Salinas police say low staffing endangers the community.

At current staffing levels, Salinas is unsafe, the Salinas Police Officers Association claims. 

“Our city is unsafe for residents,” POA President Gabe Carvey told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. “It is unsafe for our police officers.”

On any given shift, Carvey says there are 11 police officers on duty that can respond to calls for help. But sometimes—like the Fourth of July weekend when there were three shootings—most of the on-duty police officers are tied up for hours.

“Then there are literally no police officers to respond to other crimes,” POA Vice President James Knowlton says. “What happens then? You wait.”

Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin has long talked about the police department functioning at unacceptable low staffing levels. This concern led to a massive restructuring of the department in April 2015 that eliminated all special units and brought back all officers back on patrol.

In an email to his staff, McMillin said that to rebuild the police department, “We have to flatten the organization to provide us a clear horizon, a 'clean slate' on which to build for the future.”

That future remains unclear, Carvey and Knowlton told reporters, without a crisp city vision to make Salinas appealing for new cops.

“There are no incentives,” Knowlton said. “We are asking our city leaders for a plan to save this PD and the residents of Salinas before it’s too late.”

Knowlton says it has become too common to lose candidates to other nearby police departments, which offer better pay in cities where there is less crime.

Last year, Salinas broke its all-time record for homicides, an increase of 90 percent over 2012. Over this same time period, there were 85 percent more rapes and 79 percent more aggravated assaults.

The unchecked rise in crime, Carvey says, is occurring during a police officer staffing crisis.

While the police department actively recruits, the numbers of people that come in are often times equaled by the number of police officers leaving the department. So far this year, a dozen officers have been hired, but 14 left.