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San Leandro Police present 2024 annual report; department highlights staffing gains and crime trends
Summary
Police Chief Everett and staff reviewed 2024 staffing, recruitment and crime data for San Leandro: sworn staffing rose, the department reported declines in several property-crime categories and a mixed violent-crime picture; the chief emphasized hiring goals, more police service technicians and data-driven policing.
San Leandro Police Chief Everett presented the department’s 2024 annual report to the City Council, outlining staffing, recruitment, community engagement and crime statistics and outlining priorities for 2025.
The department reported progress on recruitment: 10 to 11 new police officers were hired this year (with another lateral officer due to start), up from seven in 2023, though the department remains below its full authorized strength. Lieutenant John Robertson reported the department is allotted 91 sworn positions and at the time of the presentation had approximately 71 sworn personnel with roughly 20 vacancies; the chief said staffing remains the top operational challenge.
On crime trends, the Criminal Investigations Division reported mixed results through September 2024 compared to the same period in 2023: robberies fell about 35 percent, larcenies decreased roughly 39 percent and stolen vehicles declined about 42 percent, while aggravated assaults were up roughly 23 percent. Murders reported were four in 2022, six in 2023 and four thus far in 2024; most homicide cases were solved, department leaders said, with two cases still under investigation.
Chief Everett emphasized a focus on sustainable staffing, proactive, intelligence-led public safety, redeployment and hiring of police service technicians (PSTs), and employee wellness. He set a departmental hiring goal of three police officers per quarter in 2025 and said the department plans to increase PST staffing to provide high-visibility, non-sworn public-safety presence and to assist patrol with nonfirearm duties.
Support-services manager Latanya McDaniel said the department’s enhanced-911 call-processing equipment is overdue for replacement; the department intends to move to next-generation 911 (NG-911) to improve location accuracy and redundancy. McDaniel said the replacement will likely cost several hundred thousand dollars and that the department is pursuing available state funding.
Council members and public commenters asked for additional and more comparative data, including crime clearance rates, the impacts of license-plate-reader and camera investments, and whether data showed differential stops by race. One public commenter asked the department to report clearance rates and comparisons to regional trends; another urged the department to publish outcome metrics on technologies such as StarChase and license-plate readers.
The presentation was informational. Council members expressed support for hiring, data-driven policing and greater transparency about performance metrics; the chief said the department intends to provide more detailed data in future briefings as staffing and analyst capacity increase.
