No Injuries, No Police at Accidents

San Diego motorists involved in non-injury fender benders shouldn’t expect any help from the police for a while.

Because of a shortage of police, the department has been unable to cope with minor traffic calls and has begun dispatching eight civilian community service officers in lieu of uniformed patrol officers to report all minor, non-injury traffic accidents, police officials said.

The decision was made after Police Department officials determined that patrol officers were not getting enough time to respond to serious calls because of a deluge of minor traffic accident calls, said Jim Kennedy, traffic division commander.

Kennedy said San Diego police received about 20,000 calls involving non-injury accidents in 1986.

“It was just a matter of cutting our lowest-priority item. . . . Over the years, responding to minor traffic accidents has been considered a courtesy,” Kennedy said.

Because of a shifting of some officers to foot patrols and narcotics units over a period of months, there have been fewer officers available to work on minor traffic accidents, Kennedy said.

“We’re running at about 80% strength right now,” he said.

This situation should be alleviated in June, when a class of 138 police recruits is scheduled to graduate and fill empty positions in the department, said Bill Robinson, department spokesman. When this happens the department will be closer to its budgeted level of about 943 patrol officers. Kennedy said the department currently has about 700 patrol officers.

Uniformed officers will still respond to minor or serious injury accidents, hit-and-run accidents in which drug or alcohol use is suspected, fatalities and felony prosecution accidents, Robinson said.

The civilian officers cannot issue tickets for moving violations. They would give accident reports to police, who could then issue citations by mail, according to Robinson.

Because there are only eight civilian officers reporting non-injury accidents, response time will be much slower than before, Robinson said. He said motorists are advised to exchange information for insurance purposes when an officer can’t respond.

Motorists are required to report to the Department of Motor Vehicles any accidents causing more than $500 damage, Robinson said.

San Diego police have always reported non-injury accidents as a courtesy and probably will continue that policy later this year when the department gets more officers, Robinson said.