Welcome to the public safety committee meeting of August 19, 2026 in 2 p.m., sorry, we have microphone difficulties. Is that better? Okay.
Our committee liaison, Sarah Jordan will provide information and instruction for the public to participate today's meeting. Sarah, please proceed.
Thank you, Chair von Lippert. One members of the public are able to attend the meetings in person. This meeting is being televised and live streamed on the city's website and council administration will continue to make arrangements for the public to comment using the Zoom Webinar platform.
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We appreciate the public's cooperation.
Thank you all now called the Public Safety Committee meeting of August 19, 2026 to order Sarah please call the rule.
Vice Chair Campio, your committee member Campbell,
here, committee member Woodburn, chair of on
willpert, President. Also attending the meeting today is
Daniel Orlaw from the Office of the City Attorney,
but Cooper Tell from the Office of the Independent Budget
Analyst and Code of Zyzer from the Office of the Mayor.
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Sure.
Thank you very much for reading the instructions
and how the public can participate in our meeting.
We now have a quorum present, so as a agenda order today, we'll be taking an order.
It'll be item one, item two, item three, and then at the end, we'll be not agenda public
comments.
So this will all be in order.
Do we have any committee, mayor, city attorney, or IBA comments?
I have two.
I first want to thank my colleagues, especially Vice Chair Campio for cheering a couple
a public safety meeting for me while I was out being treated for breast cancer and I'm very glad
to be back. I'm so my two surgeries I had this summer and I'm grateful that I had access to
incredible health care and we've got to make sure everyone has access to incredible health care
that is affordable in this country. So thank you to my colleagues for stepping up low without
having to be cancer free now and I have one other comment is do you may have seen in the news that
But Waymo was granted a permit by the State of California to begin operating here in San Diego.
We, as local city officials, have absolutely no control over whether or not Waymo comes to our city.
Believe me, we've asked.
And it's all been done in Sacramento and by the DMV.
And one thing I have been particularly concerned about is making sure that any autonomous vehicle will interact safely with our public safety first responders.
whether they'd be our firefighters, police officers, ambulances, and so the most I can do is call
their government lobbying team and make a big stink about public safety, but if you have
concerns, always contact your state assembly members, state senators, because they do have control,
and WAMO has been providing trainings to our first responders, and I look forward to continuing
to ensure that they do that so that they do interact safely on our streets. I think those are my
the comments and we'll now move on to our consent agenda, which is item 1, do we have any
request for constituents?
Hearing none, do we have any requests to pull from the consent agenda?
Hearing none, we will now proceed with public comment on the consent agenda.
Thank you, Chair of the public comment period for the consent agenda is now open.
The consent agenda includes item number one, which is the approval of the committee minutes
from June 17th, 2026.
Chair, we've received no speaker slips here in chambers to speak to item 1 and I am not seeing any hands go up in the virtual queue, so this concludes the public comment period for item 1.
All right, thank you very much.
I'll now turn over to any committee members or colleagues for any questions or motion.
Happy to move a little bit.
All right.
And we have a motion in a second.
Please go.
And Chair, item number 1 passes unanimously for zero.
Thank you very much.
We will now move on to our information agenda because item two, Sarah, please introduce item two.
Thank you, Chair von Wippert.
Item number two is the neighborhood policing division update.
And if you're watching on city TV or the live stream online and you'd like to dial in the speak, please call 1692545252.
And when prompted input Webinar ID 161 398 0144 pound.
Thank you.
I believe our presenters are in the overflow room.
I mean, I need to call them up.
Welcome. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. Please have a seat and get settled.
And when you're ready, please introduce yourself to the record.
Let us know how much time you'll need for your presentation.
Okay, Steve Shoboski, I'm the captain of the neighborhood policing division and accompanying me is.
Lieutenant Matt Bakken, good afternoon.
How much time do you think you'll need so we can allocate it?
10 minutes. Okay. Please proceed.
Good afternoon council members. Today I'm here to give a brief update on San Diego PD's neighborhood policing division.
specifically how NPD is evolving its approach and how we enforce laws and interact with members of the homeless community and address problems and complaints associated within it.
Over the past two years NPD, like much of the rest of San Diego PD, has had to find creative ways to deal with budgetary constraints and staffing shortages.
These are no doubt challenging times, but NPD is committed to providing the highest level of police services when enforcing laws and addressing complaints with a homeless nexus in the city.
In response to these challenges, NPD is continued to evolve its approach on how we can
compassionately, but firmly and force laws are related to homelessness, but also partner
with the city's many civic and community organizations to get people struggling with homelessness,
substance abuse, addiction, and or untreated mental illness into a safe environment in
all the streets where they can receive the help they so desperately need.
Pardon me.
First, I would like to provide a brief overview on how NPD is structured.
NPD personnel are divided into seven enforcement teams, two homeless outreach, and the
intervention services team, as well as an investigative bureau.
Some of the current responsibilities of NPD's enforcement teams are as follows.
Go back, please.
I mean, they're responsible for the enforcement of all laws related to homelessness, including
drug, alcohol, and quality of life violations, as well as address mental health issues within
the homeless population.
They provide security during environmental services division, led city, and delegated main
and disagreements, which are the freeway of payment operations, which is approximately 6,000 per year.
They respond to priority requests from the mayors and city council offices, patrol commands, business and community groups,
etc. for various homeless related issues that negatively affect the community.
We respond to an average of 3,300 to 3,400 get it done complaints, which averaged us by 42,000 per year,
and 900 radio calls per month with the homeless nexus.
conduct periodic nightly, oversized vehicle operations, city-wide.
They conduct hotspot saturation in areas experiencing high levels of quality of life concerns,
such as open-air drug use, or illegal encampments.
And then they support patrol operations and investigations on various special projects in
events, city-wide, and they provide the primary bravo complement for the department.
Our two homeless outreach teams offer seven days of week coverage, including a team that works in the
evening hours and on the weekends. They have many responsibilities, including
attending regular meetings with various civic and faith-based groups, as well as community groups on various issues involving homelessness,
they conduct daily proactive outreach assistance and placement to homeless persons.
So for example, last year, over 5,700 homeless individuals receive some level of assistance from hot officers in 2025,
and an average of 1,100 individuals were placed into some type of shelter or housing annually based on last three year average.
They support the City of San Diego homeless strategies and
the Solutions Department on coordinated homeless outreach efforts
and then they collaborate with community stakeholders to secure
placements of persons experiencing homelessness in a shelter housing and
or facilitated delivery of a variety of services outside of the
established AISSS HSSD programs.
Our intervention services team was expanded from a single officer in
2024 to now consisting of one sergeant and four officers,
a scaling that is proven to be a force multiplier which has been built on the
done by a single officer for so long.
The intervention services team is taking the lead for San Diego PD.
On many of our most difficult cases involving person suffering from substance use disorder,
opioid addiction, and or untreated mental illness.
Some of their functions are they evaluate and address high utilizers of emergency services
who primarily suffer from mental health and addiction-based afflictions to essentially decrease
the disproportionate strain those individuals have on the system-wide EMS system.
At first, often include building weaves of rapport and trust building with these individuals
along with case development and gathering and organizing of resources to effectively manage
this particular single any individual they're dealing with.
They partner with HSSD, San Diego Fire's Rap Team, San Diego County.
Health and Human Services. Private NCC such as JFS, the Recovery Bridge Center, Father Joe's,
local hospitals, and more to just increase the collaboration and capacity to mitigate these negative impacts
on the system. And then they provide training to new officers and conduct operations to address
locations that are impacted by heavy opioid use such as tailgate park, the C-Street Quarter,
217th Street, etc. And then new in fiscal year 2027, they administer and manage 700,000 dollars
of opioid settlement fund distributions for vehicle
purposes, training, and outreach,
and alternative to incarceration operations.
So for example, this additional funding
will allow the interventional services team
to go out in a hotspot locations downtown
that are negatively affected by ramp and open-air drug use.
Their goal is to specifically address opioid addiction
on a ground level, as they seek out people
that are struggling with addiction
and connect them with many service providers,
especially in addiction and substance
that use disorder by taking them to the recovery bridge center.
These efforts serve two purposes.
One, it gets people struggling with addiction, office streets, and at least initiates the process of connecting them to programs to treat their addiction rather than incarcerating them in jail.
Second, it makes our community safer by targeting and addressing one of the biggest drivers of complaints in crime and downtown, which is open air drug use.
Since we started this program on July 1st, today they've taken 57 different individuals to recover a bridge center instead of jail to start that process of the alternative zone incarceration and connect them with services.
Okay, one of the basic examples of law enforcement challenges that we face is building trust with communities that are often underserved of a complicated relationship with local police departments.
Prior to being assigned to NPD, as the captain, I was a lieutenant in a detective sergeant in the homicide unit for approximately four years.
I spent nearly half of my 30-year career law enforcement care and centralized investigations, and one thing I've learned is that persons who are distrustful of law enforcement often have the perception of everything the lose,
and nothing to gain by cooperating with an investigation.
That is why it's so important to build trust with individuals and these those communities.
That is why NPD has expanded its responsibilities to have a dedicated group of detectives
whose sole responsibility is to investigate felony persons crimes with a homeless next
set of central division.
This includes cases involving homeless on homeless, homeless on a general member of the public,
or a general member of the public on a homeless individual.
This way detectives with extensive experience working with people in the homeless community who
understand the challenges within that are paired with victims of witnesses and even suspects
in cases that impact them the most.
So as of 2025, MPD investigations is responsible for handling all generator arrest and crime
cases, including felony crimes against persons occurring in central division with a homelessness
nexus.
In 2025, they handled 909 cases that were received with 533 from central division.
The majority of those cases are crimes against persons and new for fiscal year 27.
They will be working with ESD on to investigate and administrate illegal dumping cases primarily in district 4, which affects south eastern and in mid city division on a lot of
You'd have these are cases where people are dumping large quantities with their home renovations and just dumping them in neighborhood
So we're going to focus on that to just hold those companies any individuals accountable for that
In regards to staffing and PD is not immune to the overall staffing challenges
San Diego PD as a whole has faced in recent years.
This is reflecting our current staffing
and the overall downward trend over the past several years.
This is reflected in the trend you see here.
So our total number of PO2s,
which are our season officers,
currently assigned as decreased from 2020,
we had 65 down to 2026, 39,
which only 34 are currently available.
Essentially, what that does,
that represents a 52% decrease in our staffing since 2020.
One of the ways that we've essentially make up for this is these last two years dealing with
the staffing disorders we've had to be creative and how we mitigate our use of overtime
in different methodology to make up for that gap.
So that includes the temporary assignment of every academy class to MPD for a period of three
months.
So after completing phase training, this temporary assignment serves a dual purpose.
First, it augments our MPD staffing levels to where we can essentially accomplish our mission.
It puts us that makes us whole again to 2020 levels.
Second, it gives every officer on San Diego PD,
valuable on-the-job training on how to interact
with numbers of the homeless community.
Officers gain value experience
and then a basic understanding of how to compassionately
yet firmly enforce laws related to homelessness,
while also learning how to connect
with San Diego PD's homeless outreach teams.
After three months, that academic class
then takes that knowledge to the respective patrol
commands citywide and then a new academy class begins.
So essentially what occurs is, these PO1s,
Every San Diego P officer now receives on-the-job training
and experience on how to interact with homeless individuals
citywide, and it allows us to augment our staffing,
which is a lot as to continue to maintain our mission.
But I will say there are some challenges they vary in size.
