Santa Barbara Police report 12 complaints in 2025, cites expanded training and rapid response times

The Santa Barbara Fire & Police Commission on March 26 reviewed the Santa Barbara Police Department's 2025 annual report on complaints and investigations, which the department said included 12 total complaints, three sustained findings and four active investigations.

Commander Charlie Kasapis, who led the presentation, said the department handled 69,121 calls for service in 2025 and reported average response times that beat internal targets (Priority 1 average 5 minutes, 43 seconds versus a 7-minute goal). "When you compare that to the 12 complaints we had, you can see that we had a 99.98% complaint-free contact rate," Kasapis said.

Kasapis described complaint intake and adjudication steps: complaints can be filed by phone, email, in person, online or through the city administrator's office and are routed to Professional Standards for investigation, review through the chain of command, and disposition. He said dispositions for 2025 were: two unfounded, two exonerated, one not sustained, three sustained and four open cases. Of the three sustained findings he reported two resulted in corrective counseling and one in a suspension.

Chief Gordon and Kasapis emphasized oversight and reporting to the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) for serious misconduct: if a complaint falls within nine POST-defined misconduct categories, the department must notify POST within 10 days and has up to one year to complete its internal investigation. "We only have a year to complete an investigation," Chief Gordon said during the commission's question-and-answer period.

The presentation also covered hiring and community engagement. Kasapis said the department received 1,312 applications in 2025, hired 22 professional staff and 14 officers, and reported fill rates of about 89% (professional) and 90% (sworn). He highlighted a growth in outreach events, reporting roughly 126-128 community events in 2025 and bilingual community academies.

On training, Kasapis said the department moved POST-required coursework in-house, increased annual training to 8,190 POST credit hours (up from 7,641 in 2024) and added more than 3,000 hours of structured internal training. Specialized teams described included two co-response teams (officers paired with county clinicians), a crisis negotiation team and a SWAT unit with monthly trainings.

Commissioners asked about clinician staffing, whether community comments are forwarded to other departments, the mix of in-person versus online training, and how training scenarios are created. Kasapis said the two co-response clinicians come from Santa Barbara County and are assigned full time to work with the department. Barbara Anderson, the city's independent police monitor, was noted as participating in oversight of the complaint process.

The commission did not vote on any disciplinary cases during the meeting; the report was a briefing and commissioners said they would follow up with staff if they needed additional details. The commission moved on to other agenda items after the presentation.