Sac PD Cuts May Eliminate Albert Einstein Officer

The police officer assigned to may be out of a job next year.

The Sacramento Police Department, which has a contract to provide officers to the Sacramento City Unified School District, is facing $12 million in budget cuts. Currently it funds two of the 14 school resource officers in the district, but may eliminate both as part of a proposal to trim a total of 167 positions.

“It’s not a budget I would like to propose, but I was told to go cut $12 million,” Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel said of the proposal, which was rejected this week by the Sacramento City Council. He’ll go before the council again on June 7.

Braziel spoke at Thursday’s Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Education meeting, describing a growing partnership between the department and school district. The department funds two school resource officers and a lieutenant to help improve that partnership, he said.

“[Superintendent Jonathan Raymond] asked us for some help and we’re able to provide it,” Braziel said.

The two school resource officer positions that could be eliminated are “floaters,” who can cover sick days or be sent to a school that needs extra coverage. But Officer Frank Ley, one of those two, has been assigned to Albert Einstein Middle School for nearly four years.

Ley said much of his time is spent being a mentor to students there. He also watches for early signs of gang involvement and does interventions to try to steer students away from becoming full-fledged gang members. He said he’s successful about 80 percent of the time.

If his position is eliminated, schools would have to rely more on patrol officers or the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, already stretched thin by budget cuts.

“Personally, I think the schools get better service [from school resource officers] because we don’t get called away,” Ley said at Thursday’s “Coffee with a Cop” in Rosemont.

The Sacramento City Council is set to adopt a final budget by the end of June, Braziel said.