We have four teams that are dedicated to central division
with one working the weekend,
and one specifically for East Village,
one for gas lamp, and then one that rolls around central
division as a whole, and then after three other teams
that are divided geographically with the city,
with the two hot teams that I mentioned in our intervention
services team.
The last two years, an MPDSC numerous changes that have coincided with the renewed emphasis on tackling
homeless challenge in San Diego head-on, when comparing and reviewing data over the past
two years, MPDS noted the following significant data points.
So comparing 2023 to 2025, the assistance accepted by homeless persons is about 5,500 homeless
individuals annually, placed 1100 into shelters or housing on a three year average, felony
arrest for up 60 percent, misdemeanor arrest for up 72 percent, misdemeanor sites are up 28 percent.
11550 arrests, which are persons that are under the influence of the controlled substance.
It's up 114%, persons that are essentially drunk in public.
That is up 121%, encroachment, contacts, and FIs are up 61%, fractions are up 52%,
misdemeanor sites are up 21%, and rest are up 42%.
Since we started oversized vehicle operations that started city-wide, there's been approximately
6700 citations issued, and nearly 800 individuals have been referred to in the
sleeping program.
This data reflects an evolving philosophy at MPD where our primary goal is to be as efficient as possible with the limited resources we have while dealing the highest level of police services.
The communities within San Diego. Next slide please.
So some additional changes that have occurred.
At MPD is there's an increased emphasis on open air drug use violations in downtown San Diego.
For example, Comic Con, the day that it began, there was an operation that targeted open air drug use downtown.
It's not sure this was just officers walking around downtown.
It ended up resulting in 39 arrests.
That particular day, 1968, 19 were recited on misdemeanors.
Other people were booked in a jail for various drug crimes.
Re-vamped overtime model, which is a result
in a significant cost savings.
The implementation of NPD funded Trism and Transport
that the entire retirement utilizes,
which reduces how to service time for all officers department
wide.
The restart of OVO enforcement in VHO,
outreach efforts for persons experiencing homelessness
who live out their vehicles and expansion of NPD investigations to focus on felony persons crimes
within the homeless community as central division and parts of the coastal riverbed community.
Better collaboration with the city and district attorney's office, resulting in increased
issuing rates, partnership and participation in the upcoming San Diego Collaborative Court, which
essentially is, it's a new model that's going to essentially be the drug court model that
is specifically for people that are struggling with mental illness and substance abuse addiction,
So the presiding court of San Diego court is going to be launching that particular program.
We will be participating with that.
Obviously, a two-year decline in un-chothered homelessness in the city of 12 and 5% respectively.
And then our expansion of intervention services from one officer to an entire team.
Next slide.
Okay, some changes in terms of our case issuance and submission.
We have really focused on increased our training with our officers, just what working
with the city attorney's office and district attorney's office on what we can do.
to have a highest level of efficiency in terms of when we're having cases.
So in 2024 and PD submitted 849 cases, the issue rate was 34%.
It's gone up to 38% in 2025 and then as of NPD year to date,
which is covers the first two quarters of 2026 issue and right now is up to 49%.
We have higher issue rates, what that means is officers are running better reports,
they're following better legal principles, they're following the law more importantly.
What we don't want is cases that are not issued because that doesn't result in anything.
Essentially somebody might go to get a ticket or go to jail in the cases in issues.
We want to have a 100% issuing rate because that means everything is being done absolutely
by the book.
Encroachment citations in issuing rate has gone up from 14% to 26% year to date 37% where you've
really seen the spike is in drug cases.
There is my or a renewed emphasis on tackling open air drug use.
In 2024, there was 226 cases, 225 went up to 433, and 226 is found up to 309, with on-pays for
618 or 173 percent increase year over year.
So the issue in rate in those cases is continued to climb from 46 percent to 54 percent to 66.5 percent.
Yes, please.
Okay, so some other things to talk about, just how we do our expenditures, one of the things
that we did is we've really looked at MPD's over time model and how can we be more efficient
in deploying our officers in the field.
So we revamped it completely.
We focused on putting officers in the field during times
that the public is out the most.
So our overtime model is really revamped.
For example, on the weekends, we have them work generally.
And overtime model said that it used to be a 24-hour patrol-based model
realistically because of just laws that we have.
And when services are available, we focus that now on 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
and then 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.
With an emphasis on having officers present, available,
and out in the community, at places where the public is using shared spaces, and that's our
mango.
It employs, it gives a sense of safety to folks, it allows them to see officers out there,
they're approachable, they're available, officers can explain exactly what they're doing with
folks, and it does create that sense of safety, which is what we want everybody in San Diego
to feel.
So just by reducing our over time model from 2023 to 2024, we reduce our over time by 800,000
dollars from over time budget, that response is continued to be reduced, so in response
just to the pending fiscal challenges.
We've been able to reduce last year for fiscal year 2026.
This is a slight typo, it's not a zero at the end,
which is good, it was 516,000, we reduced our overtime budget.
So the total reduction since 2023,
we reduced it down about 1.364 million dollars reduced
from our overtime budget while delivering better services
and expanding our outreach efforts,
which homelessness outreach has been doubled in size since I've
been there and increased in the intervention services team.
So since we're trying to do more
with the letter by spending less money.
Next slide.
Some of the other positive that we've done, oh excuse me.
I want to add one or thing in there.
So in addition to some of these reductions of over time,
one of the things that we've been able to do is
is reduce the get it done whole time.
So the get it done response time had an average whole time of 10 days
with a high average of 27 days and 23.
It's been reduced and 25 down to an average whole time of 5.6 days
with a high of 10 days.
This is due to increased efficiency and how we have officers respond in the implementation of utilizing RSVPs to check order complaints in farther reaches of the cities.
Today, RSVPs have handled approximately 9,000 different get-it-done complaints for us by going out there seeing this an active encounter.
It's just trash. It's just trash. It's just trash. We can have ESD respond. It saves an officer from driving out to some of the farther reaches in the city.
It's an active encampment, and we have an officer deployed there more quickly and more efficiently.
So, essentially, it cost of zero to have that, and that's nine thousand less times
an officer to driving around.
One of the things that we've also tried to do at MPD is to be as transparent and possible
with what we do, why we do, and our philosophy and mentality behind it.
We've encouraged every news outlet in San Diego to come on ride-alongs with our enforcement
and outreach teams, and this has resulted in a lot of positive news stories that I think showcased
It's a good work being done by officers.
Homeless is a complex issue.
It's something that I think everybody wants to solve it,
but the way we solve it is going to vary.
I'm depending on the energy you're speaking to you.
But considering how many complex situations
that homeless individuals are experiencing,
we want to afford every opportunity for them to interact.
So by having members of the media right with us
and be transparent, I think it builds trust
with the community as a whole.
It builds trust with the media organizations
to show that there's nothing to hide here.
We're an open book, everybody gets to read it.
And I think that's resulted in a lot of positive news stories that are out there.
Next slide.
That's going to wrap up our presentations today.
Thank you for your time City Council.
Any questions?
Thank you very much.
And Sarah, please take any public comment on this item.
Thank you, Chair von Woper.
We've received three speaker slips here in Chambers.
We will begin testimony with Lori Lipman.
You will be followed by Joyce and Yada and Lori Saltownia.
And each speaker will have two minutes to speak to item number two.
Welcome back, I'm Lori Lipsman, District 3,
from now on, she, her.
I'm am concerned about the neighborhood policing.
I'd feel personally, it does not bring safety to any neighborhood.
Having police around increases as was shown in the slide,
a rest after a rest after a rest after a rest after a rest after a rest.
is by arresting and incarcerating people or do we stop the problems that are causing these issues
before they get to the street. Money could be much more better spent on the resources to prevent
these and not having more police on our streets. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
Thank you. Joyce and Yada?
Okay. Welcome back, everybody.
STPD, thank you so much. Very solid presentation. It's good work, important work. So from
the Stanford port, here's the things I really liked. Responding to community concerns,
quality of life and safety out of five entities enforcement.
Homeless outreach and resourcing, individual outreach and resourcing, homeless cases, investigations, get it done, request, wow, great success with it. I love get it done. Each entity, detailed overview, empirical data, re-outcomes and challenges, changes over the past two years, a lot of great stuff in there. Thank you, a wonderful staff report.
from the presentation, excellent info, 52% decrease in staffing since 2020, yet eight windows
show data percent showing great progress. This is from me. How did these miracles happen?
How did you make all these miracles happen with all these shortfalls? I don't get it. Thank you.
Love you for that. So since 2023, total over time reduction, one million, three, six, four,
nine, eight, one, five stars to chief wall and all the others who made this happen. This whole
process, all of you, chief wall, you came out of the gate with trust at the top of your priority list.
Thank you for that. You have my strong support for everything you're doing for San Diego and all of us.
So I love to the Chief, love to SDPT and love to all. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Lori Saldonio.
Good afternoon and thank you for the report.
When I was serving in the legislature and chair of the housing committee, we used to say that housing is healthcare.
And what you are experiencing, I believe, or people that don't have housing by and large.
And it's no wonder that they are self-medicating.
Behavioral health issues with alcohol and drugs.
We're asking you to treat symptoms.
And the council, frankly, is not doing enough to treat the causes of what is causing homelessness
and then the situations that people end up, especially being cited for encroachment.
Let me just say encroachment was created for objects, not for people.
And the fact that you have a 61% enforcement increase in encroachment is really a failure to deal with people.
They're not objects to be moved, and yet that's the citation that it is often used to just move people away from places that you don't want them to be.
And there is a term for those places, third space, which is it's not work, it's not home, it's a place people can be safely and spend time and not be surveilled and not be policed.
And this city Plaza, outside this building, used to be one of those, and during COVID, actually
was during the premiere of Top Gun, all the benches were removed from the Plaza.
It is no longer a third space where people can comfortably stay and legally stay.
And so what happens is they get pushed into areas that they're not wanted, and they sense
that they're not wanted.
and increasingly they act out from that stress
if not feeling part of the community
because we have destroyed public third spaces.
And private third spaces are expensive.
You have to buy something to stay in a coffee shop.
So I have great compassion for the police department
trying to do its best to manage homelessness.
That's not your job.
And so managing homelessness in this manner
will never succeed until you all do a better job
providing housing and not getting rid of housing with short-term vacation rentals, for example.
Thank you. Thank you. And our final speaker is Darth Vader.
This council has done well. I am pleased and so is the Chomoe Emperor.
What we have given too much money to our libraries. Too much money to our parks. We need STPD to have
More money, more money for the emperor to rule over the entire universe.
Once the Death Star has been completed, no one will be able to rebel against us.
We will be the ultimate power in the universe.
We do not need parks, we do not need libraries, we do not need daycare centers, we do not
need homeless shelters, all we need is money for our stormtroopers.
and anyone that disagrees is part of the rebel alliance and a scum and they should be taken away immediately.
This council needs to understand that we are the ultimate power in the universe,
and we will not succumb to the forces of democratic will.
No, this council was elected to serve the police, not the public.
And if our stormtroopers don't receive all the funding that they deserve, they will be held to pay with the emperor.
And he is not as forgiving as I.
Thank you.
This concludes testimony here in Chambers.
So I will begin the five-minute timer for all those in the virtual queue to indicate if they wish to provide a comment on item number two at this time.
As a reminder, each speaker will have two minutes.
We currently have two hands raised and we will begin with Darwin.
Please unmute and begin.
after
noon, Darwin, e-campus,
responsible debts of coalition at San Diego.
And I just wanted to say that I used to be on the old CRB
community review board on police practices.
And I did write a once.
So I would share with the city council based on this
presentation that you asked the following questions.
