Menifee Police Department staff, facilities taking shape

Menifee Police Chief Pat Walsh points out the bullet-proof glass that now surrounds what was City Hall's reception desk. Menifee 24/7 photos by Doug Spoon

By Doug Spoon, Editor

Renovation of the former Menifee City Hall is nearing completion and the building on Haun Road will be occupied by the new Menifee Police Department by the middle of February.

Pat Walsh, former Lompoc Police Chief hired to be Menifee’s first police chief last March, has been working for nearly a year with city officials in putting together one of the state’s first new municipal police departments in recent years. His department will officially take over law enforcement in the city on July 1, when the city’s contract with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department ends.

The former City Hall building has been retrofitted with support beams and structure required by the state to withstand earthquake and other catastrophic damage. The interior has been reconfigured to include a lobby with bullet-proof glass at the front counter, a records room, work stations for officers, a conference room and multiple security cameras.

When furnished with a bench, this will be the holding room for arrested suspects before transport to jail in Murrieta. An officer will stand watch on the other side of the two-way window.

The building behind the former City Hall, previously occupied by AMR emergency response medical personnel, has been converted to secure rooms for evidence processing and storage, suspect interview rooms and a holding room for suspects until they are transferred to the jail at Southwest Detention Center in Murrieta.

The department will include approximately 75 employees, including sworn officers and civilian personnel. The current leadership staff includes Chief Walsh, Captains Dave Gutierrez and Chris Karrer, and Tiffani Sik, senior personnel and training analyst. Former Hemet Police Chief Dave Brown is on assignment as interim public safety director to assist in the transition.

According to Sik, the department received 310 applicants and interviewed 120 candidates. Currently, 71 applicants are in background check. The hiring plan is to have two lieutenants in place on Feb. 3, then 10 sergeants and another lieutenant on site around April 5 to complete the leadership unit.

“We will have all the leadership hired early, so we can do a lot of leadership training during that time,” Walsh said.

An additional 44 uniformed officers will in place by May 4, giving the department two months for training. There will also be six community service officers, three records technicians, a property specialist and other employees in place. In addition, the Murrieta Police Department is hiring an additional 12 dispatchers to handle Menifee calls as part of an agreement between the two cities.

Walsh shows the property lockers where arresting officers will place evidence. To preserve the chain of custody, the only person with access to evidence after that will be a property technician from the back side of the lockers. All areas will be under constant camera surveillance.

In a presentation to the Menifee City Council on Jan. 15, Deputy City Manager Rochelle Clayton requested and received approval for an additional $620,000 for the purchase of dispatch equipment to be used at the Murrieta station. The original estimated cost of dispatch services for the first year was $910,000, but exact hardware costs at the time were unknown, according to Clayton. The increase will be offset by savings in fire services and Sheriff’s Department service hours that were unfulfilled due to personnel shortages.

During the Nov. 7, 2018 City Council meeting in which the formation of the Menifee Police Department was approved, city attorney Jeffrey Melching said the estimated start-up cost of $5.3 million would be recovered within two years. Budgeted amounts of $3.7 million in Measure DD sales tax revenue and $3.1 million in developer impact fees would fund that cost.

The Menifee Police Department budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year has been estimated at $14.9 million, Clayton said last week. Melching said during his November 2018 presentation it was estimated that the Menifee PD budget would be about $16.8 million by 2023-24, at which time a contract with the Sheriff’s Department contract would be about $25.5 million.

In addition to a cost savings, formation of the city’s own police department will put more officers on the streets. Under the current Sheriff’s Department contract, the city is patrolled by an average of five officers per shift. The original estimate of officers on the street per shift in the new police department is nine. Walsh said that when the department is fully staffed, they could have as many as 12 officers and two sergeants patrolling the streets on each shift.

“We’re not running a 12-12,” Walsh said about the shifts. “It’s pretty typical for a department to run a 12-hour day shift and a 12-hour night shift. It’s easier to manage. But we’re going to have officers who work Monday through Thursday in four or five shifts that are staggered. Then a weekend crew works 12 ½-hour shifts.

"In the early morning, we may have five officers and a sergeant on duty. As we get into the morning commute, we put more people on.”

Menifee PD is acquiring five motorcycles from the Sheriff’s Department and will have a dedicated traffic unit, starting with at least two officers on the streets at one time. The department already has seven Chevy Tahoe vehicles in house and will receive another 23 as patrol vehicles.

The whole process has been a major undertaking, and one the staff is making on the fly, according to Sik.

“We’re building the plane as we’re flying it,” she said.

Walsh met with residents in several public meetings the last few months and was the subject of several recruiting videos as the department reached out to potential candidates. Only two or three members of the current Sheriff’s Department staff applied. Walsh said the officers being hired are from police departments throughout California, plus a couple from Oregon and Texas.

Walsh said he has met with little opposition in his interaction with residents.

“The only thing was that they didn’t really understand what was happening and they loved their Sheriff’s deputies,” Walsh said. “Other than that, you hear the typical things -- they don’t like the way people drive, running red lights and going too fast. If there’s any angst, it’s that people in certain parts of the city say, ‘You care more about them than us.’

“Romoland has been kind of silent. I want them to know we’re there for them. Quail Valley is definitely telling us it’s their community and they want to make sure they’re safe. I told them if it gets to Aug. 1 and they don’t feel like things are better, call my boss.

"They love their community. Sun City is the same way. They say, ‘It’s Sun City, not Menifee.’ But to me it’s all Menifee, and that’s how I’m going to approach it.”

The department will have about 30 Chevy Tahoe vehicles as patrol cars.

Interviews with suspects in this room will be recorded by a video camera.

The former AMR vehicle garage, still filled with furniture this week, will be filled with shelves for storage of evidence.