Understaffing at the El Camino College Police Department pressures existing staff and pushes the department to seek artificial intelligence resources and external funding, campus police said.

Compared to other California community college police departments, including the Cerritos College Police Department, ECC is halfway staffed with two dispatchers, six officers, three sergeants and a chief.

In addition to this staff, an officer and a trainee were just hired at the beginning of fall semester 2025, according to reporting from The Union.

In contrast, Cerritos College is nearly fully staffed with seven dispatchers, 10 officers, two sergeants, a captain and a chief.

ECCPD Chief Matthew Vander Horck is focused on relieving some of the consequences his staff is experiencing because of the understaffing issue, including the fatigue that comes with protecting a campus with only half the help.

“The school gives you a budget to run what we have, but I think that there are needs that might be a little outside [the budget],” Vander Horck said. “It doesn’t hurt having one or two more extra officers, too, to deal with [issues] when you have other problems.”

With the cases of unhoused individuals who have and could potentially cause harm to the campus, as seen in the 2023 sledgehammer incident, Vander Horck would like to implement community service officers who specialize in addressing community issues.

This would give the 14 members of the police force enough staff to survey issues on campus, while allowing a different group of specialists to focus on the issues.

Jim Newton, lecturer of public policy and communications studies at UCLA, is an expert in Los Angeles and California government and politics, the Supreme Court and policing.

Newton argues that an understaffed police department can impact the safety of a college campus.

“The general principle is the same, that police departments that are understaffed tend to have to rely on more basic practices of policing,” Newton said. “They tend to respond to crimes, respond to reports of something going wrong, make arrests and then go back to the next call. It’s called call-driven policing.”

Newton said this can differ depending on how it’s applied to different campuses and their situation, but essentially, understaffing affects police departments by having them respond to crimes more than they solve issues.

“That’s the essential work of police, but it does take away from the idea of police as protectors of a community, and it makes them more just responders to incidents or crime,” Newton said. “In the long run, it takes a toll.”

The ECCPD is doing more work with fewer people, which makes it hard to manage fatigue, Sgt. Ruben Lopez said. With several events occurring, along with 24/7 law enforcement service, it’s a difficult task, but the officers rely on their close-knit environment to keep each other together.

It’s an issue that is impacting police departments nationwide, stemming from a variety of issues, including difficulty in the recruitment process, hiring and retirement.

In a 2024 survey conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police on the recruitment and retention crisis for policing, it was reported that about 65% of the respondents were experiencing “reduced services or specialized units” due to staffing issues.

Compared to a 2019 survey the IACP conducted on the same topic, the reported service issues have increased by 25%.

According to the 2019 survey, more than 70% of respondents reported recruitment difficulty and 75% reported making policy changes, including fewer restrictions on appearance, increased recruitment efforts and salary increases, that would allow for higher recruitment.

Respondents also detailed issues with retaining officers during recruitment and training, along with pinpointing significant resignations after the first five years of being hired.

Across different California community colleges, police departments have their own systems when pushing for campus safety.

Los Angeles Pierce College is one of the nine Los Angeles Community College District campuses that use the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as their law enforcement.

Fullerton College is somewhat similar, using the Fullerton Police Department as its law enforcement.

Fullerton College also has a director of campus safety who oversees campus safety and community-building between the department and the campus.

Similar to ECCPD, the Santa Monica College Police Department is facing somewhat of an understaffing issue as well.

Although they are fully staffed with seven dispatchers, parking enforcement officers, a captain and a chief, they have only nine officers and are currently working to increase that number to 12.

Understaffing at the ECCPD is too nuanced a problem for the budget to be the sole cause of the issue.

With 33 years of law enforcement experience working for the LASD, Vander Horck understands that different departments require different expenses.

LASD is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the country, so it requires more financial power.

“While it’s not an infinite amount of money and resources in the sheriff’s department, in comparison to the El Camino Police Department, it is,” Vander Horck said. “One of the challenges for me as the new police chief here is to provide the services that we should be providing as a police department, but knowing full well that I don’t have the ability to call on an unlimited amount of resources or money to deal with these problems.”

To adapt to such a new financial situation, Vander Horck is finding creative ways to deal with issues the department faces and to bring in more resources.

Vander Horck has been working closely with Arlise Emerson, grants manager at ECC, in an attempt to find external grant funding to update the security cameras on campus.

