20+ year resident of Menlo Park. I'm writing to suggest the creation of a review group made up of a variety of citizens who monitor our police department. This 'monitoring' is basically like a board of directors who meet on a monthly basis to review the state of local crime and policing and what is being done to address it and what improvements can be made - can residents help police, can neighborhood watches assist in the bike theft issue etc. The board should have ZERO personal ties to law enforcement. I mention this because we already have three Dixons (two brothers and a sister) on the force for example.
In June I spent about 100 hours reviewing our police logs, city council meetings, and budgets as well as those of our neighboring towns and nearby larger cities. Just in that time I was able to find so many red flags. Whether it's not tracking the race of people pulled over, or not addressing our enormous bike theft issue - we have so many issues and I don't have confidence that someone outside of the department is looking at the information. If the Police Dept was a company those issues would be addressed in weekly company meetings.
Commander Dixon recently told residents that due to Defunding, his department wasn't adequately staffed to address the bike theft issue (source: Multiple resident accounts on Next Door). According to police logs our issues are theft followed by domestic abuse. What is the force doing to address those issues and who is checking to make sure progress is being made? Similarly who outside of the department is checking the budgets of the department at a line item level and questioning the spending?
Obviously there is a distrust of police departments on the national and local levels. The more visibility we can get into how our department is addressing the needs of the community the better. It should be a win/win for the force as well if you have citizens coming up with ideas and helping formulate strategies to address our crime issues. I guarantee there is a solution to our rampant bike theft issue -- especially with door cameras at every house. For one, I've never been asked for footage from my house cameras from thefts on my street or even thefts at my own house.
I look forward to a response and while the PD budget is already in place there still is a number of things that we can do as a community to help law enforcement while simultaneously attempting to trust them again.
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Nicole
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