The San Diego Police Department had just seven officers assigned to the area where two heavily armed teens horrifically killed three people in a racially motivated rampage at a San Diego mosque.
The department was supposed to have twice as many officers on duty in the northern division, which covers the Islamic Center of San Diego, according to ABC 10.
The local police unions had been sounding the alarm about understaffing in the department.
“We’ve been raising the red flags about staffing for over a year now and when we lost $12 million last year in overtime, it really affected our ability to police this city,” San Diego Police Officers Association President Jared Wilson told the outlet
Wilson did praise the department’s “excellent” response to the shooting, but said it can take days to respond to less serious calls.
“It’s unacceptable. We have to do better in the city,” Wilson said. “We need to devote more resources to getting patrol officers to these calls in a timely fashion.”
On Monday, 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez opened fire at the Islamic Center, killing security guard Amin Abdullah, as well as Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad.
They then drove into nearby neighborhoods and terrorized local residents with gunfire.
Clark then parked the pair’s vehicle and fatally shot Vazquez before turning the gun on himself. The two also penned a racist and widely offensive manifesto and etched “hate speech” on their firearms.
Before the shooting, the teens had run away from home with gear and guns from one of their parents’ homes.
A mom of one of the teens called police to inform them her son was suicidal, but police couldn’t find the pair until they unleashed the attack. She told authorities her son had dressed in camouflage and was with an acquaintance at the time.
Data from the police department showed that priority-two calls, which include runaway juveniles, took over two hours to respond to.
