AgdaPkt 2020-10-05 Special Study Session

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From: Nisha Masharani To: GRP -City Council Cc: MGR -Melissa Stevenson Diaz; Council-Giselle Hale; Council -Alicia Aguirre; Council -Diane Howard; Council -Diana Reddy; Council -Ian Bain; Council -Janet Borgens; Council -Shelly Masur Subject: Public comment on Agenda item 4A for October 5, 2020 City Council study session Date: Sunday, October 4, 2020 10:50:55 PM Dear Mayor Howard, Vice Mayor Masur, members of the City Council, and City Manager Diaz, My name is Nisha and I've been a resident of Redwood City for the past 2.5 years and lived on the Peninsula my entire life. I wanted to submit a comment on the study session tomorrow. I will hopefully be able to attend in person, but since I may arrive late, I wanted to share my thoughts. I wanted to respond to the recommendations from the ad-hoc committee on policing that you will be discussing tomorrow. Firstly, the Staff Report calls out eight categories of feedback based on the community listening the council has conducted over the last four+ months. Of these eight categories, none reflect the top feedback from the PCRC listening sessions, which was "Descope/Defend Police", mentioned 62 times in listening sessions. The closest of the eight is "Desire for the City to consider alternative service models for policing", which the staff report interprets mostly as desire for details on police engagement in activities beyond policing -- which is the opposite of what people were saying in the listening sessions. My first concern is that the findings in the staff report do not accurately reflect the feedback from residents. I'm sure this was not intentional, and is instead an oversight -- but I encourage you to revisit what you have heard from residents and try to revise these recommendations in light of what you are hearing. Skipping forward a bit, I next want to focus on the Staff Report's recommendations on Equity in Public Safety. The Staff Report makes three recommendations: (1) a pilot program where San Mateo County Health Department mental health clinicians will partner with police officers to respond to crisis calls, (2) improve data collection, analysis, and transparency, and (3) "Create a new city council public safety committee to guide public safety initiatives". My second concern is that, similarly, none of these three recommendations reflect the most common piece of feedback PCRC heard in the listening sessions, which again, was "Descope/Defund Police". The first recommendation, to have mental health clinicians partner with police officers to respond to crisis calls, does not actually reduce the scope of the police, rather, it just increases the scope of SMC health department. I have more feedback on this section, which I look forward to sharing when the council hears the details of this plan in a future session. Now, it's easy to make the argument that this stuff is hard and takes time, which, of course, is true. This is why the Stanford report lays out a clear roadmap for how to reimagine public safety. The report lays out a five step plan that it recommends to cities: (1) identify services to replace and reduce footprint of law enforcement, (2) identify inefficiencies in existing police activity, (3) locate and create "Public Safety Opportunity Zones" which need more resources, (4) measure public response to changes, and (5) respond to violent crime through focused deterrence and Collaborations with community organizations and leaders. I think this sounds like an excellent roadmap, however, I was concerned to see that the committee's recommendations reflect none of these recommended steps, nor do they lay out a roadmap to follow these steps in the future.