Trenton Johnson fully intends to be one of Ceres’ hardest working police chiefs over the next several years. That will help a department that is understaffed and underfunded.

Just weeks after the Ceres City Council gave him a resounding 5-0 vote of approval to permanently succeed Chris Perry as chief, Johnson was busy operating the department’s $15,000 drone four nights during the week of Fourth of July to catch violators setting off illegal fireworks. That kind of hands-on, behind-the-scene work ethic will be common with Johnson who notes how short his department is of officers.

“We’re down to 38 officers,” the new chief said. “It doesn’t cost the city anything for me to be out there because I’m salaried. So it’s a benefit that I can help the city and doesn’t cost it money. And I was the sergeant in charge of the drone unit before I started promoting so I still have that passion for it.”

It helps that Johnson still enjoys “being a cop and being involved.”

“It means a lot to the people we have here right now. What I have found, is they want to be communicated with. They want to see a chief that’s out there working with them. That’s definitely my personality. So hopefully that’s a good combination.”

He begins his tenure buoyed by the council’s unanimous vote of support as well as the full confidence of his officers.

“My goal is to keep their support. In Ceres, I think that a lot of the employees here in the police department just weren’t being listened to. They weren’t being communicated with and that’s a big deal. They want to be in the know. They want to know what’s going on. They want to know what the chief is dealing with, what admin is doing, what direction the department’s going. And they want their ideas to be heard, even if you don’t go with them. They’re like, ‘Hey I have an idea.’ Okay, well, let’s talk about it. But we probably can’t do that. In fact, we were just talking right now about a crime analyst. It’s a great idea. We need one. We don’t have the money for it. But they just weren’t being heard.”

Short on officers

Currently the Ceres City Council has funded 47 police officers with five authorized slots that are unfunded.

“We should be at 52,” said the chief. “A lot of this is not sustainable,” he said, adding, ”I don’t know how many more cuts we can take.”

Ironically, Johnson and his staff found some paperwork from the late Chief Peterson showing that he projected how many officers Ceres was going to have in the future “and it was like double the amount that we have right now.” Peterson served from 1983 to 1999.

Besides a shortage of officers, currently CPD’s administration is also short because of budget problems. Johnson previously filled the captain’s position – which he enjoyed – but is now vacant.

“Our staffing is so critical and now that we don’t have a captain. It’s me and three lieutenants and there’s a lot put on their plates too. The lieutenants are really stepping up. One of the lieutenants (Travis Hudson) is back at the National Academy for 10 weeks, so we’re down to two. And one of the spots that was frozen or unfunded is a sergeant spot. So now we’re down a sergeant too.”

He said it’s common to have only two sergeants running 12-hour shifts.

While the council recently approved higher salaries in an effort to attract and retain officers, there are other factors that cause officers to leave out of Ceres’ control, the chief noted. After officers get on-the-job experience in a busy department they often move on due to Ceres being a small agency and limited in offering special assignments – something most officers desire. 

“Let’s take the Sheriff’s office. They have the equestrian unit, the off road unit, the air unit and they have the canine unit. You can just do so many different things, and some of these officers want to go out there and they want to experience where in Ceres it’s limited. They want to do their time on patrol, but then they want to experience the other sides of law enforcement. And the goal should be to promote. And that’s kind of the succession.”

At age 49, Johnson is only a year away from 50, the magic retirement age for most law enforcement but Johnson has pledged to hold off.

“I made a promise to these guys, and I’ll keep good on it. So I’ll be here until I meet my goals, uh, unless the city fires me or the Police Officer Association has no confidence in me anymore, I would resign.”

He expects that it will be realistic to accomplish those goals in three years but said “it all hinges on the budget. I’m looking forward to the next three years, I think we’re gonna get a lot accomplished. I’m very connected with this community. Like I said at the council meeting, your problems in Ceres are my problems because I live here. I want to make it better than it was. I think we have just standout employees here that have slugged it out.”

Johnson said his three main goals for his officers are to focus on gangs, drugs and traffic.

“The gangs have changed. You don’t see the gang members walking down the street flying colors. Back when I was on patrol, you had the red and the blue, and they would walk around with that, and it’s not like that now. They don’t dress like that but they’re still committing the same crimes, still have the same tattoos. It’s still the North and the South, and the white gangs.

ICE raids

With ICE raids being in the news lately, Johnson said he’s not seen immigration officers in Ceres but said his department isn’t necessarily going to assist ICE “unless it’s an officer safety issue and they need our help. Since they’ve been doing this, they really don’t need our help. They’re doing what they do federally, they’re forcing the immigration laws, great. We’re not going to impede them.”

Homelessness is not a huge problem in Ceres with the neighboring cities of Modesto and Turlock accounting for the highest numbers in the county but Johnson does not see the problem locally or statewide getting better. Code Enforcement is dealing with homeless persons illegally camping in Ceres but he sees the problem as multi-faceted, complicated and requiring a group effort with no clear answers.

In the case of unlicensed vendors selling food products, Code Enforcement will involve the county Health Department which comes and seizes everything.

Holding officers accountable

Johnson rejects the occasional public perception that many cops are on a power trip.

