In less than a month the Lathrop Police Department will provide law enforcement services to the residents with the city’s boundaries.

And it’ll the first time in more than two years that law enforcement operations for the growing city will be based out of the city itself.

On June 25, from noon to 3 p.m., the public will be invited to the formal grand opening of the Lathrop Police Department – located at 940 River Islands Parkway, just across the Bradshaw’s Crossing Bridge. The building had just been completed at the time that the Lathrop City Council began the steps towards launching its own inhouse police department – fulfilling a longstanding goal for the city and its residents – and the building has sat vacant for more than a year while the steps towards building an agency played out.

The new police station is 100 percent paid for and is the newest in the South County.

Ripon built its police station just after the turn of the century while Manteca’s police station was built in the late 1970s.

A formal ribbon cutting ceremony will take place from noon to 12:30 p.m., followed by a tour of the facility, a meet and greet with the officers and administration of the new agency, and the opportunity for the public to view the equipment that will be used by Lathrop Police.

The City of Lathrop has been without a home base for law enforcement operations in the city since October of 2019 when the lease between the family that owned the site on 7th Street that had housed Lathrop Police Services for approximately a decade failed to reach an agreement with the city on rent.

Initially leaders had planned on temporarily transferring operations to the sheriff’s office in French Camp while work on the new police department in River Islands – located just across the Bradshaw’s Crossing bridge – was completed. The goal was to have Lathrop Police Services operating out of the facility once it was up and running.

But before that happened, the city decided to investigate the possibility of achieving its longstanding goal of financing its own standalone police department – using ample reserves to fund the transition.

And that development drastically altered the relationship between the City of Lathrop and the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office – which historically had been tenuous.

Sheriff Pat Withrow showed up at a council meeting and informed Lathrop’s elected officials that he can’t work with current City Manager Steve Salvatore – something that caught councilmembers completely off guard. Withrow had been a voice of reason when the council was looking at abandoning the contract in favor of a different contract with the City of Tracy just prior to him being sworn in as the sheriff after he beat incumbent Steve Moore, and pleaded with the city to give him some time to figure out ways in which the relationship – which had soured under Moore as well – could be mended.

The city’s contention was that they were overpaying for the startup costs associated with new officers that were assigned to the contract – something that was further exacerbated by the county’s high pension costs that were shouldered by Lathrop’s taxpayers. Lathrop believes that it will save tens of millions of dollars over the years with its own agency while at the same time adding even more officers than they had received under the contract.

The situation came to a head in late July when Withrow formally requested that the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors – the entity that has to agree to any contract services – to cancel the remainder of the contract and force the City of Lathrop to renegotiate its rates. The county’s governing board declined to do so, stating that it didn’t make sense if Lathrop was going to have its own agency in place when the contracted less than a year from that point.

Part of the issue was that the City of Lathrop contested a portion of the contract and began withholding payment for the portion of the contract that they felt that they legally were not obligated to pay. While claims were made that Lathrop “stopped paying” for its police protection, the city claimed that it had simply taken the money that would have paid towards those disputed charges and set them aside while steps towards resolution – likely requiring adjudication – were sought.

The relationship between the City of Lathrop and the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office spanned more than three decades.

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