MLPD SEEKS ANSWERS TO STAFFING WOES
During last Wednesday’s Mammoth Lakes Town council meeting, Sergeant Jason Heilman dropped a bombshell: the Mammoth Lakes Police Department (MLPD) has lost seven officers in the past year.
Two of these officers retired, one resigned, one began work for the Mono County Sheriff, another for the Bishop City Police Department, and the final two are now located at the Inyo County Sheriff.
The MLPD is funded for 19 sworn positions. But today, the department only has 12 active sworn members – less than the number it had when the Town incorporated in 1984.
MLPD is struggling to laterally recruit officers, leaving the rest of the staff without key support systems. It’s a problem that began when the town went bankrupt in 2012, and cut the department’s staffing.
“It has not really grown back since,” Heilman told the Sheet.
The longlasting impact of the MLPD’s staffing shortage is felt throughout the department.
Typically, three officers would patrol every night. However, currently, the numbers only allow for two. Zero patrol occurs between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., because there are not enough officers to patrol 24/7. Responding to a call becomes complicated when there are only two officers available, as they often both have to arrive at a scene, leaving the remainder of town unmanned.
For Heilman, the short-staffing means working around the clock, often battling his own exhaustion and sacrificing time with his family in order to keep up the grueling demands of his job.
“My husband worked a 13-hour shift the other night,” said Erin Heilman, Sgt. Heilman’s wife, at last week’s town council meeting. “He came home at four in the morning, slept for two hours, then was called back out for a 17 hour shift… that should concern everyone in this room. Your families are safe because my family sacrifices on a daily basis.”
Moreover, the department no longer retains a school resource officer.
“Historically, we’ve had one dedicated school resource officer,” Mayor Amanda Rice told the Sheet. “I’m a teacher, so I’m very dismayed to see that.”
Heilman also raised concerns about the strained MLPD’s ability to police crime in the town’s affordable housing units.
“The stats for the Parcel and the Innsbruck don’t lie,” he said. “Anytime you have low income housing, history shows, it causes increased workload for public safety.”
So why is recruitment so difficult?
The MLPD offers a competitive salary, ranging from $108,871 to $132,334 (see ad in the classified section) for laterally recruited officers. Benefits include health, vision and employeer-paid life insurance.
In Feburary, the Mammoth Lakes Town Council ratified a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Town of Mammoth Lakes and the Mammoth Lakes Police Officer’s Assoication, which will be active through June 30, 2028. The MOU, created by Chief Daniel Casabian and Mammoth Lakes Town Manager Rob Patterson added incentives for the MLPD’s March recruitment cycle such as longevity for laterally recruited, sworn personnel.
Typically, this longevity operates by increasing salary by 3% when a town employee has worked for ten years, adding another 3% for 15 years, and a third 3% for 20. The new recruitment package allows these longevity incentives to transfer to any experience an officer has accrued prior to working for the MLPD.
In April, Casabian and Patterson collaborated again to add recruitment incentives such as a $5,000 signing bonus, a $5,000 relocation reimbursement, and six months of housing in town condos. With these new incentives, the MLPD hired two candidates during its hiring cycles in March and April, respectively.
Still, Casabian hopes for more.
“We didn’t get the amount of applications we were hoping for,” he said. “[Most]… were not qualified.”
The problem isn’t just limited to Mammoth. It’s nationwide, both Casabian and Heilman told the Sheet. Departments everywhere are struggling to hire and maintain their forces.
“When I went to the police academy in 2003, I felt like there were 100 applicants for two positions,” Heilman said. “Now, I feel like there’s two applicants for 100 positions.”
Casabian agreed.
“It’s just so hard to find candidates that want to get into law enforcement,” he lamented.
Multiple police agencies throughout the state advertise a myriad of hiring bonuses, an indication of the universal struggle to recruit officers. For example, the Torrance Police Department offers a maximum salary of $188,000 and a $100,000 signing bonus, the Monterey department offers to pay for a gym membership, and Coronado’s department offers a $2,000 education reimbursement. Each of these departments have flashy websites, with slogans like “More than a career. It’s a calling.”
Casabian and Heilman pointed to the 2020 George Floyd murder, the defund the police movement, and the Trump adminstration’s deployment of ICE as hindrances for Gen Z to join law enforcement.
“There were some negative views towards law enforcement,” Heilman said. “That may have turned the younger generation away from going into the police academy.”
“[Incidents] keep building and building, which makes it a lot more difficult for law enforcement to hire,” Casabian added. “It feels like more and more people are not interested in coming into the profession.”
Heilman believes the Mammoth community still supports its local police force.
“I believe the public absolutely supports and appreciates us,” he said. “I think we truly embody community policing.”
Cassabian noted that while the community is impacted by the news coverage of law enforcement and the national discourse around police, he doesn’t think the public’s perception of MLPD has changed.
“We still have a great relationship with the community,” he said. “There’s been an outpouring of support from the community when they heard about our hiring struggles. A lot of people ask, ‘What can I do, how can I help?’”
However, this community relationship was tested last March, when local resident Jesus Uribe was shot and killed near the public library. Police were deployed to the scene because Uribe was “throwing rocks at passing vehicles,” the MLPD statement read. The comments left on the MLPD’s official statement Instagram post regarding the killing reflected a conflicted public reaction.
“We got a lot of sensitive cops in Mammoth and Bishop,” @ohjeezluis said. “It was a matter of time before they ended up killing someone.”
“God bless,” @deathvalleyalex said, on the flip side. @_adamsadventures_ left six clapping emojis and commented “Amazing job MLPD.”
The mixed perception of this event has endured.
“There were no non-lethal de-escalation tools used whatsoever before four police chased the man and fired multiple times, killing him,” an anoymous community member wrote to the Sheet.
“Though Mr. Uribe was clearly having a crisis and was unpredictable, he did not deserve to die.”
She suggested that perhaps the struggle to recruit officers is systemic, rather than generational.
“Alternatives to policing exist. Though establishing them is no easy task, anything that reduces the presence of guns in public interactions and incidents is a step in the right direction,” she wrote. “If we’re serious about change, shouldn’t we focus on fixing the system instead of the people within it?”
For now, the MLPD and the Town of Mammoth Lakes will continue to focus on hiring more officers.
“We need to look at our hiring practices and see if there’s anything we can improve on to get more people here,” Rice said. “I’m hopeful we will be able to get more staff and fix this problem, because I’m mom and a teacher. I would love a fully-staffed police department.”
Patterson and Casabian are continuing to work on adding lateral recruitment benefits, with the hope of hiring more officers in the June cycle. Casabian hopes the community will understand the effort MLPD has put towards lateral hiring, especially since the new MOU’s ratification in Feburary.
“My goal is to staff this organization to a level that can provide 24 hour coverage for the Town of Mammoth Lakes and ensure the safety of my officers,” he said.
