Dear Council members, I'm a 49 year old resident of Menlo Park and have lived here since I was born (save 4 years at college). I was educated in the Menlo Park city school district (public all the way through MA) and now have children at MA. I also ran a small business in Menlo Park for 13 years. I sat in on yesterday’s town council and want to share my thoughts on what I heard in that meeting, but also what I have learned recently about our police spending in Menlo Park. 1. Emotions are running high, across all constituents in our town. I applaud the offering of these town hall meetings, but wonder how well marketed they are. I only found out about it 5 minutes before it started. 2. I recently learned that there is a $450K mobile police vehicle that was greenlighted for purchase. I don’t believe we should be spending this much money, when surrounding cities, the county and our own fire departments have similar vehicles that we can use if needed. 3. Our budget allows for way too many police officers for the level of demand in Menlo Park. I am floored by the following information that was gathered by another MP resident: 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 downs, dispatch calls - all police activity is included in this number according to the budget). 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). Why don’t we consider outsourcing our policing to SMC (as San Carlos, Millbrae and Half Moon Bay have already done)? Many other cities have committed to cutting police budgets, including neighboring Palo Alto and San Francisco. I believe Menlo Park should seriously consider following suit. The amount we spend each year ($21M and growing each year by $1M!) is staggering! How has this been allowed? 4. Transparency on our police department activity data has been non existent these past few years. Please update the links online that are showing 2016 data. 5. I have heard you are considering cutting spending on the Belle Haven district. Please do not cut services at the Onetta Harris community center. You need to consider taking care of ALL areas of Menlo Park and not punish East Menlo Park, which in my mind has the most to gain from continued financial support in the community. 6. I support keeping the subsidized day care centers open. I do NOT support raising the fees by $500/mo during a recession. This is simply not feasible for these families. 7. I support the 8 can't wait initiative and believe the MPPD should at minimum have those 8 in place, if they don’t already. 8. I support the demilitarization of our force and I do not believe they should be armed with rubber bullets nor tear gas. Cristy Barnes Received on Fri Jun 19 2020 - 06:58:20 PDT
