Four new officers have joined the ranks of the Ceres Police Department after having graduated from separate local police academies.
The police leadership team and other employees of Ceres Police attended the Friday, Feb. 6 graduation of two cadets who completed the Stanislaus Regional Law Enforcement Academy. From there Chase Maloney and Romy McClain were sworn in as officers as they moved into a time of field training.
While Maloney and McClain were going through the local academy, Andres Oropeza of Newman was trained and graduated from the Delta Police Academy in Stockton. In the midst of training, Ceres hired him.
McClain is a 2021 Ceres High School graduate who served in the Air Force.
A fourth trainee, Gurwinder “Gary” Singh is being put through the academy by the city.
“We have filled 47 out of 47 positions,” said Chief of Police Trenton Johnson.
On paper Ceres has 52 officers but five of those positions are frozen due to budget constraints. Those frozen positions are that of a captain, a sergeant and three officers.
Johnson said that currently only 36 of the 47 sworn officers are deployable due to training or medical or other leaves. That is not unusual, said the chief, because every department experiences the roughly the same percentage of positions on leave.
Johnson said he will never be satisfied with the numbers but acknowledged he is “very happy that we have made some progress here and if … all four officers pass the training that means in June and July that we’ll have four extra officers working which is gonna be a huge relief.”
Chief Johnson said he won’t be able to realize his goal of establishing a Street Crimes Unit like Ceres had decades ago unless the council finds some way to fund the frozen positions and hire another sergeant to oversee the unit – something that won’t be happening any time soon.
“There’s no way we can. We have to staff our patrol. This is the backbone of the department and if it’s not properly staffed it leaves us vulnerable.”
Last year the city passed a budget that dug into reserves by $2 million to fill a budget gap. The city was expected to end the budget year on June 30 with a “rainy day” fund of $4.8 million, which is 16.3 percent of the General Fund and below the 18 percent minimum established by prior councils and lower than the recommended 17 percent from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA).