“That would be a concern if they were just out here on a power trip, trying to exude their authority. I don’t see that. I think nobody likes nobody likes to be pulled over. Nobody wants a ticket. I gave this example the other day: If you’re sitting at the coffee shop at Hatch and Mitchell and a speeder goes by, and they they’re in a loud car and race by, they run the red light or something, everybody sitting there’s like ‘where’s the cop when you need him? He should get a ticket.’ When you get in your car and you do 55 down Mitchell, which is over the speed limit and you get pulled over by the motor officer and he writes you a ticket (they think) ‘I can’t believe this officer’s writing me a ticket. I was only going 10 miles over the speed limit. Don’t you have criminals to go catch?’ And it’s just like, nobody wants to get a ticket.”

Another misconception is that writing tickets helps the city’s budget, which is not the case, he said. The state gets roughly half, counties receive 40 percent and cities get around 10 percent.

With recent personnel problems faced by the Sheriff’s Department, Johnson intends to make sure his officers are held accountable.

“I think that right now, we have a really good group of employees that are out there doing the right thing for the right reason. They’re doing good work. They’re ethical, they’re honest. They will come and tell me, ‘Hey, I’ve made a mistake.’ And that’s what I want.”

“I would say the way to best prevent it is to be paying attention and making sure, like, for Ceres, our sergeants hold a lot of weight here. They do a very good job of keeping tabs on, what’s going on.”

Dispatcher issue resolved

Johnson said his department has taken care of the loss of dispatcher shortage due to low pay and overtime.

“Everybody left. They quit here and went to work for SR 911 for a substantial raise. We actually went down to one full time dispatcher. That’s all we had here to run a 24/7 operation, and our options were to either staff the center or we’re going to have to switch and contract with SR 911. And I dug my heels in. My wife was a supervisor at the time, and I dug my heels in.”

Johnson was opposed to switching and losing Ceres’ dispatch center. The city got a couple of trainees onboard to increase staffing as well as used some officers who are qualified to dispatch.

“We just dug our heels in, and we went from having the one to now we’re at seven – and we’re still behind.“

Ceres continues to benefit from a contract with the city of Newman for police dispatching. He noted the $200,000 annual payment to Ceres is used for dispatcher pay and raises.

When Sheriff Jeff Dirkse approached Ceres about the possibility of dispatching for the Sheriff’s Department with a new system set up by Oracle instead of remaining with Stanislaus Regional 911 (SR 911), Ceres was willing. But the resistance of county supervisors was fierce and eventually Ceres was unable to get ready under the county’s onerous timeline.

“We needed more time and they did not want to give us more time to present this to them and they didn’t want the county to contract with Ceres,” Johnson said. ”They wanted the (SR 911) JPA to stay together. They want dispatching services to stay. It’s been there forever.”

Local product

Like Chiefs Brent Smith and Rick Collins before him, Johnson benefits from being a product of Ceres and knows the city inside and out.

Local boy from birth

Although he was born locally in 1975, he nearly was born in Japan.

“My mom was eight and a half months pregnant when they flew back to California. I tell people I was made in Japan.” 

He attended the Central Valley Christian Academy in Ceres – then called Modesto Adventist Academy – all the way through high school. His mom, dad and aunt all taught there. His parents are the late Clair and Beverly Johnson.

Early interest

His interest in law enforcement geminated in the eighth-grade when he did a ride-along with a Manteca Police Officer Clay DeFreitas.

“I was hooked. It was a Sunday morning and absolutely nothing happened, but I thought it was the neatest thing in the world. I don’t even think we handled one call. It was just the neatest thing. And then, I carried that passion on through high school became an explorer, I think, maybe my junior year.”

He graduated from high school in 1994 and became a Ceres Police explorer while holding down a job at Gun Country on Yosemite Boulevard in Modesto. Johnson enjoyed working there because he loved shooting guns and making ammunition and had “a great boss.”

Sgt. Mike Borges was in charge of the explorer program and Pete Peterson was the police chief.

After graduating from the Modesto Junior College police academy in 1997, he was hired as a reserve officer in 1998.

In March 1998, just three weeks on the job as a Ceres Police reserve officer, Johnson was involved in a deadly shootout with Officer Howard “Howie” Stevenson. In that case, Steven Schmidt and Kenneth Michael Duckett were attempting to break into an occupied duplex on Whitmore Avenue. Duckett was shot to death by both officers after he raised to raise his hands, pulled a gun from his waistband and aimed it at both.

“I think that everyone goes into this job thinking they’re prepared. You’ve been through the police academy. I’ve been shooting guns my whole life until you get that moment with the adrenaline. You just aren’t really prepared in three weeks of being a cop to handle that. So, was it scary at the time. You’re young and you don’t really realize the danger that you were in.”

One of the four rounds that struck Duckett came from Johnson’s sole round fired.

“This would never happen now, but his parents called the department and apologized and said, ‘That wasn’t our son. We lost our son to drugs a long time ago, and please tell the officers that we’re sorry that they had to deal with this and do what they did.”

Schmidt was apprehended and later found with knives taped to his arm.