Measure M – no pun intended – is saving Manteca’s bacon.

The extra half cent sales tax we all pay when we shop in town is paying the salaries and benefits of 11 of Manteca’s 72 officers. Another two officers are paid with interest from a public safety endowment fund set up with fees paid by new home builders.

Should the worse happen – Manteca losing 15 police officers to budget layoffs plus the state releasing 2,500 inmates significantly ahead of schedule in the coming months – the community will still have 57 officers. Without Measure M there would be only 44 officers – a staffing level not seen in Manteca since the early 1990s.

 Manteca municipal management and Manteca Police Officers Association representatives are pushing hard this week to try to avoid layoffs from happening. No one is happy with the situation. The city, smarting from the state pilfering another $1.1 million in property taxes at the same time property and sales taxes are declining – is still trying to bridge what is left of an original deficit of $11.6 million – some $2.5 million.

City management figures with concessions being negotiated with other employee groups and early retirement of three or so senior officers, they can skate by the rest of the fiscal year without reducing the police force further. The concessions for the police are to forgo raises for 2010 and 2011 plus forgo an annual $1,000 uniform allowance for two years and pay more into their retirement.

If the worse scenario unfolds, Police Chief Dave Bricker said personnel will be shifted from other units such as detectives and gangs to keep the patrol’s presence on the streets at its current level. That means all of the effort that has been put into pro-active efforts to go after repeat offenders, gangs, and drugs that the police have been able to do since Measure M passed will go to the wayside.

“Our crime rate will go up should that happen,” Bricker said.

It should be noted after passage of Measure M, it was predicted a positive impact on crime would start happening in a little more than a year. It actually took 18 months. Thanks in a large part to the staffing Measure M has allowed Manteca to enjoy, the crime rate has fallen for eight straight months.

Couple police layoffs with early releases and it don’t paint a pretty picture.

On release levels that there appears to be a consensus on up in Sacramento, San Joaquin County will see an additional 2,500 criminals dumped back on to its streets.

A study by the Rand Corp. think tank projects that those 2,500 career criminals are likely to commit nine felonies with three of them considered violent over the next two years.

It is important to remember you have to be arrested and convicted a number of times any more to reach the state’s big houses. Those coming out early meet the definition of career criminals. Plus they are coming into a county already struggling with a 16 percent unemployment rate.

It will put more pressure on police to keep the peace.

Contingency plans are already in the works should the unthinkable happen and layoff notices go out to as many as 15 Manteca Police officers.

Bricker has started talking with nearby agencies about forming a regional SWAT team which would be a step beyond the Manteca-Ripon partnership.

Such specialized training is critical when another situation happends such as the one Thursday involving the two suspects involved in the Bank of America armed robbery.

In the worst case scenario, major crimes should still be investigated but those farther down ladder will either take longer, be lumped in with similar cases or go to the wayside.

Manteca – currently at 72 officers - actually is authorized 83 officers which is considered a decent level for a community of 65,000.

Being down nine officers has made all the volunteer units of the Manteca Police Department even more critical to helping maintain public safety by freeing up officers to concentrate on handling calls and crime investigations.

If you can’t make a huge time commitment there is one way to be of a big help freeing up officers in pressing circumstances such as Thursday’s standoff, murder investigations, or even a missing child search. That is to become a member of the Citizens Emergency Response Team (CERT).

Six weeks of free training starts this Thursday at the Manteca District Ambulance offices on East Center Street.

For more information contact CERT leader Jesse Ramirez at 471-2306 or access www.mantecapd.com/cert for more details.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com