Dear Council members, I'm a 20+ year resident of Menlo Park and a small business owner. Per the discussion on police spending today, below are my thoughts and suggestions. 1. The council should cancel the $450K 'mobile police vehicle' purchase approved on 11/19. If there is a mass casualty event, MPPD has jurisdiction for a very small window of time before our Sheriff and then larger agencies (e.g., FBI) step in and lead the investigative effort. I find this expenditure to be wasteful especially as San Mateo County, Menlo Park Fire Department and Palo Alto PD already have similar or more robust vehicles that MPPD can utilize. 2. We have too many police officers. MPPD has 7.5 officers per sq mile, and one officer for every 500 residents. Palo Alto and Redwood City average 1 officer/1,000 residents and 5 LE personnel/mile. The clear indicator of our inflated force, however, is the number of calls per officer per day (calls include traffic stops, waved down events, dispatch calls - all police activity is included in this number). During SIP we have an avg of 5 police calls/day for 46 salaried patrol officers (source daily police logs). Our calls are very consistent: 2 suspicious persons calls and 3 theft calls (usually bikes). Pre SIP our average rate was 2 calls/officer/day (source budget). Two a day - that leads to bored cops over ticketing and over policing. Anecdotally, getting ticketed for parking in front of your own house is a daily occurence in allied arts as we have parking codes that were in place for when el camino was full of car dealerships. Tom Davis is a local resident and a long term LE officer in a nearby small town and he has commented on city council meeting notes that based on our population and call volume we should not have more than 35 total officers (and we currently have 75.5). On an annual basis MPPD responds to 40,000 calls and as of the half year mark we are tracking to reach only 20,000 this year which means less than 1 call/officer/day. In that 'call' number 20% are people who call 911 and hang up. I've looked through call logs and crime reports and very few occasions even call for law enforcement. The majority of our crimes are theft (700 cases) followed by domestic violence violence (~75). We could easily adopt the approach of San Francisco and other cities in sending unarmed personnel to take theft reports and counselors help with domestic violence cases. I have had a number of thefts and car break ins and each time I have met with 2 patrol officers and then a detective or two -- all to give the same report that could easily be done online. I think cutting the traffic and parking enforcement patrols was a good move by the council but many more cuts need to be done in this department. For the short term, I propose the police budget be cut by 15% (palo alto just approved 9%, SF is reducing by 15-20%). For the long term it's worthwhile to discuss reducing personnel by a larger number and evaluate following in the footsteps of San Carlos, Half Moon Bay and Millbrae in outsourcing our policing to the County. We would save Millions of dollars/year and cut a lot of duplicative roles. 3. Our police spending has gone up by roughly $1M/year (a phenomenon that also should be addressed). Reducing the police budget from $21M to $18M simply brings us back to 2017 spending levels. 4. There is very little police visibility. I have recently done a lot of research on our PD and for comparative purposes I have looked at a number of other agencies. We have the least amount of information about our police force. Below is information from the police page: On June 1, 2016, the Police Department launched its first three data sets https://data.menlopark.org/browse?category=Public+Safety > that included calls for service, traffic stops and personnel demographic information including sex, race and education level. Within the coming months, the department hopes to publicly release more data sets via the City’s open data portal http://data.menlopark.org/ >.-- Both links do not work. The data that was promised in 2016 - we are still waiting, four years later. I am glad that the council did not cut the $144k budget line item to increase police transparency. 5. As the council considers cuts I do NOT think cuts should be coming from the Belle Haven district. If you have noticed the protests in East MP, they are asking for East MP to be treated like West MP. Please do not cut the pool or services at the Onetta Harris community center and instead cut our over inflated police force. 6. I support keeping the day care centers open, especially since 73% of the families in the Belle Haven center are first responders (source: council meeting notes). 7. I support the 8 can't wait initiative 8. I support the demilitarization of our force and I do not believe they should be armed with rubber bullets nor tear gas. icole Nicole Scarborough Photography www.nicolescarborough.com http://www.nicolescarborough.com > Book a session now: https://nicolescarborough.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php follow me on instagram: ns.photo 415.308.6584 Received on Thu Jun 18 2020 - 06:35:09 PDT
