Richmond, California - Government

Government

Richmond is served by the Richmond Police Department and Richmond Fire Department. Dozens of parks are run by the Richmond Parks & Recreation Department. The Richmond Civic Center is currently undergoing a seismic upgrade and renovations program. Some buildings are being refurbished while other buildings will be replaced.

The city received widespread attention in 2009 when a girl was gang raped at a homecoming dance at Richmond High School.

The city has in recent years suffered from a high crime rate, so serious that the city council at one point requested a declaration of a state of emergency and asked for the intervention of the Contra Costa County Sheriff and the California Highway Patrol in order to ameliorate the crime rate. Murder, vehicle theft and larceny rates are all high, although they tend to be concentrated in certain areas such as the Iron Triangle and areas surrounding adjacent unincorporated North Richmond, which is outside the jurisdiction of the Richmond Police Department.

In 2004, Richmond was statistically the most dangerous city in California and was named the 8th most dangerous city in the country. Those rankings have changed and Richmond is now the third most dangerous in California behind Compton and Oakland and 11th most dangerous nationally according to the Morgan Quitno rankings. For every 100,000 people there were 38.3 murders, 50.4 rapes, 485.8 robberies, 512 assaults, 1110.7 burglaries, 3497.4 counts of larceny and 2471.4 thefts of vehicles. Richmond had 42 murders in 2006; and the city experienced a record of 62 homicides in 1991 out of a population of 98,000, which was 7 times the national average.

Current mayor Gayle McLaughlin is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, an organization formed in 2006 and co-chaired by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas Menino. The city is also participating in the California Cities Gang Prevention Network. Gangs are a serious problem for the police department as they cause violence and shootings. Many gangs graffiti their "tags" to mark their territory thus blighting the city with vandalism. A high-ranking MS-13 (or mara salvatrucha) leader, José Santos Bonilla, was captured in the southwestern Annex neighborhood in 2006.

Richmond is also home to the West County Detention Center in the Point Pinole area. It is a male and female county jail.

RichmondWorks and Richmond Summer YouthWorks are city programs which aim to decrease unemployment and crime and have led to hundreds receiving employment at area retail businesses.

Fires, medical emergencies and other disasters are handled by the Richmond Fire Department which has seven fire stations in the city. Medical and trauma patients are transported by American Medical Response Paramedics and EMTs.

Sewage is largely handed by the Richmond Sewage Treatment Plant in Point Richmond.