With those numbers up and falling with lawyers,
how do I just, with those numbers up and arresting people?
How many of those people arrested come back out on the street
and are still on house and then get arrested again
And again, and again, when I was on a ride along in Western Division with a young rookie cop,
he's shared with me one of the people he arrested on on-house community for being at a 7-11,
and also struggling mental health because he was clearly screaming, and he was also not obeying
their commands, they arrested him, and he shared with me that that person had been arrested over 100 times.
And most likely, next week, he was going to have to arrest that person again for something similar.
arresting people and putting them in jail, not a solution. As Lori said, if you don't provide housing,
you don't help people get out of the situation. Then all of the work that police are doing,
even if it's wonderful work and supporting them, is not going to succeed. It's not going to be a
police and law enforcement solution that's going to ultimately solve this. The jails are public housing,
that is not the best way to provide affordable housing for people and healthcare. Clearly,
If you want to actually reduce those numbers, that's not something we proud of in terms of the numbers going up and the place doing more with homelessness
Get health and human services work with the county partner with other cities and find actual solutions. Thank you
Thank you for your comment
Our next speaker is Daniel Perno. Please unmute and begin.
Oh, that was awkward. Okay. I think I'm unmuted now
Hey, good afternoon.
Yeah, my name's Dan Pernell.
I'm, you know, San Diego resident for a while, former Marine officer, combat veterans.
So, not that that really matters, right?
Because nothing matters anymore.
But like I've been problem with the city council and with the San Diego police department,
right, as I do many people do.
We're talking all this, you know, we're doing all this great outreach, you know, arresting
unhoused people outside of 7-11 and I get it, you don't want people doing drugs that are
and drugs, cool, whatever, but why are we spending time talking about the police arresting
people who are unhoused when we have this huge problem with non enough housing in San Diego?
So, like some of the other speakers said, we should probably address that issue.
At the same time, city spending tons and tons of money on flocks or vallets cameras
to warrantlessly surveil the people.
We know cops use flocks to go stalk their ex-girlfriends, and it's not just me saying that.
There's plenty of articles that talk about that.
The city government wrongfully arrested someone on parole, which is not the city government, the city police department got hit on someone with a flock camera.
Turns out it wasn't the right guy and he spent a month in jail.
There's good arts technical report about that.
So this is honestly really, really disappointing, right?
Like I spent a lot of my 20s.
We're spent a good summer in my mid 20s.
Sleeping in Baghdad Iraq with two tournaments next to my bed.
In case a rocket blew one of my legs off in the middle of the night or arms.
So I'd stop myself from bleeding to death and the reason I say that is because I've sacrificed for this country as have a lot of people
So all I'm asking the city council and the city police department to do not to risk life-limber eyesight
But just to stand up for these rights that you know myself and all these other great Americans signed up to defend right
So please enough of the talk of oh, we're doing a lot. No, you guys are not you're you're bowing the knee to you know
to our overlords. So great job. Steve Whitburn going to try and vote you out. Honestly,
you would take a wipe bag at this point. Thank you.
Thank you, your time has concluded. And with no other hands raised in the virtual queue,
this terminates public comment on item number two.
Thank you very much. And I'll turn over to my colleagues for any comments or questions,
but no, this is an integral item. So no motion necessary.
Thank you, Ms. Councillor Whitburn.
Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Captain.
Thank you, Lieutenant, very much appreciate the presentation.
Thank you to the members of the public who commented on this, and I particularly want to
think those of you who acknowledge the fact that such a key part of the solution to homelessness
is adding housing. It is absolutely essential. It is something that this city has been focused on.
This city council has been focused on. We have added more housing in the last several years that
we have added in San Diego in a long time,
and we are beginning to see reds stabilize.
But I will also say this.
Some of the longest meetings that we have
in these council chambers are when this room is packed
with people who are opposing a housing project.
So for those of you who genuinely believe
that part of the solution to homelessness
is adding housing, I hope you will come down here
advocate for more housing at those times when people are opposing it. We need the housing. There's no
question about it. In the meantime, as that housing is built, we do need to help people get off the
streets. Living on the streets is very unsafe for the people who are living on them. One piece of good
news is that we have seen a decrease in street homelessness over the last few years in San Diego.
And with that decrease in street homelessness, we have also seen a
commensurate decrease in the number of people experiencing homelessness who have died.
The medical examiners records have showed a decline in the number of deaths among homeless
people at the same time as we have seen a decline in the number of people who are
living on the streets.
So there is a real benefit to helping people get into housing and if the housing is
available to help them get into shelters or into safe sleeping.
And there is a lot of work being done around that.
We have nonprofit outreach teams that are connecting with people experiencing homelessness
and the police department and the neighborhood policing division is an important part of that process as well.
To that end, one of the concerns that I had had, we saw a pretty significant decrease in
We saw a 65% decrease in the number of people living on the streets over about a two and a half year period, but that has started the level off because
our shelters are full, our safe sleeping sites are full.
Are you running into situations where you are encountering people who are willing to accept shelter, but there is not a shelter that available for them?
Great question. Yes. So let me have Lieutenant Watkins and Charter Homeless Outreach
seemed to give you the numbers on folks that are willing to have shelter but we have
to refuse them because essentially it's that capacity.
Thank you. So the the number that you're referring to we title as accepted but rejected
due to capacity and that is when someone accepts going into services but they're rejected
because of capacity, that number is 2,225 people.
2,000.
That's completely unacceptable from my standpoint.
I mean, sure there are individuals who don't want to come off the streets.
But when you've got that many people who are on the streets who want to come off the streets
and the city does not have the capacity to help them off the streets.
that is unacceptable and it also goes to a myth that I think that we all need to do a good
job of busting and that is this idea that everybody who is out there on the streets wants
to be out there that all these people are out on the streets don't want help they don't
walk that is false sure there are some people who don't but there are a lot of people
who are out on the streets right now who desperately want to come indoors and to a shelter
bed, get help, go into safe sleeping, but the city does not have the resources to do that.
And that is one of the reasons why I've been such a strong advocate for more shelter beds.
And I hope that we're able to add additional shelter beds and safe sleeping sites and that
that will help you do your job.
One other question that I have for you, and the last question, has to do with the decrease
in staffing.
Uh, the brothers.
A significant drop in staffing levels that your division has experienced that I appreciate all that you've done to try to operate more efficiently, do more with less, as you said.
And I see that what have been the ramifications of having less staffing in the division?
Great question. If I could just piggyback on the previous question, just one thing I want to make clear.
And when we do someone that accepts a shelter bed and we're not available to do capacity,
we are not siding our resting them.
That is not our policy.
Because that's just a case.
That's why the issuing rate was so low the city turns off.
So we really got rid of that.
There's no point in if someone wants a bed to cite them for unsaid camping.
That's not practical.
It's not very humane.
What is happening now is we're contacting a lot of folks that are violating law for whatever
reason downtown.
I'm going to use that as an example.
And we talked about that persistent number and you brought it up.
In 2021, I'm going off memory, the overdose rate for drug overdoses in the county was up
869%.
So what we are saying is there's still a persistent drug epidemic that is occurring out
on the streets.
So we're trying to address that underlying issue with opioid cell lymphones, many to start
rather than with jail.
We don't want that.
Let's start them with recovery, bridge center, and go from there.
There's going to be persistent cases, unfortunately, that jail is going to have to be,
but it's still.
That's why we are one hundred percent on board with San Diego collaborative court is to find
an alternative car situation model for someone who,
because we do have about 3,300 people this year
that have refused any shelter even if it was available.
So we do have some people that are affected by addiction
and we understand that our goal
is not to wear how people that are homeless in prison
for drug violations.
Our goal is to get them off drugs,
get them to help they need.
So they can have a stable life
when shelter or home housing is available.
So I just wanted to kind of conclude that.
Regarding this, the staffing challenge,
I think the way we, it's impacted
and how we do some things that we do, and we want to do.
For example, it's very important that we engage
in the best concepts of community policing.
One of the things that I task every of our officers
to spend two hours a week walking around downtown
is go down there and just interact.
So remember the public and approach officers
see what they're doing rather than they're in a car
waiting in the light.
And honestly, it's a terrible act that
when officers are in a car and they drive by some situation
because they may not see it.
So we want to engage in, get it done in response time.
We'd love that to be under three days,
but we're not able to do that.
We want to respond to anything that could be a fire risk as quickly as we can with the
pending El Nino season that we're looking at.
We want to get out into the river bed and get out and contact folks, get them out reach
to where they're one, not subject to flash flood and their lives and data.
And two, we don't want to encampments to build in those locations where clogged storm drains
with debris, trash, and then it impacts those neighborhoods around there.
We have flood and like we saw in SouthCourse in 2024.
So it's a multifaceted approach.
One thing that is really augmented is the assignment of the temporary assignment of new officers
out of the Academy of Chief Walls started doing when he came.
I think that is one of those critical ways we're able to get out there and engage and complete
our mission and interact with homosokes.
If we didn't have the new officers come through, we couldn't have taken the intervention services
team and take it from one officer to four in the sergeant.
We couldn't double the size of our homosot rich.
We understand that if we're going to be out there and contacting more folks and potentially
arresting more folks or engaging them in whatever enforcement activity we need to have a mechanism in place to receive those folks when they do
And I will say even though and I want to give you the number
187 people as of July 31st of this year except it's some level of assistance from
Homeless outreach so they might not have had a bed available to the capacity but we were able to help them get their
Identification a system and completing a Medicaid or VA application for generally
give a ride to the DMV or medical or a counseling appointment, things like that.
Those numbers can be impacted by staffing and we have officers that are heard, have to attend
mandatory training, things of that nature, but anytime we have more officers we're able
to be out in the public more engaged with more people and unlocking those issues that might
be keeping somebody homeless. So more staffing is going to help with that.
Thank you. Thank you, Bradford, those questions. Thank you for not arresting people who
accept resources. Thank you for offering those resources to people and for all of your efforts
to respond to the community. It's one of the things that you hear about and I hear about
in our office from community members who have concerns around these issues as well. So certainly
more resources would be useful both for housing and for homelessness that appreciate the very
hard work that you and your team, all the officers do with this regard. Thank you. Thank you,
Thank you very much. Now with your phone call, so we're able.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Captain, and Lieutenant, for your presentation, and for all
your hard work. Obviously, you know how to do things efficiently and unless of a dime, which
is really important for us. I, in hearing the questions from the public and the comments
from the public, first of all, let me just say, do not mix up the police,
They root police in division, helping the homeless people with arresting the homeless people.
They're making the rest of criminals, they are not arresting homeless people because they're homeless.
So I'm afraid you have conflated things.
I know it's different than it used to be, but we are much more humane than we used to be, and we have learned a lot.
So, the other thing I want to say is how much I agree with my colleague about needing more
shoulder beds.
Obviously, 2225 more people need a shoulder beds and we had available.
Once we get people into shoulder, we can give them the wrap-around services, discuss all
the problems that have led to their homelessness and help them to no longer be homeless.
And so it's a very important that we continue to improve our care for the homeless and our
sheltering of the homeless and giving them these services.
And I really appreciate the police taking a big part in that, which is really, I've been
here eight years and this is really a big jump upward and it's so helpful.
And so I just can't congratulate you enough for all the good you have done in reducing
crime with even less of a force than you than you've had in the past. And being so humanity
oriented is very much appreciated. So this is significant work. This is the work of the good
guys. And I recognize the officers and staff who are making this happen and appreciated so much.
Yeah, what you've done is truly remarkable and amazing with such little resources.
