I am very disappointed with the state of emergency services in City of Menifee.
When someone calls 9-1-1 frantically because they think someone is breaking into their home, it is not acceptable for the emergency operator to reply, and I paraphrase, “Sorry, we don’t have any officers available, they are out on higher priority calls, we will have an officer call you back when they are available”.
Yes, this is what dispatch told my mother this morning when this scenario presented itself to her. Fortunately, she was able to make a call to family to come check on her this time, and everything was OK. What happens next time, when that family member is not available?
After the fact, officers told us that on the mid-watch, Menifee has 3 officers on duty at any given time. That’s 3 officers for a city of over 88,000 people, in fabulous Riverside County no less.
Another interesting note, it was mentioned by a city official that although the total number of police officers we should have in Menifee is somewhere in the 80’s, we are staffed somewhere in the 30’s. Think about that, that’s a scary number if accurate.
We are a growing city, the state wants more of our profits every day, but something’s not right here. We’re either not properly forecasting and growing our emergency services adequately, or, we’re recklessly slashing them due to budget cuts. Either way, this should be a priority, and a critical safety concern for our city.
Our current state of response when it comes to public safety is unacceptable! At this rate, we’re waiting on a catastrophic incident to occur for us to really dig deep and take this matter seriously!
A young and growing city, are we making poor decisions at the cost of our community?
We need change!