The Chula Vista Police Department is made up of 250 police officers and 113 civilian support personnel. But the department is growing. The support personnel consist of dispatchers, secretaries, records clerks, jailers, community service officers, property custodians, crime scene technicians, computer technicians and custodians. The uniformed officer usually gets all of the credit and is the person most visible to the general public, however, the success of any police agency is contingent on a team effort and success wouldn’t be possible if everyone didn’t work cohesively.

We serve a population of roughly 210,000 people. Don’t panic. I know that you’re looking at the population and the number of officers and you’re thinking that there aren’t enough to keep you safe, but the numbers are not much different than most other Southern California police agencies. If you were to poll other agencies in San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles Counties, you’d see that there is roughly 1 officer to every 1000 residents in each city.

The Chula Vista Police Department has 4 different divisions:

Administrative Services Division

Patrol Operations Division

Investigations Division

Fiscal Operations Division

I’m not going to talk to much about each individual division as information is available at our website www.chulavistapd.org, but you should know that each division serves an important role to the success of the overall agency.

For those of you who have ever thought about becoming a police officer; I have to say that it’s a wonderfully rewarding job. There is always the opportunity to get an adrenaline rush and there is no other career that lets you wear so many different hats. Think about it; We are obviously out there to catch criminals and prevent crime but, we are usually the first on scene to combat fires or to provide first aid to injured or sick people (no offense to our friends at the fire department but we’re already out in the field and in more mobile vehicles when the calls come out). We wear our psychologist hat at practically every call. Domestic disturbance calls allow us to wear our counselor hats. We are often called on to provide instruction at local schools and, right now, I’m wearing the hat of a journalist (although I must admit, Hemingway I am not). There is no career in the world that requires a person to be so diverse. This is why only 1 out of every 100 police officer applicants actually gets to wear the badge. It does take a special person with a high level of integrity and exceptional decision-making skills to do the job right and make a difference.

Now that I’ve got all of you pumped up to become police officers, take the first step and visit our website for more information about the hiring process. We are always looking for quality people.

Thanks for participating,
Alan dela Pena