And that is why our office helped so much to get that $700,000 of the opioid settlement
so that you could have that money to help with these intervention services.
And thank you, I mean, helping over a thousand homeless of the 5,000 over 5,000 that you
success rate. And this is really quite quite good. We need to, we want to improve to 100 percent,
but we really, really appreciate that everything you have done. And we appreciate you making the public
place much more safe for all of us by arresting the criminals and the drug dealers. So thank you so much
and keep up a good work or so proud of you. Thank you.
Thank you. If you want to answer a question,
Captain, you look like you're ready to answer a question.
The only thing I wanted to add in just from the public comment that I heard is actually
our encroachment arrest, they're down 22%, so we're actually trying to do less arrests for
someone for encroachment, but what we are seeing is we're contacting someone for encroachment,
and that's why you see the drug arrest.
Really, that's what we're tackling, is there so many folks that are just struggling with
addiction out there?
And that's why with the opi, it's said when we're trying to divert people by having an
and go out and take them straight to RBC.
Okay, let's get them to recovery bridge,
start with the lowest level where it's not an arrest on a record
that's impacts them from getting a career.
But I appreciate Councilman and Councilman and Councilman.
There are people that are dealing drugs on the streets
and there are people that are using drugs on the streets.
And that's not tolerable.
So you have someone using friends from 10 in the morning
on the corner of the street.
So we're out there, even though some numbers are down,
we're trying to move away from that
and focus on the things that are really core drivers,
which is addiction and mental illness.
Thank you.
So thank you for your presentation and the work you're doing.
You have a lot on your plate.
And one, I have a couple of questions.
One is, how much is neighborhood police division
able to do proactive outreach rather than just having to respond
to get it done requests?
I would say most of what we do is it's a hybrid.
So we might get just a simple complaint that starts
as, hey, there's a homeless guy in the park, or can we deal with them?
Our goal is not that that's a complaint goal.
our goals, hey, let's go out and contact them,
figure out what's going on, if they're committing a crime,
then we have to deal with that.
But if it's something that we can, our first path is always,
what is going on with that individual,
and can we try services first?
Every contact begins with, hey,
which you accept the shelter, but it won't be available.
And then we find those individuals,
and we talk about, I mentioned in the Interim Manager Services,
a guy was arrested 161 times in your district,
Council Member Campbell.
That's not good for anybody.
So, intervention services got involved,
and that's why we're really committed to having those programs,
to divert people away from prison and jail,
but also not just leaving them in the park hoping that today's
the day they're going to accept services.
There has to be a middle path.
And that's why we've expanded so much on our homeless outreach,
intervention services is for those individuals
that are really kind of stuck in the middle, right?
We don't want them to end up in prison
because they end up committing a felony
because they're on a drug fueled episode.
But we also don't want to just leave them there.
And if they say, no, I don't want to shelter today,
then we just walk away.
That's what we're trying to find in the middle path.
So it's a blend, but most of it starts with complaint driven, it's not an officer's driver
on looking for someone, it starts with that, but the approach always begins with not a
criminalization approach, it's a help approach and then from there, the officers are expected
to use a good judgment and go from there.
That's why it's so important that every officer now, for standing a police officer, never policing,
so when they go and work whatever corner of the city they work and they understand, oh, I
know officer so and so for almost, I got their cell phone number, I can call them and then
that angle rather than just simply going to an arrest for encroachment or whatever else
out there.
And then the person just cycled in and out of criminal justice, and we're trying to
evolve with that.
So, tell me more about intervention services.
So, intervention services used to be one-offs during what they specialize in is they deal
with our cases that are the most difficult cases of substance abuse addiction or untreated mental
illness.
So, they're going to be working, they're going to be our point-person work with San Diego
collaborative court to get folks that have been cycling in and out of the criminal justice
system to get them, whether it's us picking them up from jail and taking straight to a
treatment bed, we'll do that because we understand probation stress, but it's better
for us to have an officer bought and spend an hour doing that and we already have those
connections because all of our interemptions work within the home side, we can pick them
up from jail, take them straight to a treatment center, rather than hoping what's happening
sometimes is they get released from jail on a Friday night and they were hoping they
show up on Tuesday morning and they're going to withdrawals and that's not good.
the overdose, they come into crime, they relapse, and they don't show up.
So we need to have some level of accountability.
And when you look at the best models with the highest, I'm sorry, the best levels of
precipitism that people were not going through, it's drug court, the drug court model.
So we see any of the collaborative court is built on that with a mental health component
of it, which is why the resource ask us program, street health, things of that nature, our
intervention services will work with them.
So we want officers to understand there is off-ramps for folks, instead of just jail.
or they didn't take services today and we walk away.
We went them to have connections with our homeless outreach team
and we went out with the intervention services
and understand there might be a different path
that we need to do for our chronically homeless population
that are battling with serious substance abuse disorder
or untreated mental illness.
When we talk about the recovery bridge
and the opioid summit funds,
they just started like the middle of July
and we're in the middle of August
and 57 people were not taking a jail
but they weren't left on the streets
because they were high on drugs.
They were taken recovery bridge
and at least we're starting that process.
If they continue to use drugs or do things
that sometimes people use drugs do commit crimes,
then they might have to go to jail,
but there's always an off-ramp,
even if they end up in a criminal justice system
to have their record cleared,
to get to treatment through the criminal justice system.
So that's our goal is not to wear
how's people in jail and prison,
but also not just to leave them on the street
and hope that today is the day.
We have to find that in the middle ground.
Yeah, that's often been the challenges.
There is no place to go other than jail or hemorrhaging room.
It was not built by society, and part of the issue is that the county is responsible for
health and human services, but the city is the one who has the police department.
And so getting these two entities to work together has been a challenge.
You know, we have the perk clinicians, the psychiatric emergency response team, which
go out with officers on now and one calls, I'd love to have more of them, but they're county
employees.
We have to bag the county to budget them and fund them.
And so it's, but that's the way the California government was set up was to
bifurcate these two governments and it makes it a challenge.
So can you tell me more about how you're working with the county to fold in?
We need more substance abuse and mental health centers.
That's a challenge.
I'm going to divert a little bit of that to Lieutenant Bobkin because he's our homeless
outreach lieutenant and he works well with our care court and lifts some of the other
programs.
I will say that for us as a macro level for neighborhood policing, it's about having
the best relationships we can and honestly if the county or another entity is not picking
up the slack, we're going to, because that problem is in our backyard, it's not in the county's
backyard.
So we're not going to just hope to the county as it is, if they're not going to do it, we'll
step up, which is why is it really necessarily a San Diego police whose job if we have
to pick somebody up from jail and take them to a treatment bed, that probably is not, but
is it better than that person just going right back to the same neighborhood, creating the same
problem versus having an officer go for half a shift and we've already developed those
relationships.
And one other thing we talked about, 187 people this year accepted some level of assistance.
So at least they've interacted with the cops and they're like, they're not so bad and at least
we're building some trusted.
Hey, you're not going to jail today.
We couldn't get a bed for you today.
But hey, here's a personal hygiene kit.
Let's help you fill out that application at the VA.
We'll see you tomorrow and let's try again tomorrow.
So we're not going to give up on our end because we understand we're part of the social
fabric and have that responsibility to carry that weight.
And we don't mind doing it.
We're just with the understanding that we can't paint the use a one large.
Paying a brush on every individual because they're different. For the county and some of those things, I'll turn off Lieutenant-Botkin.
I don't know if I have a ton to add to that, except that working, working with all the different county entities is something that each of our individual teams do.
You asked about the different proactive efforts we have. We have three different homeless outreach teams, two different daytime teams and a hybrid team that work evening time hours.
And then we also have the intervention services team which you have heard about.
They address the 1% of the population that produce 17% of all calls for service.
Whether it's behavioral health systems, the hospitals, fire, and police departments.
But I will say that when it comes to collaborating with the county through PURT,
even through MCRT, our teams, the homeless outreach teams in the intervention services,
and even our live level officers on the enforcement side of the house, they know that they
have access to them and they know how to utilize them. And so while there may be challenges
and while there may be difficulties in working with those teams, officers and our supervisors
understand at intricate level how to use them and how to best use them. And so there are challenges,
that's for sure. But as we like to say at neighborhood policing, we're committed to the long road
for the people that we work with, and that we collaborate with, because we know that people matter,
and we know that if we can find sources of services, we're going to do it,
and the homeless outreach team and intervention are really the ultimate example of that.
The homeless outreach does ground level work, and they will go out to different people throughout the day.
Intervention services will literally attach themselves to a person, and really not let go,
we have some kind of success, the example from Councilmember Campbell's district was a person
who had been arrested 163 times. An intervention service is just refused to give up.
Well, that person agreed to enter in a treatment, began to actively participate in their own
treatment, and has since remained out of custody. That's one of a handful of examples I just
presented on today at a different group. The life change that occurs through our efforts and
the participation of those we work with is really phenomenal and so that's what drives the work that
we do at a neighborhood policing. Got it. Thank you. And I had a question about in the progressive
enforcement model but you've already answered every time you contact someone the first instances
offering help but every single time if you have to come back multiple times even before an arrest is made
you'll still offer help before an arrest correct correct so we follow that that's why actually our
sort of down to send a degree in the encroachment model because we are trying to
kind of, you know, we have to leave it on the plate that there are going to be certain
individuals that just refuse and they're difficult. We're committed to
still even with that individual. We contact them every day. We're going to offer them shelter
first and services that they're willing. Some people are not. But that's what we're
just trying to get officers out of their cars, interact with these folks, and figure out
what's going on with them and hey, you know, maybe we can at least, if you want to take
shelter today, maybe you can at least take some level of assistance for our
and we'll start building that trust.
But on the same token, we do have to understand
our first responsibilities public safety.
And if someone's coming in,
cry, we're doing something to make the public unsafe.
We want to interact.
And I think it's also important to note that
when we have all these opportunities to intervene
at a lower level in fraction level,
a warning level, a misdemeanor level,
if we lose all those opportunities,
then the only opportunity intervenes at the felony level,
or when someone's hurt.
We don't want that.
We want to intervene at the lowest level possible
so we can cooperate,
whether it was with HSSD or any other partners that we have to avoid people getting deeper and deeper into the criminal
justice system, make it in their lives harder.
And what about obviously there's still a huge addiction crisis on our streets and it's one of the
reasons that the city sued opioid companies and I was on that lawsuit as Deputy City Attorney
and I'm glad we're using the money for medical vans so we can have mobile street health care
and provide suboxone on the street.
People don't have to come into healthcare centers but someone is dealing those drugs.
somebody is providing drugs and praying on home of people to consume them. So what are we doing
about the dealers who are specifically praying on unsheltered people and continuing to push drugs
in their community? So without getting in the actual specific operations are, except our number one
priority is open air drug use that especially occurs in the downtown area that is something that
just completely detract from neighborhoods, it's our number one driver of complaints with the community
and it's frankly unacceptable. So we always mix in if we're resting somebody that's a user versus
someone that's selling drugs. Obviously, when you look at those issuing rates, they're up because
we have better trained officers that are focused more on core drivers. People out there
are selling drugs to members of the homeless community because they're a, they're a population
that's easily targeted and they're struggling with addiction already. So, when you see those
arrest go up, but you can see the encroachment and say, Camino's are going down, it's not that
we're not, those are still priorities for us. We're contacting people for those particular crimes,
but what we're trying to do is off-wrap some of that simply homeless that's encroaching or
and say, can't be in get them with homeless outreach,
but when we come across, like I said,
we talk about these arrests,
it's almost all drug driven,
but that's why we're committed to things such as using
the Recovery Bridge Center
and off-ramping people at the earliest level we can.
