Caught in an injury-free fender bender? Don’t expect the police to show.
Effective this month, Long Beach police will no longer respond to many non-injury vehicle crashes in an effort to focus on high-priority calls amid a record shortage of cops.
In a statement released Wednesday, the department explained that LBPD officers will respond only in situations where the collision either involves a pedestrian, cyclist, impaired driver, city property or a public agency-owned vehicle.
Police declined to make someone available for an interview but said in an email that the change will “help alleviate the current workload in patrol” and let officers “prioritize responding to priority one emergency calls for service, which improves our overall response efficiency.”
For crashes that involve an unlicensed or uninsured driver, disabled vehicle on the road, or a disorderly or uncooperative party, the city can dispatch a civilian community service assistant in lieu of a police officer, officials said.
For other crashes, drivers should still call police dispatch at 562-435-6711 if they need help filing a report. A community service assistant may still respond to these calls if they are available. In some cases, drivers can file a report themselves through the LBPD Online Police Reporting System.
The change, which took effect Oct. 1, will remain in place as a one-year pilot that officials hope will lessen the strain on officers who already struggle to meet demands for violent or serious crimes.
This comes two months after an analysis of city data found Long Beach police officers have in the years since the pandemic been running at about 80% strength.
Hamstrung by its rank-and-file deficit — 155 vacancies in August — cops are taking much longer to respond to calls than they did three years ago:
Response times to second- and third-priority calls, which include crimes like theft, arson and other property crimes that have the potential for violence, each rose by about 20 minutes between July 2021 and 2024.
Responses to priority 1 “life-threatening” calls, which involve assault and other serious crimes, rose to 5 minutes and 48 seconds — nearly a minute and a half increase — in the same period of time.
Lt. Rich Chambers, president of the Long Beach Police Officers’ Association, said he “can’t argue against” the department’s decision to stop sending officers to minor crashes. “We actually need our police officers free to focus on some of the more serious crimes,” he said.
In a statement, the LBPD said the decision mirrors policies already in place at other law enforcement agencies. Several departments statewide, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, have, for years, diverted minor traffic calls to non-sworn personnel.
Growing pains are expected, however. “It will take some getting used to since it’s a service we’ve always provided,” Chambers said. But the shift will free up officers to focus more on violent crime and solve more cases — a move that will likely improve officer morale.
“What has been true over the last several years is that we’re in a constant state of adjustment,” Chambers said. “What had been normal and static for a long time — those are under constant change given our staffing realities and changes in the law. While this is going to take an adjustment, it’s just another change that police officers are happy to get used to.”