The new Lathrop Police Department is ready to meet the public they’re sworn to serve and protect.

Today from noon to 3 p.m. the staff of the new Lathrop Police Department – which will assume law enforcement dues in the growing community on Wednesday, June 29, at high noon. – will be in attendance for a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new facility in River Islands.

The Lathrop Police Department is located at 940 River Islands Parkway – just across the Bradshaw’s Crossing Bridge. Those coming from Historic Lathrop can take Louise Avenue under I-5 and continue until they cross the San Joaquin River. The building will be on the left.

After the formal ceremony concludes at 12:30 p.m. the staff will be available to meet Lathrop residents and escort them on tours of the state-of-the-art complex while showing off the new equipment that will be utilized in protecting Lathrop’s streets.

“People in the community are excited about what this means for Lathrop,” Police Chief Raymond said he was gearing up for the big ceremony. “There’s a lot of gratitude on this side for how accepting the community has been so far – we’re really looking forward to getting started.”

A longtime goal recognized

For years Lathrop has been the largest city in San Joaquin County without its own in-house police department.

Until Bechler and his staff take over the helm on June 29, the only agency that has ever provided law enforcement services to Lathrop – both the unincorporated town of its past and the growing city of its present – has been the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.

The rising costs associated with that contract spurred a discussion several years ago about possibly looking elsewhere to be more financially prudent, and nearly resulted in the Lathrop City Council choosing to contract with neighboring Tracy instead.

While a standalone police department was discussed at that time, the funding necessary to pull off such a move was a big ask of the council, and the words of then Sheriff-elect Pat Withrow at the time gave the council solace that things would improve with the new leadership.

But when that didn’t end materializing in the way that the council had hoped, the city’s financial position was slightly different than it was just a few years earlier.

Between Measure C and an a growth explosion that has made Lathrop one of the fastest-growing cities in the State of California, the funding necessary to facilitate a transition was finally there – as was a state-of-the-art police department building in River Islands that was initially designed to be a sheriff’s office substation.

With only 15 months left on the existing contract with the sheriff’s office, the council made the decision to move forward with achieving the longstanding goal and dedicated the funding necessary to achieve the goal – including funding that would allow for duplication of resources in the final months of the contract so that officers could be familiar with the city prior to being tasked with protecting it.

Making the most of the transition

Less than six months after the council agreed to move forward with its stated goal of starting a police department, the city’s first Chief of Police was hired.

Raymond Bechler, who had been working as a Lieutenant with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office and held command positions in both Northern and Southern California, was hired after an extensive search to take the monumental task of creating an agency out of thin air.

And he hit the ground running.

With the contract with the sheriff’s office set to expire on June 30 of this year, Bechler had to work with the city, the consultants hired to aid in the process, and the public to build out a roster of officers and staff that would be up to the task.

And in order to maximize the time that the city did have, the decision was made to move up the hiring window for some of the positions and even have the officers formally start as city employees before the formal transition so that they could build camaraderie as an agency and get to know the city that they’ll be tasked with protecting before the spotlight officially shines down.

On Friday, as a crew worked to prepare the building for its big debut today Bechler was onsite with his two commanders making sure that everything that everything was in working order before inviting the general public in to see the building and meet the men and women that will make the Lathrop Police Department what it is.

The atmosphere was a jovial one – lots of smiles and laughs – but also a focused one as the reason for all the hard work started to come into sharper focus.

“We had that survey that went out and there were three things that people said they wanted to see when it came to having their own police department – they wanted community engagement, they wanted officers to be held accountable, and they wanted to see transparency.

“Those are three concepts that went in the process of hiring our staff, and those are going to be core concepts to how we conduct ourselves moving forward – we wanted to make sure that the community was the focus.”

After the formal pinning ceremony last month, Bechler said that the credit for achieving the goal should go to the city staff and the council that never faltered in the pursuit of something that be believes will be “special” for the growing community.

“I am very excited to begin full operations and show the people of Lathrop what we’ve been working so hard on building for them,” said Bechler. “It has been no small task getting us to where we are today, but thanks to the exceptional team we’ve put together and the incredible amount of support from City staff, the Mayor, and the City Council, we’re poised to deliver something really special very soon.

“I think the residents of Lathrop will be very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, in no small part because of the amount of engagement and feedback we’ve received from every corner of this city.”

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.