Possession of drugs is a citation,
it's a misperience citation
when you see those numbers up, those are going up,
but I look at those misdemeanor citations for folks
as they're not meant to impact them,
they're meant to be an opportunity to get them into court
And they, for lack of a better term, might get the nudge from the judge to get into treatment because they're struggling.
But there's always an off ramp for any of those individuals, they're not going to prison for that, to have them get the help that they need.
And that's why we're having the officers go out there and interact and you see some of those numbers go up, but other numbers go down.
Because we have such a persistent drug use problem on people that are struggling with it. Those are people we have to contact.
Okay. Thank you. Two more questions. One is about outreach into some of the farther up parts
of the city in the particular canyons. You know, we had fire started in Rancho Bonardo
Canyon in Mission Valley that almost took houses and I do believe in Councillor Campio's
district. There was a fire near Monazuma near the college area that was also started by an
unsheltered individual in a canyon using a flame for cooking or for unfortunately in Rancho
it was making meth, but it's for whatever was being, but then it turns into huge fires.
And so we need to get help for people who are in canyons, get them out of canyons, endotreatment.
But how do we do that with such huge city?
So I would say twofold.
Number one, any encampment, complaint that we get that has a fire risk is our number one priority
that we respond to.
We were closely with environmental services on the three-hour abatement to get out there
if there's hazardous materials that might affect waterways or any kind of fire risk.
The flip side is when we talk about revamping our overtime model.
But one of the things that we did is it's set of officers responding to these low-gette
done times.
We have a dedicated canyons and beach safety team that goes out on, picked on the weekends
when I have lower staffing and they specifically are tasked with addressing complaints within
the canyons.
Places that we, that's harder for officers during our normal shift to get to, and that is
their pure focus is to get to those open-preserved canyons and try to knock those down and
get out and contact those individuals, rather than let them build up and become some big
fire.
So that is a dedicated way that we've revamped for over time
to be more specific and targeted on those complaints
specifically.
It can be a challenge for some people
that are within the riverbed community
and things that nature, I think a lot of it
is building trust with them.
That's why we just stay out of work closely
with the San Diego Riverbed Foundation.
And that was one of the reasons that we looked at last year,
the last quarter I saw the riverbed population
of homeless drop by 52%.
So we're making an impact there.
We still have a long ways to go,
but at least it's starting there.
I think as we get deeper and deeper into homeless and we look at California, we might be
homeless 25% of the nation's homeless population, but 60% of the chronically.
So we have people that are chronically being on the streets for a long, long, long time, and
those are more complex cases.
So again, the goal is not to arrest our way out of this problem.
Our goal is to interact with them, build trust, get them out of it.
But if they're doing something that's going to hold the community unsafe, we have to address
that.
That's still is our number one responsibility.
but it's always a compassion but from the program.
Thank you and I'm glad that our recovery bridge center is now open.
I'm glad that we have mobile street bands doing street medicine with our firefighters and our
paramedics and you know I'm really interested to see how the collaborative court goes because I agree
you should always have an offer amp if someone's willing to get help and take the step to get their
life back together they should have an offer amp from the coronavirus system so I appreciate that my last
question you might not be able to answer this but we're about to start our next item is going to be on
police training because that's equally important to providing high quality law enforcement
that's responsible in the city of San Diego.
And I do understand the need for every police recruit who goes to the academy to interact
with homeless individuals in a kind, compassionate way and they know how to access resources.
At the same time, when you go through the academy, you learn all sorts of tactical things
you have to learn on the streets, chopping cars, individuals going into barricaded suspects,
arresting people, not arresting people, de-escalation, and then you need that on-the-street training
to really compound what you've learned.
And so if we take officers from the Academy and we put them straight into NPD, are they
not then going to get that immediate field training that you might want to have, right when they
get out of the Academy, wouldn't be better for our training program to have officers come
after they've done some in-service training in patrol, for example, before going to NPD.
And that might not be a question you can answer, but that's something I'm going to ask in the next item
because, you know, as a lawyer when I graduated, I didn't know how to file a court case.
I had to have attorneys trained me, so.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I would argue the opposite is true.
You know, when an officer completes face training and they go to their divisions, certainly they're going to apply the things that they've learned.
But what they're also going to do is to a certain degree, be beholden to radio calls and reports that they're going to have to take because that is part of the role of a true division.
However, neighborhood policing division, we have these officers interacting with people consistently on a daily basis in some instances.
Because these officers will contact 15, 20 people a day.
The ability to speak to someone to know whether you're being lied to or not, to apply
an understanding of valuing people from being under the influence of a controlled substance,
dealing with people who suffer with mental illness and act out because of that and or a drug
or substance abuse problem really is a skill that is only developed over time.
You receive the rudimentary training, but the advanced level of that is applying that training and then seeing what works and what doesn't
and understanding how to
take everything full circle from the initial contact to an arrest.
The officers at our division, again, that come straight out of phase training,
they will work and
arrest people for open our drug use, open our drug sales,
committing violent crimes and all of those cases are things that you will do at a
patrol division. However, in our circumstance, they're doing it repeatedly without the
incumbents of having to answer the radio or take crime reports. And so that is what happens
when a new officer comes to us. They really, as the police term is 1186, a special detail. We like to
that you're 1186 every day the neighborhood policing and you had the opportunity to go out and
really apply your craft to learn how to talk to people, to learn how to to evaluate people and
interact with people because there's just, there's nothing like actually doing the job and when they
come to us they have three to four months of doing that every day and so we produce at the end of
really a much better product, so to speak.
One thing to piggyback on that.
I do think that police officer job is so many different things,
and they do receive training.
They do come to us after they complete phase training,
and they're employing a lot of on-the-job training
related to homelessness.
Helms are things that we've already discussed.
They do still have radio responsibility.
We on average respond about 900 radio calls a month at MPD,
so they're still going to hot calls officers
went to the market shooting.
They're still expected to monitor air
and go to calls about.
They're also volunteering for calls
with the homeless related nexus.
they might hear something on the radio.
So there's whatever division they're in.
So that responsibility is still there.
I'll leave out to Captain Ramsey if you talk
about some of the other training that occurs.
I think what they're able to apply to a lot of it
is the core tenets of community policing,
instead of being kind of tied to the radio.
And they're getting out there, learning about self-initiated activity,
learning how to interact with someone
most difficult members of the society,
doing the de-escalation with folks that, you know,
instead of just one particular community,
they're in interacting with several different communities.
And they're getting the opportunity to understand, like, how do we interact with people?
I think they're so much to learn this.
I don't think they're losing it.
I think they're just getting that component because if they don't get it with us, then
they're not going to get it, I think, down the road, and they're trying to fumble through some
of these complex laws related to their homelessness and their progressive enforcement for some
model versus, hey, someone didn't stop at a stop sign.
It's pretty simple.
I can write them a ticket and stop.
It's a little more easier for them to digest and understand.
I think it's just a layered approach.
I think that whole first year officers are going to feel they're they're they're just learning and I just think when you look at public the number one
Crime issue and I hate these crimes. I don't want to criminalize homelessness, but the number one complaint issue and law enforcement deal with in California
It's not murders or gang activity. It's it's homelessness related issues. So I think that's what we prioritize and it allows us to
If we were fully staffed then we wouldn't need to do it but this augments us and it does serve that purpose of at least everybody goes out
to every substation with an working on the job and knowledge of, how do I tackle that?
Okay, I gotta remember how to write a burglar report and they might have to ask for help with that.
But I think they're going to be okay.
I want them to know how to interact with some of our most difficult cases in society.
First, and I think that's worked out well.
It prevents a lot of misunderstandings, prevents a lot of use of forces.
I look at one of the best examples that we talked about OVO enforcement.
How many cars we've towed, zero this year?
We're not trying to take someone and make them a situation more difficult.
That's officers interacting.
How many complaints?
Zero.
So that shows thousands of contact officers
are being professional and we're learning to engage with people.
And that's what they get from there.
And then they go on their patrol command.
I think they're better prepared.
God.
Thank you.
Well that's a good segue into our next item.
I appreciate you very much.
Being here.
Thank you for my colleague.
And let us know how we can support you. So that brings us to our next item, which is item 3, which is our training division update. I'm Sarah, please introduce item 3.
Thank you, Chair. The training division update is item number 3. And if you're watching on city TV or the live stream online, and you'd like to dial in the speak, please call 169-2545252.
including Webinar ID 1613980144 for Pam.
Mike, please introduce yourselves for record.
Let us know how much time you'll need for your presentation.
Captain Mike Ramsey, the San Diego PD Training Division, with me I have a Lieutenant
Brian McGilvera, he's in service training division, and I'll need about 15 minutes.
Okay, please proceed.
Thank you, public safety members for inviting us to share information on training division.
There has been significant changes within training division, especially in the last 18 months.
But before I get into individual programs and initiatives, I want to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Over the last year and a half, training division has been involved in an incredible amount of work.
We've expanded programs, developed new training, supported department-wide initiatives, strengthens, leadership development, and continued to deliver mandatory training for our personal.
This work is important because this is one of she walls top three priorities for the department.
That's investing in our workforce and development.
When I'm going to share with you is not just a list of accomplishments or projects.
It represents a direct investment in our workforce.
When you look at each project individually, it's easy to see just one more thing on a list.
But when we put it all together, really demonstrates the volume, the scope and the impact of what the division has accomplished in the last 18 months.
Today, I want to highlight some of that work, not just talk about what we've done, but to show
how much effort has gone into building a stronger and more capable and modern training operation.
We talk about training, it's easy to think about courses, certifications, checking the boxes,
that says someone completed a requirement. Training is how we prepare our people for the moment
when preparation matters most. It's how we build confidence, develop leaders, improve decision-making,
and ultimately make our organization better.
The training division has an important responsibility,
not just to train people for the job they have today,
but to prepare them for the challenges and responsibilities
they may have tomorrow.
That's really the theme behind the work I'm going to share
with you today.
How we are continuing to evolve to meet the needs of department,
our personnel, and the communities we serve.
A little overview of training division.
This is what falls under the umbrella of training division.
We have a leadership development unit
In service training unit, the regional police academy, the range, field training, administration, and force analysis unit.
Everything I'm going to talk about is relatively a new training program that has taken place in the last 18 months.
First one is the command cohort.
This is about changing the mindset from managing today's problems to leading an organization,
understanding the role and expectations of command staff.
Looking at the history of SDPD and the lessons that shape we were going, introducing decision-making models in the business side of running a police department.
Some of the topics is leading people, command leadership is ultimately about people, coaching and mentoring, understanding different generations and leadership styles, having difficult or crucial conversation.
How this city works? Future leaders need to understand how the mayor, how the council, city departments, labor organizations and the police department interact.
budget policies and legislation processes directly affect what we can accomplish operationally.
From my 30 years on this department, the first time I was exposed to anything like that.
This helps future command staff understand how decisions get made beyond the police department.
Communication, command officers have to communicate up and down, communicating with officers,
employees, the public, media, city leadership, it requires different approaches.
The goal is to build leaders who can communicate clearly during both routine operations and crisis situations.
Commuting engagement, policing doesn't happen independently in the community.
Of the community, future, command staff needs tools to build relationships and credibility.
Empathy gives leaders a framework for understanding different perspectives, ultimately this is about building legitimacy and trust.
Strategic planning for in the future.
We also asked our future leaders to think beyond today's problems,
while we'll completely seem to look like in five or ten years from now.
How do we improve a vision rather than react to problems?
