SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The San Diego Police Department had a staffing shortage on Monday when two gunmen stormed a mosque and killed three people.
The force was supposed to have a minimum of 14 officers on duty in the northern division, which includes Clairemont, where the Islamic Center of San Diego is located, but police sources say there were just seven officers working in the division when the shooting happened.
“We’ve been raising the red flags about staffing for over a year now and when we lost $12 million last year in overtime, it really affected our ability to police this city,” said San Diego Police Officers Association president Jared Wilson.
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Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, said response times are unacceptable. He said it’s taking officers over 40 minutes to get to priority one calls in San Diego.
The union leader said while the massive law enforcement response to the shooting was excellent, the force’s staffing levels are at a historic low and officers can take days to respond to less serious calls.
In March, data from the police department showed priority one calls, which include active burglaries, had an average wait time of 43 minutes. The department’s target is 14 minutes.
The data, released in a public records request, shows that priority two calls, which include reports of runaway juveniles, were taking over two hours. The picture was even worse for priority three calls, which had an average wait time of three hours.
“It’s unacceptable. We have to do better in the city. We need to devote more resources to getting patrol officers to these calls in a timely fashion,” Wilson said.
Late Wednesday, the San Diego Police Department told us it would not be able to respond to this story.
“As you can imagine, there are a lot of details we are working to sort through right now,” an unnamed spokesperson said in a statement.
The statement did not answer any of our questions or address staffing levels as of Monday.
Investigative Reporter Austin Grabish can be reached at austin.grabish@10news.com