Currently, the campus has around 530 security cameras, with about 90 of those cameras being out-of-use due to technical difficulties.

The chief is currently waiting to hear back from Omnilert, a gun detection AI company that offers grants to K-12 and college campuses.

It’s a three-year, free-of-charge grant that will update the security cameras on campus, using AI to pick up on weapons.

LASD Senior Lead Deputy, Isaac Jorge oversees law enforcement across the nine LACCD campuses and understands the value in using AI to aid in campus safety.

Deputy Jorge has explored AI on his own, not through the sheriff’s department, but has seen the benefit in its abilities, including facial recognition.

“Those tools are all great. It’s just we don’t have access to those tools,” Jorge said. “At the end of the day, it’s all dollars and cents. Who’s going to pay for it? It’s really expensive.”

At SMC, Chief Johnnie Adams has used AI camera systems on his own campus.

With around 1,300 cameras on campus, SMC’s police department also benefits from the use of AI. Their cameras act as motion sensors, picking up activity on different corners of campus.

When activity is picked up on the cameras, most notably when it’s past a certain time or in a certain part of campus, officers are alerted and urged to investigate, Adams said.

This allows officers to survey different parts of campus, but also with the extra eyes of the AI cameras.

ECC psychology major, Jeremiah Degrate, 18, said it’s concerning to find out about ECCPD’s understaffing issue, especially because of how open the campus is.

Degrate wonders how exactly the AI systems will be utilized by ECCPD.

“That brings in a lot of questions, like who’s in control of it?” Degrate said. “Who’s the one’s going to be programming this for our school? How is it going to be identifying what’s considered dangerous?”

Degrate said he hopes the AI systems are used for what they’re meant to be used for, to ensure the safety of campus, and not used for malicious intent.

Jeffrey Hinshaw, business manager at ECC, said that the understaffing issue isn’t a reflection of the aid from Fiscal Services on campus.

Every department on campus fills out budget sheets before the start of a school year to reflect how and what they’re spending their money on.

Once approved by the vice presidents of the departments, it’s sent to Fiscal Services for final approval.

“The money is right where they said they wanted it,” Hinshaw said. “So the idea is they’re able to hit the ground running right when the year starts.”

However, as things change during the year, departments are able to transfer money to things that require more funding.

If, for instance, the police department needed to prioritize money toward security cameras instead of vehicles, they would have the ability to do so.

Hinshaw doesn’t believe the budget is influencing the staffing issue in terms of authorized staff, based on what he sees from his side.

If there’s a permanent, full-time position vacancy in a department, it stays in the budget for the full year because of the possibility of that position being filled.

Hinshaw also details that, what’s approved by Administrative Services, which oversees campus PD, is what they’re ready for.

If the administration is discussing possibly putting things on hold, that’s a separate issue from what Fiscal Services sees.

“That, from my office, would not cause any sort of an issue or delay in recruiting,” Hinshaw said. “From my end, the budget is in there ready to meet anything that is authorized all year long. If they hire tomorrow, we’ve got the money to start paying the person.”

CCPD Chief Don Mueller said that having a legitimate body of police officers on campus protects the students.

Cerritos College has experienced low crime on its campus. In fact, there hasn’t been a robbery in five years since Mueller became chief, Mueller said.

However, there’s plenty of crime directly outside of the campus, and Mueller believes the visible police presence is to thank.

“Someone that is looking to commit a crime is not going to do that 100 feet away from a police officer,” Mueller said. “We have officers that are on the campus, physically visible, on bikes, on foot and in cars. Everybody sees our guys and our cadets.”

Mueller says finances play a big role as well. A lot of schools are tight on money, but it’s about prioritizing what matters most, Mueller said.

“Cutting safety may seem like an easy thing initially, so you can keep other programs, but if something happens, they’re gonna regret it,” Mueller said. “If you don’t have it and somebody comes on that campus with a gun, it only takes seconds, and that can be the difference between two or three people being hurt or 25 people being killed.”

With colleges positioned in a major city like Los Angeles, it’s not realistic to be dismissive of danger, he said.

“You can’t wait until it happens. You’ve got to plan ahead, unfortunately,” Mueller said.

Editor’s note:

• The majority of the reporting in this story occurred during spring semester 2025.