SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – The San Jose Police Officers Association is calling the city out for not asking for mutual aid Saturday night when there were multiple shootings and stabbings.
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Mutual aid is when other neighboring agencies in nearby cities are called in to assist if the department is overwhelmed.
73 calls went unanswered by law enforcement Saturday night, even as an entire swing shift of San Jose Police Department officers were held over.
There were at least two homicides and two attempted homicides. Some officers worked as many as 16 hours to help assist that night.
"When a supervisor had requested a couple of additional units and the response from our dispatchers was 'We do not have any available units citywide,'" said Sean Pritchard, President of the Board of Directors of the SJPOA.
This happened around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday when there were no free officers able to respond to new calls coming in.
Some of the criticism for what happened has been levied on Mayor Sam Liccardo, but the mayor does not have the authority to request mutual aid.
Only the command staff within the police department are able to request mutual aid, and they determined it was not needed.
"Unfortunately what does suffer and what we don't get to is often as we would like to are the lower priority calls when we have major incidents like this," said SJPD Sgt. Christian Camarillo.
"For example a residential burglary, a car break-in, a traffic accident where no one is injured," he said.
Instead, more serious crimes are given precedence.
The only time mutual aid has been called into the city in decades was for the funeral of a police shooting victim and for the George Floyd protests in 2020.
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