State Senator Steve Glazer and Assemblymember Tim Grayson sent a joint letter to Governor Gavin Newsom today seeking assistance for the city of Antioch’s police force, decimated by years of FBI and local investigations.

The investigations into Antioch’s police ranks have eroded local officers’ ability to maintain public safety in the city, according to Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe in an interview on Senator Glazer’s Podcast, Table Talk.

Senator Glazer also spoke with California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee about the public safety crisis and the request.

“The City of Antioch is struggling with public safety right now, and the CHP can help,” Senator Glazer said.

Mayor Thorpe, a guest on Senator Glazer’s latest episode on his podcast, Table Talk, said, “we have about four or five officers at any given moment patrolling our streets,” in a city of 120,000 people.

Mayor Thorpe said the low numbers of police officers on duty at any given time means police response times can be excessively long depending on the crime being reported. Thorpe said more than half of the 87 city-authorized officers are on leave because of the investigations into the force, leaving just over 40 officers to patrol the city.

“We can use the help because it would drastically reduce time in which an officer can respond to a crime,” said Mayor Thorpe on Table Talk.

This isn’t the first time leadership in the City of Antioch has voiced the need for more law enforcement in the wake of the police scandal and ongoing investigations. In early August, Antioch City Council Councilmember Mike Barbanica asked the City of Antioch to look into getting more help from both the CHP and the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office after sideshows got out of hand.

These safety concerns were echoed by Mayor Thorpe on Senator Glazer’s Table Talk; the two areas that were decimated as a result of the racist text messaging scandal were traffic and investigations. “And so it has had real impacts on the community in terms of keeping them safe,” Thorpe said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has already assigned CHP officers this year to cities that request the help; the City of San Francisco has had CHP assistance in dealing with the Fentanyl crisis since May and Oakland has had CHP help since August in dealing with road-related incidents to give City police officers more time to focus on solving violent crime.

Senator Glazer will be available for interviews today.

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