Introduction to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence,
the objective is to develop leaders who can anticipate change rather than simply respond to it.
Incident command. Command staff need to be prepared for large-scale
complex events, critical incidents, leadership,
that planning and management, understanding how different components of the organization work together,
and wellness and self-care, leadership carries a different level of responsibility and stress,
command staff need to understand how their own wellness, as well as the wellness of the people they lead,
recognition and appreciation of our leadership tools.
The networking component helps build relationships across the organization.
The common thread through this command cohort and all these topics I talked about
is developing leaders who understand the organization, understand the community, can communicate effectively and make decisions under pressure that ultimately have the ability to lead STPD in the future.
Before I talk about this, throughout my career in the department, I saw leadership development gap.
I was experienced in the leadership development gap as well. The traditional model is promotion, then your leadership training, checking the box training.
So, what are we doing to change this culture in status quo?
Well, the new model is the leadership starts at the recruit level,
then the officer in development, promotion, and then advanced leadership.
Leadership development should be long before promotions.
Building a leadership ecosystem where every stage of build upon the previous one is the goal.
The L3H training, I want to talk about this.
This is what we did many, many years ago.
called the Behind the Badge series of training, it wasn't originally developed for police.
It was created by the National Wildfire Coordination Group as part of wild land-fire services
leadership programs. It used across various emergency fields, but because of the high-stress
team management tactics, crossover well into law enforcement and all hazardous trainings.
The L380s designed for sergeants, the L280s for the police officer, or field train officer,
in the L-180s for the new officer.
These courses are designed around managing complex
high-risk incidents, but the lessons go well
beyond the incident itself.
They focus on how leaders perform when the environment
is dynamic, stressful, and consistently changing.
The understanding of leadership styles,
leader intent and communication, team cohesion.
That means building teams that communicate effectively,
recognizing operational errors, identifying problems,
early in taking action before small issues
become significant ones. And finally, the stress magic, because leadership decisions are
often being made under significant pressure.
What I like about this training, it takes concepts that are proven in other high-risk
emergency environments and applies them to law enforcement.
This is the Department's leadership course. This was created about a year ago now.
This course is designed for our inspiring leaders and officers who want to promote. We also
made this leadership development available not just the swarm personnel but to our professional
staff as well. This course establishes the fundamentals of leadership before someone gets
into a former or former supervisor leadership position. It focuses on the difference between
being a good employee and becoming an effective leader. This helps participants understand
the influence regardless of rank and title. And some of the topics that are covered in this
of course, is how to have that crucial conversation or difficult conversations addressing performance
conflict and expectations. Ethical decision-making leadership decisions aren't always black and white.
We want participants thinking about ethics, consequences, organization of values and public trust when making decisions.
Accountability and modeling the way. Leaders set the tone through their own behavior. Accountability starts with ourselves.
process is about creating leaders who model expectations that they place on others.
We do have a segment of critical incident management, crime scene processing, financial
wellness, career guidance and resume building, fearless leader.
This is where we're helping people think internationally about their careers rather than
waiting for opportunities to happen, resume development and career guidance are practical tools,
Fearless leadership is about having confidence to make decisions, speak up, accept responsibility, and lead even when it's uncomfortable.
The bigger objective is to create leadership culture, not simply a leadership class.
We want people throughout the organization thinking about leadership before they ever receive a title of promotion.
And by including professional staff alongside sworn staff, we're reinforcing that leadership is a responsibility that exists throughout the entire department.
mentoring program. This is about creating culture of career development within the
department. We want our employees to have access to resources, relationships, and
information they do not take control or how to take control of their careers.
We have currently about 175 officers who had volunteered to become mentors for
our new recruits. They mentor them throughout the entire police academy, upon
graduation and essentially throughout their entire career. The mentoring
program is a strong foundation that gives employees an opportunity to learn from people who have
already navigated the organization and career opportunities.
Another program we're working on updating is a training career catalog.
This is an online training catalog that will make it easier for employees to see what
training is available whether it's STPD, post training, regional training or an outside course.
The career development portal takes that step further by putting career information and resources
in one place.
The objective is to establish a clear path in transparent pathway for career development.
So employees understand not only what opportunities exist, but also what they need to do to prepare for.
We want people thinking about their development years before they're ready to promote.
If we develop our people early, we build a strong bench of qualified candidates and ultimately a stronger leader's lit of parliament.
I'll play this in a second.
So I'm going to show you a video of what we are doing to promote career pathways.
There are so many different units within the San Diego Police Department, so many different
opportunities, our forces very young.
We are creating a career pathway, video segments, to highlight units, to look at what these
officers have to potentially look forward within their careers, if they're, you know,
interested in specializing units.
This particular video is from our Abel, a flight helicopter here,
you know,
is.
Able
started over three decades ago with a pair of binoculars and a paper map book.
And now we have moving maps systems and high-definition cameras.
We are looking for good street cops that we can turn into great tact to the flight officers.
The cockpit could be a very small workplace, so we have to get along with each other,
but the fact of the matter is that we do.
Before coming to Able, I had incorrectly assumed that everyone here had a long history of aviation experience,
and I did not. In fact, I had zero aviation experience. It took me bumping into one of the pilots
that worked here and telling him, I'd love to go to that unit, but I'm not a pilot. He's the one
who told me you don't have to be to get started there.
This job can be so dynamic. It goes from 0 to 60
so fast that you have to be ready for it, and we'll teach you.
About 15 miles an hour, come
into a stop, looking for a football, looks like a male, black shirt, white under shirt, black,
Sweat, he's right, he's found through the parking lot out towards Elfano, Louisiana, happened to rope, a little bit of the stop sign, still south of them.
Trifers doors open.
Okay, the guy jumped out of the driver's seat, car's old, southbound, nobody in the driver's seat.
Your head's up, the driver is running.
It's going to be right at the off ramp of the 905, the westbound.
He will put first suit, he is northbound, 2090.
He's going to have to have four.
All right, KC guys, get a KC now, look at the foot fail, and Starv is going to be self-bound, all blind
which is what's going on there.
Now, fine, all blind, right, wait, should fit a driver.
Looks like we got one get a big contact with the bell.
We offer a perspective.
Effective, and no one else on the ground has. And because of this, we have the opportunity to keep officers safe and help catch the suspect that might otherwise got away.
The goal is air to have that career path building system with technology for our younger officers to highlight units like able, swat, canine, being a detective, working certain specialized assignments, so they can really look at what the job involves, so we could help build a careers recruit them.
and really expose them to what the other units do.
Next topic, I want to talk about command convention.
We had our first command convention this summer.
This involved all the tenets in above.
This is the first time in the history of STPD
that I believe where we got all our command convention
or command staff together to meet,
to bring leadership or together for future needs of the department.
It was a two-day event featuring keynote speakers
who brought perspectives and ideas that went far beyond the normal day-to-day operations.
We focus on public safety issues that are directly relevant to the work we do.
We also created space to look at the bigger picture and the department needs.
One of the most valuable components was a working group sessions rather than simply listening
to presentations.
Attendees were asked to work together and address some of the key issues facing the department.
While we use the convention as an opportunity to have a meaningful discussion about department
goals, making sure our leadership team understands not only where we are going, but how we're
going to get there together. The training panels gave attendees practical opportunities to
learn from subject matter experts and a friend went from one another. The bigger objective was
connection and alignment. We want to the command staff to lead with better understanding of our
priorities, stronger relationships across the organization, and ideas that could take us back
ideas that could take back to their teams. Ultimately, this was about investing in our leaders,
so they can do better and leave the organization.
A few other training topics I wanna talk about,
is the incident command training.
It's major part of the building
a more consistent understanding of the ICS system.
This will be mandated for all the attendance and above.
The ICS will be required with the goal
of making sure our supervisors become proficient
in the different ICS models.
That's important because when we have significant incidents,
we need leaders who can step into those roles
and operate effectively.
Another component is the command training.
We want to continue developing our current and future
command staff so they prepare not only for the responsibilities
they have today, but what is also coming next.
Employee development.
It's about creating opportunities for people
throughout the organization and to grow professionally,
not just sworn personnel, but in their leadership roles.
And finally, advanced officer training
allows us to continually build skills and capabilities
beyond the basics training requirements.
The bigger picture here is where we're trying to create
a continuum of training and development
from the line level through supervision
and ultimately into command.
That ties directly back to our overall philosophy.
We don't want to wait until someone gets promoted
or an incident occurs that starts to be apparent
and we want them to develop our people
before they're put into those situations.
We'll talk a little bit about the in-service training teams.
This was newly created.
We have two in-service training teams that just went in effect earlier this year.
Traditionally, most patrol officers and sergeants saw training through AOT, which is advanced
officers training, and that was a two-year cycle.
And most of that is the state mandated training from post or assembly bills or penal code.
About 95% of those 40-hour week involved some kind of state mandated training.
So we had very little time as an organization to do anything outside of the mandates.
We created these field operations teams to make sure we're having training consistently throughout
a year or have a group of officers maybe getting in front of each command four to five times
a year can provide them real-world realistic training.
The goal is not simply to provide more trains to provide the right training at the right
time based on what officers are actually experiencing the field.
Also, the ability to pivot our training needs in any direction needed.
Officer safety and tactics is one of the things that we cover, reinforce the fundamentals
and making sure officers are prepared to handle high-risk situations.
Realistic scenario-based training, this is move beyond classroom instructions and create
realistic situations that require officers to communicate, make decisions, and apply tactics
under pressure.
Decision-making and de-escalation gives officers opportunities to practice the decisions they
made in real time, not just talk about them, squad in individual training, teams can identify
specific strengths and gaps and address them through squad level or individual training.
Learning from real world incidents, every significant incident is an opportunity to ask
what can we learn from this and how could we turn that into a lesson of training. Consistency
across the department, the objective is to create a common training standard swancers receive
consistent expectation and skills regardless of the assignments.
Crickleum development, the team, isn't just delivering training, they're continuously
evaluating and developing new training based on operational needs, emerging trends, training
has to stay ahead of the curve, identifying new threats, tactics, technology and changing
community expectations.
Ultimately, these teams connect what happens in the field and what's happening in training.
Our goal is to create a continuous cycle of experience,
identifying the lessons, train it, and improve performance.
That's how we build a department that's safer,
more consistent and better prepared for whatever our officers encounter.
One benefit of the training teams is that the teams actually
go to the officers' command, so we impact out of service time.
Rather than traditionally training, we have officers
travel to where the training is being held.
we're doing that opposite or traveling to them, we're taking them out of the field for
short periods of time, maybe a half hour to 45 minutes, running them through training
cycles and then sending them back in the field so they can be available.
At the end of the day, everything we do in training comes back to one simple objective.
Being better prepared, better prepared officers, better prepared supervisors,
better prepared
are benefiting both our officers and the communities they serve.
Training isn't something that happens once and then we move on and it has to be continuous.
As our profession changes, our community changes, and as a challenges we face change, our training
has to change with it.
Our goal is to create a culture where learning, development, and improvement are part of who
we are not simply something we do.
One thing I truly need to add, a lot of the training we're able to do has been from grants.
We had very little impact overall on the cost of training and also from the generous donors from the police foundation
has really been helpful for us to provide training classes, secure locations, and really invest in the time
that is needed to develop and improve the programs like that.
So I did want to mention our focus on is to continue to get grants for training and use the current resources we have to continue to build a training division programs.
Now I will ask for any questions if you have some.
Okay, thank you very much for the presentation and first we will take public comment on this item.
So please take any public comment.
Thank you, Chair. No organized presentations were submitted for these items, so we will move to in-person public testimony, and we have received two slips here in chambers.
