Police took hours to respond to a pair of Antioch burglaries; the repercussions reveal a division between cops and City Hall

Police have arrested a person suspected in both of the Wednesday morning burglaries.

ANTIOCH — Inside his home, Dwayne Gilliland watched the security camera images at his Antioch business incredulously.

At the Hillcrest Restaurant and Taphouse, a restaurant he runs eight miles from his Oakley home, a man who had broken through window glass about 6:30 a.m. was throwing property from the business into a backpack. Minutes earlier, the security company that oversees his restaurant monitors called 911 to report it.

“So I’m literally watching it as it’s happening,” Gilliland said Friday. “And I keep thinking, ‘Well, the police will be there any second. I just kept waiting for them to get there.”

The wait went on so long that it prompted a viral social media post by Gilliland, followed by a public apology from the police department and a pledge to increase staffing, which in turn was quickly followed by a message from the police rank-and-file laying blame for the delayed response at the mayor’s doorstep. Put together, the two statements reveal a long-brewing divide between police and city officials that appears to be reaching a pinnacle.

For more than a decade, Antioch residents have voiced their concerns over crime and police staffing levels in the city. But now, with changing attitudes toward the very nature of policing and an ongoing misconduct scandal that has forced at least eight officers on administration leave while federal prosecutors weigh criminal charges, that conflict is harder than ever to ignore.

The same morning that the Hillcrest was being burglarized, the Cocina Medina restaurant in Lone Tree Square also was hit. Police also took hours to arrive to that one. Gilliland posted his frustrations about the long wait time to social media from inside the restaurant, 90 minutes after he called 911, lamenting that “police never showed up.”

“I posted it on there because of my frustrations that they weren’t there,” he said Friday. “I mean, I get all the challenges they’re facing, and I appreciate that they’re trying to take ownership of it. However, being a small-business owner and somebody who works night and day to bring the public a service, it should’ve been a higher priority for them than they made it.”

Lt. Michael Mellone, from the department’s professional standards unit, released a written statement Thursday night to respond and apologize, writing that the long wait times “fell short of our goals” to respond to in-progress crimes. In a subsequent interview, Mellone said two patrol cops were at a medical emergency call and two others were called to a physical fight.

“We did not have any other officers available that we could send to that burglary or the other one,” Mellone said. “They waited several hours for us to show up. It’s not OK.”

Mellone said the post by Gilliland and the response to it created enough of a ripple that he felt an explanation and apology to the public was necessary. In the same statement, Mellone asked the public not to blame the officers for the staffing levels.

On Friday, Antioch Police Officers Association President Rick Hoffman blamed the lack of response on Mayor Lamar Thorpe, saying that one of the “major driving forces” for the department’s “staffing crisis” is “ongoing rhetoric.” Hoffman added that police arrested a suspect hours after the burglaries, a detail released by the APOA, a union representing police officers, after they said police were blocked by City Hall from releasing it.

Thorpe and Antioch Police Chief Steven Ford did not return emailed messages Friday.

Absent from the police department’s message was the elephant in the room: There are fewer Antioch police officers right now because eight officers have been implicated in an ongoing criminal investigation that involves alleged civil rights violations, drug dealing, falsifying police records, fraudulently obtaining college degrees for incentive pay, and more. One of the officers has resigned, while the other seven remain on unpaid administrative leave, still occupying staffing positions while they wait for a federal grand jury to decide whether to file felony charges against them.

Then there’s another issue that few in the public know about: In 2019, the City Council authorized the payment of more than $1.6 million for a new dispatch system. Known as Mark 43, the new system has proved buggy, unreliable and has caused serious problems, such as failing to record missing-persons alerts or crimes in progress, according to an internal memo, although it is not to blame for the slow burglary-response times.

“Within weeks of launch — our Emergency 9-1-1 Dispatch Center experienced numerous and frequent catastrophic failures with the Mark43 CAD system,” Mellone wrote in the August 2022 memo addressed to Capt. Trevor Schnitzius. “These shutdowns have occurred during serious incidents, including officer responses to armed robberies, mental health crisis interventions, medical emergencies, and vehicle pursuits. Dispatchers have been forced to use pencil and paper to take down call information, which has dramatically slowed the manner in which we provide service to the community.”

For most of Antioch’s history, the community has comprised passionate law enforcement supporters who were willing to tolerate questionable police tactics in the name of fighting crime. In 2014, the biggest police-related issue at City Hall was that there weren’t enough officers. Residents have loudly demanded the department beef up its ranks to keep up with rising crime rates, and city leaders pledged that they would. The city’s mayor at the time, retired policeman Wade Harper, faced multiple recall attempts over concerns he wasn’t doing enough to combat crime and streamline new officer hires.

Now the political climate has done a 180 as police critics gain political power and Antioch transitions from a predominantly White populace to one of Contra Costa’s most diverse cities. In 2000, Antioch was 65 percent White. Now 39 percent of Antioch’s residents are White, while Latino or Hispanics make up 34.5 percent of the city, and the Black population has increased from 10 to 20 percent over two decades, according to census data.

Attitudes toward police are changing, too.

A September 2020 hunger strike protesting police brutality outside City Hall spanned more than a week. Police-reform advocates and supporters now clash at protests and online with regularity, with current and former officers sometimes joining in the fray.

Thorpe speaks openly about the need to reform the police department and appointed the city’s first outsider chief, Ford, in more than a decade. And while Hoffman accused him of holding back “good” news about the burglary arrest, Thorpe still holds regular news conferences — while apparently also muzzling the APD — lest people forget that a significant portion of the department is under criminal investigations.

Gilliland said police contacted him after making an arrest and have been forthcoming with as much information as they can. It was a nice gesture, he said. The sour taste of the experience still remains, however.

“If I’d known they weren’t going to show, I would’ve gone down there myself,” he said. “It’s good that I didn’t. That would’ve been a mistake.”