San Ramon Police: calls for service jump as department reports 2024 statistics and new programs

The San Ramon Police Department presented its 2024 annual report to the City Council on April 8, detailing program expansions, crime and traffic statistics and operational challenges as community-generated calls for service rose sharply.

A department update opened with an organizational overview: the department has 86 authorized positions, the chief said, and is organized into an operations bureau and an administrative bureau overseen by Captains John Cranford and Becky Chestnut. "We actually have 86, because I'm not on there," the chief said, underscoring staffing levels the department uses for planning.

Captain Becky Chestnut described two program highlights: a Behavioral Health Response partnership with the fire department that diverts certain mental-health calls to fire first response when clinically appropriate, and a major outside audit and subsequent overhaul of the department's property-and-evidence operations. Chucking the audit led to upgrades including refrigerated evidence storage, a ventilation drug-packaging station for officer safety, and an aggressive purge of old items; Chestnut said the department reduced stored items from roughly 17,000 to 11,000.

Captain John Cranford summarized a grant-funded Organized Retail Theft (ORT) suppression team and a drone-as-first-responder (DFR) pilot. Cranford said the five-person ORT team has investigated dozens of cases and made regional impact: loss-prevention data from one major retailer indicated the San Ramon team accounted for approximately 30% of solved Northern California Ulta Beauty ORT cases and that suspects arrested in San Ramon had not reoffended at that retailer in the chain's tracking. For the DFR program, Cranford said the department flew 217 drone missions from October through the end of the year, with many tasks beyond ORT support to clear suspicious-vehicle or reckless-driver calls more quickly.

The chief and captains also presented crime and traffic trends. The department reported 79,805 calls for service in 2024, a substantial rise from prior years driven primarily by community-generated dispatched calls rather than officer-initiated activity. The chief described that the department maintained priority-one response times (emergency responses) despite the workload. Use-of-force incidents were low: the department recorded 29 force incidents in 2024 and, the chief said, "every single 1 0 1 was physical force only" (no impact weapons or chemical agents used).

Traffic enforcement statistics showed 7,800 traffic stops and 3,300 citations in 2024; collisions and injury collisions declined year-over-year, the department said. The department reported a marked rise in vehicle theft and other property crimes while violent crime remained lower.

Council members asked about causes and responses: whether theft incidents were driven by non-resident offenders (the department said most ORT arrests were people from outside San Ramon), how to reduce mailbox and catalytic-converter thefts, the role of distracted driving in collisions, and how the department monitors saturation of patrol resources. The chief referenced an ICMA staffing study and provided a department "saturation index" measuring the share of officer time spent on calls for service; San Ramon's calculated saturation index was 51.7%, higher than the 61-city study average (28.9%) used for comparison and reflecting increased community calls.

During the police discussion the council voted to extend the meeting by 30 minutes to finish scheduled business (motion passed unanimously). Council members thanked department staff and asked for continued reporting back on staffing, public-safety outcomes and program performance.

What residents should know: the department is expanding data-driven programs (ORT, DFR), has invested in evidence-room safety, and reports rising property crime and significantly more community-generated service demands. Staff said they will continue to monitor response time performance and return with additional analysis of staffing and program impacts.