We will begin with Joyce and Yada, and you will be followed by Darth Vader, and we have a third slip Patricia Madrigon.
So if these individuals can please come up to the front of the room, and we will begin with Joyce and Yada.
Thank you, great, great, great advances in the training, especially in the leadership area.
Thank you, thank you so much, really, five stars.
I'm concerned about the training of the new street, the training of the new street troops.
I like when you use the word emerging training trends, and I want to, if you're around, listen
to what I'm going to say in the non-agenda public comment because I'm going to be speaking
on non-verbal communication.
So I'm excited about this training solution, it's an emerging training trend.
Law enforcement, virtual reality, VR, headsets, where simulation meets reality in unprecedented
ways, simulators provide an unparalleled level of realism, immersing users in real world
scenarios to help them develop critical skills and prepare for the challenges they could face
in the field. I quoted this information from TI training. Thank you TI. Perhaps this is, this is
from me. Perhaps we can get philanthropic and or grant money to provide these new equipment for
our police officers, the new ones, especially coming into the academies. Because from me,
every single action all of you take between the SDPD and the public unfolds very quickly.
I don't care what you're doing.
I don't care if it's a serious, gun incident, or you're just talking, you know,
fifth amendment rights.
Anyway, I have so much to say to you, great job.
Thank you.
Thank you, Darth Vader,
Patricia Madrigone.
Thank you, I wasn't prepared to speak on this item,
but I want to share a story that happened.
I'm here in my personal capacity as a D3 resident.
I was flying home one day from Sacramento,
and there was a SDPD officer that was sitting in my same eye
whole with me. I was in the center seat, and they were next to me.
And we recognized each other and they were reading a book that was about line.
And I asked him, I mean we were having a very nice conversation and I don't want to
out anybody so I won't name anybody or name the book.
But it was about line and I asked him, so are you trying to become better at detecting lines
or becoming a better liar, and he answered both.
So I want you to think about that when we talk later on
about flock technology and master valence.
The goals that I saw listed were not community focused.
And I think one of the things that we really need to think about
is a city is that our law enforcement should be here
also to protect us as residents and we need to make sure that we have an informed
force that understands our constitutional rights and our human rights when they are
interacting with us.
Thank you.
And one final call for Darth Vader.
All right.
That concludes testimony here in chambers.
So I will begin the five minute timer for all those in the virtual queue to indicate if they
number three, we currently have two hands raised, and we will begin testimony with
Ale, please unmute and begin. You will have two minutes.
Hi, thank you. My name is Alecandro, and I'm born and raised in South
San Diego and South East as well. I'm here on my personal capacity. Just speaking
to these trainings that I'm seeing, you know, someone that works with currently
formerly incarcerated young people, young people that are being impacted by the
justice system, predominantly young people of color, especially girls who are
disproportionately affected by the policing that's happening in our communities.
It's frustrating to look at these trainings because we sit in meetings with
your attendance, we sit in meetings with other law enforcement agencies in
the community, both in the county and the city, and kind of just what the
there is no lived experience to be here.
It's great to have all these trainings,
but who's training you?
Are the people that you are directly impacting
through your policing, through your policies,
perhaps are outdated?
And where is the intent and the effort to collaborate
with those lived experience organizations
that are the reason why your crime rates are going down?
We also have to acknowledge that as well.
Public safety is the funding
of these community-based organizations that are doing this work on the ground when you are not
there, two, three, four, five in the morning, 11pm at night, these lived experience mentors
that are getting these calls. They're not calling police officers. They're calling formally
incarcerated individuals that have transformed their lives and have shown this change and have
become these leaders in their communities. And I don't see any of these people training you all.
And it's just really frustrating because you're continuing to use the same game plan
and the same strategy and you're going to a season and it's all in 16 again and when are y'all
gonna continue or when are gonna begin collaborating with the community and lived experience
individuals so that we don't come here year and year and year in every single public safety
committee meeting asking for the same thing. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker
Here is phone number ending in 5, 8, 6, 8, you can press star 6 to unmute phone number
Good evening and five, eight, six, eight.
Okay, can you hear me?
We can, please proceed.
Wonderful, wonderful. I would like to thank all the police officers for their presentations.
And I was sorry to see the neighborhood policing division go. That was a very good presentation.
And they are a very sincere and diligent in helping people that don't have any place to live.
I was also very impressed with training divisions, presentation, and all the new training they wish to implement.
I have just a few suggestions from the outside.
Are there going to be benchmarks?
Do you see if this training is effective?
And it's not just going to be checking about that this training was done.
Are there ways that the police department can see that these trainings are having a positive effect on the department?
Also, are there going to be feedback from the officers that take this training?
Will they have input as to whether it's the effect they feel it's effective or not?
The last thing is you can have all the training in the world, but if you're very short
staffed and some of your staff are burned out because of excessive over time, you're not
going to be able to train your way out of that.
So I would implore the committee to talk to the rest of the city council and divert the
like $40 million a year that we're paying in officer over time and to actually hire the staff that this police department needs so that they can protect and serve this community.
And they need to be mindful that they protect and they serve and they need to be mindful of the public's constitutional rights.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
Natalie Humphrey, please unmute and begin.
You will have two minutes to speak to item three.
Hi, there.
I am here in my personal capacity as well.
I'm speaking as actually a child of sheriff's
deputies for San Diego County.
And I'd like to piggyback off of what Alejandro said earlier,
regarding the training and who's training and
who's providing the feedback, I would have to agree also that I don't think it's just training,
you know, in my personal experience, I have a very, like dual type of experience with police
work on one hand, my mom, I was a share of 70 for 27 years and her breath. She had never filled
to take a book and that she had never had to fire her weapon on duty and then on the other
hand I had my father who was a sheriff's deputy for San Diego County as a sergeant detective
and was pretty openly known in the department for domestic violence and was never once arrested
and there is a 40% self-report rate for domestic violence in police work
And so I think part of it also is not just training, but personal accountability and tolerating
that kind of personal and private behavior from our officers because it impacts how
they serve our community.
That's my time.
Thank you for your testimony and share with the time concluding and know their hands raised
in the queue.
This concludes testimony for item number three.
Thank you very much and thank you to everybody who spoke on this item all turn over to my colleagues for any questions or comments
And this is an informational item only so no motion is required and we'll start with Vice Chair Campio
Thank you chair. Thank you to our police department for your presentation your good work
Obviously training has to remain a top priority for the department as
Environment changes as crime changes and I know we're putting a lot of good minds to that. I was wondering how frequently the average
press troll officer gets scenario-based de-escalation training so that after graduating from
the Academy, so we have a sense of how repetitive it is that our officers are exposed to
techniques that are meant to reduce violence and the need for force relative to the fact that
sometimes force is necessary to protect the public.
So with the new train teams, the goal is to at least every shift so every four months to have
train teams in front of those divisions two to three times. So that would be repetition training
through that based on different scenarios. And then I'd like to mention the comment about
the VR. We do use VR. We've been using it for years. What I mentioned is some of the new programs.
Part of our grant we have, moving forward is the more updated VR, the mixed reality where we take
those headsets to the officers,
they could go simply as in the parking lot,
and characters could be involved in that mixed reality
train and de-escalation decision making that all can happen
right there at the command moving forward.
Understood, do you have a sense of what percentage
of the hours worked by a police officer
on an annual basis are training as opposed to field work,
as opposed to patrol.
So, that we get a sense of this is the proportion that law enforcement officer receives to stay up to
up to par and better than up to par while they're on the job.
So, there's different components of it.
We have the post-mandated training, like I mentioned, that's 40 hours.
And then, in addition to the training we're providing, I'm going to estimate that probably be at least 10 hours or so.
And then that's the insurface side, that is the field interaction, that's a narrow base,
and then we have the leadership component, too, that all these courses that were
our relatively new that were moving forward with, and those vary from one-day courses to command
cohort is three months, eight sessions. So that varies, and that's how it's broken down in those segments.
Okay, and to be promoted through, do you have to show particular number of hours or coursework
to go from a police officer, to police officer, three, to sergeant upwards, there's to rise in
responsibility and authority. You need to show certain level of expertise and coursework as well,
right? Correct. So, promotions would start at the detective level followed by the sergeant
and up, and those are going to be based on the minimum eligibility, which is a set time on the
department, and then that whole rating is their experience, different assignments today. They work,
how they get on the written test, how they do on the oral interview panel, and that's all
combined into one score and promotions are based off those.
Okay, well thank you for answering those questions to give us a sense of what the regular training
and regular exposure to improved techniques, habits, and so on, that our officers go through
so that we can continue to improve our crime-detecting ability, our interaction with the public,
our preservation of rights and preservation of the public and their property.
Thank you.
And thank you for the presentation.
We talk about training officers a lot.
I'm standing with our firefighters and our lifeguards and anyone who has to interact with the public in life for desistuations.
And one thing I did here that absolutely breaks my heart is that you're having to search out grants for increased training.
You know, we talk about the fleece budget a lot and it is something we're working on over time and
recording it in, but training should be something that's fully funded.
And so I'm glad you've been creative in getting grants, but you know, the State of California,
which imposes post-training should also be providing funding for this too.
So just thank you for sharing that with us, and thank you to the fleece foundation for the work
they're doing.
I know that you provide equipment that we can't afford the city, but I didn't realize
that you're having to try so hard to scrap together funds for increased leadership training
and things that we want.
So Captain, thank you for doing that.
We'll attend it for going above and beyond.
But that's noted.
And next time I talk to our leaders in Sacramento and my counterparts,
we need to start thinking about how we fully fund that.
Because it's also not fair for us to put officers out
in the street without the training they need to interact
in these life or death situations.
So just noted.
So thank you for sharing that.
I want to ask as well.
We have quite a few newer officers on the force
because we had a large wave of retirements here
the past years in San Diego. So what is the basic training that they go to? They have the academy
and then they have what what happens next? How do we make sure they're ready to do the job?
So once they graduate from the academy, which is approximately seven months, they go into,
yes, seven months. They go to our field training program and they're assigned to field training
officers for a total of four months. And generally it's a month with each train officer and they rotate
around different divisions. After that, if they have any training deficiencies, we continue that phase
training up to two additional months to make sure they're efficient in their overall job duties
of police officers and you also have to remember Post does mandate and have set curriculum that the
officers have to achieve during phase training. There's a training book guidebook that they have to
complete. Many pages of tasks, certain crime investigations, certain types of arrests, certain
seizures, all of that has to be completed through phase training. And that kind of
gets me back to your question earlier with Captain Shibowski. The main reason they don't
go to MPD first is because of that high volume of training they need across the board as a police
officer to work an area command. Once they complete that, now their full functioning police
they go to MPD after that train is completed.
So that is the initial beginning of a police officer,
and what we're trying to build on now
is that continual training for the young officers
to do have a young force.
So that's where now the training teams are involved
with more of the tactical side, the de-escalation,
all of those in service side of the train,
and then that development and mentoring
of the young officers to move on through their careers to what's called a police officer
too and then up through detective or sergeant rank or specialized unit those that's
where we need to step in and that was our one of our goals is to get that experience and
give them the opportunities to expand their career and have a pathway moving forward.
Okay, and what is the sapin level of the training division? Are you guys fully staffed?
We're just about fully staffed. Again, it was chief wall's priority to increase training
division, so that has increased significantly. I want to say approximately 40% of my staffing
was increased. There's a couple openings, just because we have some movement coming on that,
but again, the goal of I think getting in front of our officers early,
provide in the training. I think the better decisions, the correct decisions,
the more prepared, the better outcome for them, the community, the trust, and all of that.
