Council gives city power to skirt VPOA
'Public Safety Emergency' passes
The Vallejo City Council approved a local public safety emergency proclamation and symbiotic police reform initiative Tuesday night, allowing the police chief and city manager to bypass Vallejo Police Officers Association scrutiny on certain issues.
In a unanimous council vote, the declaration of emergency gives Chief Shawny Williams “the ability to hire a command staff without having to go through
the civil service process,” Mayor Bob Sampayan said Wednesday.
When interim assistant police chief Joe Allio resigned last week to care for an ailing daughter, it left Williams as the lone nonVPOA member.
“What we want to see is the command staff that is not part of the VPOA,” Sampayan said. “That’s the problem we’re having now. It makes for a difficult time when it comes to enforcing the chief’s mandates. This will give the chief more authority.”
The 100- plus member VPOA quickly responded:
“They already said they’ll file an injunction and take us to court. They have fought us for everything,” Sampayan said.
VPOA lawyer Peter Hoffmann said in a press release Wednesday that the “emergency declaration is an abuse of power that does nothing to address the rise in real crime, shootings, rape, and murder in Vallejo. What the citizens and VPOA need is more cops on the streets, not more administrators behind desks.”
With the proclamation’s passing, “the City still intends to meet and consult with the Association, but it will not be required to do so before implementing policies that need to be expedited quickly to avert additional crises in the Vallejo Community,” according to City Manager Greg Nyhoff’s report.
During Tuesday night’s three hour meeting, Nyhoff presented a brief slide show detailing Vallejo’s upswing in crimes, particularly homicides that have reached 22 this year compared to nine at the same time in 2019. Williams joined the Zoom meeting conversation, elaborating on the all of this year’s 328 shootings.
Nyhoff said the resolution and proclamation were also necessary to expedite the 45 suggestions of police department reform recommended by the independent OIR Group.
The VPOA will continue to pursue the reforms recommended, said Hoffmann, “while pursuing all legal and administrative remedies to combat this unlawful declaration of a public safety emergency.”
Tuesday night’s actions “will allow the City Manager and Police Chief to manage the necessary actions to flatten the recent unacceptable crime spike and accelerate the necessary transformation of the Vallejo Police Department,” Nyhoff said in his recommendation for passing the initiative and proclamation. Hoffmann disagreed. “The City was clear last night that this ‘ emergency’ doesn’t address crime,” Hoffmann said. “Their action is about City’s desire to create more bureaucratic administrative desk jobs and avoid their obligations to hardworking police officers and a struggling citizenry. The City has invented this ‘emergency’ to give it unusual, unnecessary and illegal powers. The VPOA is going to fight their action to protect the safety of officers and citizens and to preserve our rights.”
“We have seen a spike in crime as we all know …changing policies and cultures are hard,” said Council member Pippen Dew. “We need to make a change quick ly so we had to move forward with this action in order to implement those changes in a satisfactory manner.”
Many of the roughly 40 community members who called to comment during Tuesday night’s Council meeting accused the city manager of a power grab. That won’t be possible, said Dew.
“With the robust and plethora of amendments that will be put in place.. with ample council and community oversight, I think those concerns can be alleviated,” Dew said.
“We need to have limitations of his (Nyhoff’s) powers and how it’s exercised,” said Councilmember Robert McConnell.
The proclamation and police initiative goes into effect immediately and the council has 72 hours to email Nyhoff with any possible “added ons” for the resolution.
“We need to rebuild and redirect our police department and that’s going to require a cultural change,” said McConnell. “Like all matters of growth, it’s going to be painful. If it means going head to head with the VPOA, that’s something we’re prepared to do.”
McConnell and Councilmember Hakeem Brown said Vallejo officers need to be in position to report a bad cop without repercussion.
“No veil of silence,” McConnell said.
“The police chief has to implement more changes than we’ve seen,” Brown said. “We need to take action now. If the buck doesn’t stop with us, we shouldn’t be in office.”
“It’s a critical time in our city. I don’t want to kick the can any more,” said Councilmember Rozzan VerderAliga.
The mayor understood why roughly 85 percent of Tuesday night call-ins were against the proposals, many which chastised Nyhoff to the point where the mayor had to warn citizens to “stay on the subject or you will be muted.”
“I don’t think they have faith in the City Council and they believe they’ve been lied to,” Sampayan said.
“I’m at at-will employee. My interests are in the best interests of the community,” Nyhoff said, emphasizing the ultimate goal is to lower the crime rate and improve the city’s financial future.
“The crime rates we see are unacceptable and we have to take urgent action in attempts to lower those numbers,” Nyhoff said, praising the “majority of those men and women who do a tremendous job and care about you and the community and the community they serve every day. However, in order for us to ensure all officers are accountable and all officers understand our policies and expectations, we have to move forward on these reforms.”
Tuesday’s action was pivotal to the city moving forward, the mayor insisted.
“It’s a brave step for all of us, but something that needed to be done,” Sampayan said.,