By Joe Rodriguez
San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Trying to generate public pressure to force City Hall to reverse its decision, San Jose’s police union Sunday lambasted Mayor Chuck Reed and the City Council for disbanding an elite anti-gang unit.
“This is a warning,” said George Beattie, president of the San Jose Police Officers Association. “The elimination of the Violent Crime Enforcement Team will have a devastating impact on the city.”
Friday was the last day for the team, whose 21 officers were credited with making about 1,000 gang-related arrests annually in recent years. Better known by the unit’s acronym, VCET, officers mainly patrolled neighborhoods where gangs held sway, keeping a vigilant watch on veteran gang leaders while steering younger ones to social services. It also kept scrupulous files on many of the city’s estimated 9,000 gang members.
The police union leveled its criticism at a strip mall in East San Jose where an innocent 12-year-old boy was shot in the head last Halloween night, allegedly by three gang members. He suffered near-fatal, disabling wounds.
The union also praised VCET’s record in a paid, full-page advertisement in Sunday’s Mercury News.
Almost a year later, the Halloween shooting has not been forgotten.
“The area needs more police,” said Saul Echeverria, who has a financial stake in the Costa Chica restaurant owned by his brother at the Sunset Gardens Plaza shopping center. “This area used to have an even bigger gang problem.”
Two council members, Nora Campos and Ash Kalra, joined the police union’s appeal to their fellow council members to reinstate the unit immediately.
“Without VCET, we can’t do it,” Kalra said. “They were doing the real heavy lifting against gangs.”
But Mayor Reed on Sunday defended the decision by Police Chief Rob Davis and the council to disband VCET as part of a larger reorganization forced by layoffs and skyrocketing police pension benefits.
“We had to cut people to make pension payments,” Reed said. “You can’t do the same work with less people.”
After city officials and the police union could not strike a deal to reduce pension benefits or pay, the city laid off 90 officers this year. Before the reorganization, Reed said, VCET and the department’s Metro unit had 57 officers between them. Now they have 38 combined, and the gang-unit no longer exists as an independent team with a singular mission of ridding the city of gangs. The Metro unit is responsible for basic patrolling and responding to crimes and accidents.
Police union Vice President Jim Unland said no amount of reorganization can replace the anti-gang team.
“No one is going to know the gangs like VCET knew the gangs,” he said. “The work will get diluted because nobody will be doing it full time.”
Copyright 2010 San Jose Mercury News