Walnut Creek council hears urgent staffing shortfalls in police and 911 dispatch

Walnut Creek — At a public hearing required by state law, police officers and dispatchers told the Walnut Creek City Council on June 3 that persistent vacancies and extended hiring timelines are shrinking frontline capacity and elevating public safety risks.

The presentation, made during a hearing under Government Code section 3502.3 (AB 2561), included detailed staffing figures from the Walnut Creek Police Officers Association and the city’s dispatch center. Shane Blatz, president of the Walnut Creek Police Officers Association, said the department currently lists 85 sworn positions but only 61 officers are available for solo patrol once trainees, officers in field training and injured employees are excluded. “We are really struggling, as an industry, trying to recoup from the time of 2020 and 2021,” Blatz said.

The council received additional staffing detail from dispatchers and Teamsters representatives. Dispatcher Zachary Richelme said the center had 12 full‑time dispatchers plus one part‑time (12.5 FTE) at the time of the meeting; the unit had recently operated with 14.5 FTE and lost two dispatchers to other agencies. Richelme described forced overtime in June that required staff to work 25 of 30 days and said staffing shortfalls increase the risk of delayed 911 answers and of burnout among dispatchers.

Why it matters: Police and dispatch staffing directly affect response times, investigation capacity and officer safety. Both sworn and civilian public‑safety employees described long background and training timelines — up to six months for new police academy recruits and about six months of in‑house training for new dispatchers — that limit how quickly vacancies can be filled.

What was said and proposed: Blatz gave a breakdown of sworn staffing and vacancies, noting three recruits in the police academy, eight injured officers and several officers in field training. He outlined consequences of low staffing, including reductions to specialty units previously deployed (MET, SROs, traffic). “A lot of agencies are struggling with this lack of veteran officers that are there to continue that process,” Blatz said. Dispatchers requested restoring their authorized headcount to 14.5 to reinstate swing shifts, reduce mandatory overtime and preserve service levels.

City staff said the AB 2561 report showed a citywide vacancy rate of about 10.3% (data through May 10, 2025) and explained that vacancy rates fluctuate day to day; the human resources director, Trish Raver, detailed recruitment process improvements the city has adopted to shorten timelines and broaden applicant outreach. Raver said police recruitment has been streamlined to allow conditional offers and initiation of background checks on interview day and that the city has removed redundant background steps to shorten processing by one to two weeks.

Council action and follow up: Council unanimously moved to receive and file the AB 2561 presentation after asking staff for supplemental information on overtime budgeting, forced overtime policy, the composition of vacancies (trainees vs. true vacancies), and benchmarking for injury rates and hiring timelines. Council members said they wanted the full PowerPoint slides and additional data on FTE accounting for the police and dispatch units.

Context and next steps: The hearing is the first annual presentation under AB 2561; no bargaining unit met the statute’s threshold to require a separate, detailed bargaining‑unit presentation. Council asked staff to circulate the slide decks and to return with clarifications on specific items raised by the Police Officers Association and the dispatchers, including staffing counts, the forced‑overtime policy, and a pro forma showing the effect of restoring dispatcher headcount to 14.5 FTE.

Ending: Council members thanked presenters and told staff they expect follow‑up information ahead of budget adoption later in June.