CHICO — The Chico police officer nicknamed “Lonely Lefkowitz” finally has some company now that Chief Billy Aldridge reconstituted a traffic enforcement team.
Due to short staffing, patrols dedicated to driving violations fell strictly to Sgt. Todd Lefkowitz, among other duties such as overseeing evidence. But with the department growing, Aldridge deployed other officers to this duty, starting last Monday.
Aldridge revealed the change at the City Council’s budget meeting the following day, when Fire Chief Steve Standridge also said a plan to bifurcate dispatch into police and fire units would remain on hold.
Public safety dispatchers Tovi Brown, Rochelle Finkbiner and Sheri Marshall, left to right, work in the Chico police and fire dispatch center in 2014. (Bill Husa/Enterprise-Record)
Elaborating on traffic, Aldridge told this newspaper that he’s assigned four officers to the team: two weekdays on motorcycles and two weekends for DUI enforcement.
“They will have a zero-tolerance posture for poor driving so we can get people to understand the importance of operating a vehicle safely,” he added. “My hope is it brings a level of safety back to our streets and reduces accidents within the community.”
The council has discussed installing red-light cameras at major intersections due to the number of fatal crashes — something Chico P.D. is exploring — but has not decided whether to do so.
Meanwhile, last year, the chiefs started moving forward with a plan to devote dispatchers to fire calls at a facility separate from the current space at police headquarters. Issues with staffing levels, training and certification put the change on hold.
“We are working on a new training program and classification that is tiered,” Aldridge said, explaining that new dispatchers first learn how to field calls, then gain experience specific to fire and police. “Chief Standridge is working to get certification to have his (dispatchers) on Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP),” Aldridge continued, “and once that occurs, we should have the fire dispatchers ready to move over to his center.”
Standridge does not have an estimate of when this might happen due to the various moving parts, particularly in regards to personnel.
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“Because of the staffing shortage, we had to pause the plans to create a fire PSAP,” he told this newspaper. “This was necessary because the city has struggled to recruit and retain dispatchers, and we have been at a critical point for several years.
“The city has taken aggressive actions to change that trajectory and is slowly building back up the depth of the dispatchers. Once it’s stabilized, we will again focus on the need for a separate dispatch center that serves the fire department, as the two dispatching functions are very unique and challenging for our dispatchers to maintain the capacity to manage both fire and P.D.’s increasing needs.”
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