfully got into a detective unit the ability to contribute right away.
The police department emphasized its overtime changes “are not permanent, nor are they intended to eliminate the valuable benefits that specialized overtime assignments can provide, including the investigative exposure some patrol officers have gained in the past.”
“If a unit becomes stretched thin and requires additional support, the chief has made clear that those requests can be elevated and considered on a case-by-case basis. What we are focused on is making sure those requests are backed by operational need,” the department said. “As we continue working to address staffing shortages, our goal is to eventually return to utilizing those specialized overtime assignments more consistently.”