Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Public Safety Police topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Gardena police chief praises staffing gains, cites major fireworks seizure and community programs
Summary
Gardena Police Chief Mike Saffel reviewed department history, recent staffing and program changes, crime statistics for 2024 and a large fireworks seizure the department says was the largest in California.
Police Chief Mike Saffel used the State of the City gathering to present a 95-year history of the Gardena Police Department and to summarize recent operational changes and crime figures.
“We have 2 missions at the Gardena Police Department. They are distinctly different. We make people safe and we make them feel safe,” Chief Mike Saffel said, describing the department’s dual focus on tactical response and community engagement.
Saffel highlighted staffing and program milestones: he said the department currently has 91 officers, has promoted dozens of staff in recent years, and added specialized teams and technologies, including a real-time crime center, a drone program, a citywide camera feed and a trained explosive-and-firearms-detection K-9 named Ghost.
Saffel also described a major 2024 enforcement action involving illegal fireworks. “75 tons of fireworks were discovered. ... We had 52 pallets with approximately 150,000 pounds of fireworks. It required 5 53 foot, tractor trailers and 1 40 foot big rig to haul this away. Street value of these fireworks was estimated between 7 and $10,000,000,” Saffel said. He said the seizure was the largest single fireworks seizure in the department’s history and, according to the address, the largest in California.
Crime and use-of-force data cited by the chief: - Officers responded to roughly 55,000 calls for service in 2024, of which about 29,000 were face-to-face encounters. - The department recorded 14 complaints in 2024, a complaint rate of about 0.048% per face-to-face incident as stated in the address. - The department recorded 31 uses of force in 2024 (about 0.106% of face-to-face encounters, per the chief).
Saffel emphasized community-facing programs, including district policing, a community academy, a Find and Protect campaign (which distributes Apple AirTags to help locate caretakers’ missing relatives) and partnerships with schools around STEM and drones. He said 10 officers received lifesaving awards at a regional ceremony and that the department received policy recognition for ongoing policy maintenance.
What the speech did not include: detailed incident reports, names of suspects, or prosecutorial outcomes for the fireworks seizure; those records would be handled through standard law-enforcement channels.
Saffel closed by thanking long-serving community leaders and department staff and urging continued two-way communication between the police and neighborhood representatives.
