Merced ‘still a relatively safe place’ to live, police chief says

John and Lea Tilley feel safe in Merced – for the most part.

“I’d say it’s a qualified ‘yes,’” Lea Tilley said. “I’d say I have absolutely no problem driving in any neighborhood in Merced anytime, day or night.”

When asked if she would be comfortable walking through every area in the city, she hesitated. “In my neighborhood, I have no problem walking alone,” the Park Village-area resident said.

“There are some parts, maybe in south Merced,” he may question, said John Tilley, but, overall, he feels “very safe.”

The Tilleys are both retired schoolteachers who have lived in Merced since 1971. The husband and wife were window shopping Friday in downtown Merced, a neighborhood in which they said they feel completely comfortable.

Such questions can be viewed uncomfortably in a city coming off a year in which more homicides were reported than ever before.

In addition to the record-high violent deaths, Merced police Chief Norman Andrade in early February told the City Council assaults on police officers were trending upward. Two weeks after the police chief made that report, one of his officers was shot during a traffic stop on H Street.

Andrade, in an interview this week, acknowledged Merced has “work to do” in terms of public safety, but said the overall perception of violence in the city is exaggerated compared with the reality. “We have a relatively safe community, and so many of the issues we do have are related to the socioeconomic situations of the community that are still dealing with the economic downturn and struggling for (financial) opportunities,” he said.

Although homicides and assaults on police grab a lot of attention, overall crime in Merced fell by 4 percentage points in 2014 compared with the prior year. Those numbers included a drop in the number of assaults with firearms, which fell by more than 23 percentage points. There were also fewer sexual assaults, aggravated assaults, burglaries and vehicle thefts in 2014 than there were the year before, according to the Police Department’s annual crime analysis. Andrade said those numbers reflect an overall downward trend in crime nationally.

At the same time, Andrade said, respect for and cooperation with law enforcement in many ways has never been worse. Although most people feel about the police the same way the Tilleys feel, many don’t. Detective Joe Deliman, president of the Merced Police Officers Association, said he believes “most people still respect law enforcement.”

“But what the totality of that respect is, I’m really not sure,” Deliman said. “But I don’t think there’s a lot of ill will towards police in Merced from the community.”

Still, Andrade said, officers are confronting dangerous confrontations more frequently. “I don’t think it’s ever been more dangerous to be a police officer than it is right now,” he said. “It’s still relatively safe for the citizens, but for police, we’re the ones stopping cars and confronting criminals and (the criminals) are more aggressive, more combative with us now than they’ve been in the past.”

A lack of public cooperation, particularly in homicide investigations, is another key concern for officers in Merced.

“I think a lot of that is due to a fear of potential retaliation against witnesses,” Deliman said. “But I can only speak for myself; in my six years on patrol and six years in the gang unit, I’ve only seen one case where a witness was threatened and that person who made the threats went to prison and the assault never happened.”

Help needed from witnesses

Since 2010, 23 of Merced’s 47 homicides have been gang related and those cases have been among the most difficult to solve because of a lack of cooperation from witnesses, police have said. They acknowledge there’s a potential for witnesses to be threatened or attacked, but said, in reality, it happens rarely in Merced. “We take great care to protect witnesses and victims and keep their names out of reports and away from the public in general for their safety,” Deliman said. “But, at some point, someone is likely going to have to be willing to testify in a case. I can’t say retaliation never happens, but it almost never happens.”

Andrade agreed.

“Any case, no matter what it is and no matter how good or talented the police officers are, any case can only be as good as its witnesses,” Andrade said. “We hear people say they don’t think Merced is a safe place and I ask, what are you doing to make your community safer? Are you willing to work with us to do everything you can to make this place as safe as possible?”

Ultimately, police believe they will need a combination of public cooperation coupled with additional officers, which, Deliman said, is likely to happen only if the city can offer more competitive pay and benefits. Deliman said the union is working on a package it hopes to present to the City Council in the coming weeks as the city prepares next year’s budget.

This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Merced ‘still a relatively safe place’ to live, police chief says."