So that is at the focus. Sure, I'd love to sit here and insert, I'll take more
officers, as I of course I would, but there's a balance between still patrol staffing and
staffing units like mine. Okay, and once the changes that you talked to that I wanted to
into was prior to the current chief in service training was done on a two-year rotating basis
to the same officers once in 48 months would get training that could be stale.
You know, 48 months later, that's two years there could be new tactics, new updated things
we have to learn or use the force incident that went wrong and we should learn from.
So, how are you now training more in real-time?
You know, say we have a use of force incident, it does not go that the way that it should have gone.
And how do you then train the current officers not to learn from that?
So those are the emerging trends that we've talked about and our first analysis unit,
we look at incidents and we determine not just within the unit but the officers involved,
that command involved, is there a need and so what is the path forward with that training?
So that is our number one focus, that is one of the rules of the training teams is to look at an incident
that maybe goes viral or something gets sent to us to review from a use of force perspective.
That is our goal to correct any necessary, you know, whether it is a tactic, whether it
was a technique, whether it was a tool, use whatever the case may be.
Our goal is to make any corrections, make adjustments, and also certainly highlight the successes
and what was done correctly and the interventions and the de-escalations and avoiding a use of force.
So that's the other side of the coin as well to highlight that part of it.
And how do you do that? How do you get that training to the 118 hundred officers?
So the training teams, they're creating the content. They're creating the curriculum.
They're getting out in front of the officers at lineups.
They go to lineups and they'll provide a training overview.
Maybe a PowerPoint, maybe some video, and they'll talk about the incident, and then they immediately move to a parking lot or location or even inside the command to run through scenario-based training to look at, you know, what was just taught.
And even in Ghostory Case Law, new cases that come out across the board that is their main role, and the key for them is pivoting to when something else needs to be addressed.
and they have the flexibility and the ability to do that.
Okay, that's a much better system than waiting for every two years for people to get to a curriculum.
So I'm glad to see that that's happening.
And how do you know, how do you evaluate the training?
Are there evaluations where officers can say this was helpful?
Not helpful? How do you continually improve on how we're training officers?
So, every course we do, we have some kind of feedback evaluation.
You know, a form or whether it's online or paper. We look at the reviews. We have conversation with the officers. We have conversation with the supervisors. We get their input for the training needs as well. There's a small group of us for 1800 officers. I tell them we need your input. We want your input. So that is the main way for us to look at training. And then also focus on direct squat needs or division needs, policing is different in different divisions.
There's different needs for different divisions.
So that's part of the focus, but most of it comes back
from the officers themselves, the training they want to see,
the successes they want to see.
And I know someone mentioned how do we measure that?
Measuring, tough sometimes.
But there's many ways we can still look at it.
We can look at it from our force analysis unit
to see where our incidents that we capture,
how the level of whether it's the statistics of use
of force versus our interactions versus use of force
on a rest or enforcement action,
that's a way to measure training successes,
internal affairs, you know, complaints
on certain topics is a way to measure successes as well.
And then again, the feedback is another big part of it.
And so that's, that's the ways we look at it
to see if our training is successful.
Okay, and what happens if an officer
doesn't demonstrate proficiency?
So the immediate role of their supervisors
to identify that. Contact us, depending on what the deficiencies, we will provide the resources
of training necessary. Whether it's report writing, whether it's traffic stops, psoriasitation,
I can reach out to all of my instructors. I have instructors across the board that are in
catamines, structures to their adjunct instructors, their core, post-approved instructors. Any topic
with in police work, I have resources to provide them to training. Sometimes it's handled with just
a interaction between the supervisor and the officer, the accountability piece is a part of that.
That's important as well. And so those are the ways we encourage our patrol supervisors,
are the tenets to manage those training deficiencies that they are going to be the first one
recognizing. Okay, and you know, one of the callers talked about there's some things that you
can't train. There's just some character in judgment, flaws that make it so that you know
don't be trusted to wear a badge. And so how do you determine between someone who just needs
extra training on how to do this scenario, how to, you know, de-escalate, how to, you know, write
the Berkeley report versus somebody who is not able to restrain themselves for use of force or
committing violence outside of the job,
including domestic violence,
how do you differentiate that
and appropriately discipline how you need to?
Those are the greatest cases.
Those obviously need to be handled aggressively
and, you know, immediately, either by our PSU,
a professional standards unit on criminal activity,
or any kind of violation of laws
and then our internal affairs,
depending on what the scope of the investigation is.
We get involved after the fact
If there is a discipline recommendation that involves training, we would be involved at that point.
So depending on what it is, if an officer was disciplined, maybe given a written warning for something,
that discipline could include a training aspect, whether it's four hours on whatever the topic would be,
or it's, we send them to, even a class sometimes
that we've done that.
So it just depends on what the topic is
and what is documented in the discipline recommendation.
I have many more questions, but we have to get to our committee
hearing, so I ask you as well, I'll find,
because I believe training is incredibly important.
It is important for the community, but it's also important
that we send officers out with the best training we can.
One of the questions from the community members
was how is PD interacting with the community and giving feedback on training?
And I know we have the no-shots fire program where we're used folks who are formally
either incarcerated or had issues with gun violence or who are now helping alongside PD
to reduce gun violence.
We have the Commission on Police Practices, but how is it that the community could also give
input into better ways that officers can interact with the community?
So even from upon graduation of the Academy, some of our ASU specific training involved
spending days with the community, different community groups, listening to them, talk about
cultures and community needs. Most of our leadership training has outside people instructing
to some degree community members, you know, even council sometimes comes and talks about the
city side of things. So we do involve outside members of the community to come to all of that training
and they do. We also reach out to outside organizations. This is the first time, at least
a micro that I know of that. We've reached out to even executives from businesses to provide
that aspect of leadership training. We need to get out of the bubble sometimes within the agency
and look at different training needs that aren't all about law enforcement. So that's part of the
And so it includes a lot of people from the outside and they're more than happy to come and share their experiences and and share their
goals that they've ran through their company and the successes and the not successes. So that's all part of it and then
You know the no shots fired. I was involved with that initially as a lieutenant in the gang in it and I was a big part of community involvement and
using those resources
to have out there in the availability and the community to be a voice for us.
We need the community to be involved as a successful police department.
That is so important.
That is one of our focus of the training division is certainly involved all of that.
Fantastic.
I didn't see in the PowerPoint either, but I'm glad that you're having outside folks come in to
do training at all levels for leadership and below.
So, well, thank you very much for coming today.
I've learned a lot about how we need to do a better job,
making sure that leadership training is funded at the department.
I know we're doing with issues with the gun range
and how they're overcharging us for rent
and all of the things that you're dealing with,
but I just appreciate you for coming in
and for talking about this,
and I'm sure we'll continue this conversation.
So, unless my colleagues have any other questions?
No. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
And I appreciate all the members of the public who called it and gave us their time, too.
So this is an informational item, so no motion is required.
And now we will take up non-agenda public comments.
The council respects, or sorry, the council members are expecting appreciate the public's input
and our fully committed protecting every participants for a speech rights, a council and committee meetings.
Sarah, please proceed with non-agenda public comment.
Thank you, Chair von Wilpert.
Approved 2.7 non-agenda public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on items that are not on the agenda
But are within the subject matter jurisdiction of this committee each speaker will have two minutes as a reminder to our speakers
If there are eight or more speakers on a single issue during non-agenda public comment time the maximum time for the topic will be 16 minutes for in-person speakers
and eight speakers and
or 16 minutes for virtual speakers once the maximum amount of speakers allotted has exhausted on a single topic
we will no longer hear public comment on the topic. Members of the public can submit their
comment at council committee at sandiago.gov and council administration will post and distribute
your comment to the committee members. If you're watching on city TV or live stream online
and you'd like to dial in a speak, please call 1692545252, including webinar ID1613980144.
We currently have over 30 slips submitted here in chambers. If I call up your name, if you can
Please come to the Reserves seats at the front of the room.
We will begin testimony with Lori Lipsman.
You will be followed by Brandon S. Omar Miguel Fuentes,
McKenzie Martinez, and Patricia Madrigan.
If these individuals can please come up and be ready
for when their time to speak comes up.
And we will begin testimony with Lori Lipsman.
Hello again, Lori Lipsman, district three.
Ronan, she, her.
I am here to speak to the City Committee about getting rid of flock or any surveillance cameras in our city.
This has been an issue going on and I know I spoke about it for a while and I don't understand why the city is still insist on having it.
There has been issues nationwide and within our system that have not been addressed and it's not safe.
There's no safety in flock and you need to stop flock now.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Brandon?
Good afternoon, Council members.
My name is Brandon Christopher Cigua.
And I am a senior policy advocate for the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial counties.
Everyone in this country has the right to move freely without being surveilled.
To associate where and with whom they choose.
And to be protected against unreasonable searches.
And yet, the City of San Diego continues to embrace a technology that puts those rights in jeopardy.
Automated license plate readers or ALPRs have been used to criminalize people seeking health care,
stock former romantic partners of law enforcement officers, and aid this federal administration's brutal mass deportation agenda.
And San Diego specifically, a LPA LALPR data has been shared with U.S. Customs and Board of
Protection, an LPR hit caused the wrongful arrest of a man resulting in him being jailed
for a month, and LPR also led San Diego police officers to respond to fashion valley when
there was a mass shooting occurring more than five miles north at the Islamic Center
of San Diego.
And this is just what's been discovered so far.
today I bring your attention to the more than 1900 residents, visitors, and neighbors of the city of San Diego,
who signed a petition demanding that the city cancel all of its ALPR contracts.
Join the 95 cities that have already rejected ALPR systems.
Thank you.
Thank you, Omar.
Is Omar aversion here?
Okay.
Miguel Fuentes.
Mackenzie Martinez.
Good afternoon.
My name is Mackenzie Martinez and I'm here with Alliance San Diego.
to speak in strong support of terminating the city's ALPR contract with flock safety.
Our city has been made no safer because of ALPR cameras and if anything,
these have exacerbated community distrust and fears specifically in our local government and police force.
People are already afraid to drop their kids off at school,
leave their homes to buy groceries or even visit a doctor for life-saving medical treatment.
In over 60 incidences in 2024 alone, SBFDPD shared flock data with third parties in ice, which
retrieves our trust as community members and blatantly attacks our human rights.
This is not how we solve crime or make our city safer for our children.
If you truly care about the dignity of our communities, you will terminate all APLPR contracts
with flock and put those resources into programs with proven success to improve our city, such
libraries, youth programs, and parks. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Patricia Madrugam.
Good afternoon.
Bethesia Mowen that I go in from Alliance San Diego.
We have come before this body repeatedly asking you to
end San Diego contract with Flock Safety.
Meanwhile, cities across the country are responding to the dangers
of this technology.
At least 54 U.S. cities and local jurisdictions
have rejected canceled or suspended Flock systems.
with some tracking efforts putting that number above 80, not including other institutions like
universities, campuses, and campuses who are also removing cameras.
The simple reason is that these cameras are dangerous.
They create a searchable record of our movements, where we worship, work, organize, seek medical
care, and spend time with our families.
ALPR systems have been misused to stock and track people, the concerns are so serious that
even flock is now changing its own safeguards in response to misuse.
In a border city, the danger to immigrant communities is even greater.
It is unconscionable that a city led entirely by Democrats is falling this far behind
other communities on a fundamental civil rights and privacy issue.
C&D should be leading, not lagging, join the growing number of cities across the country,
and the Floor Contract, use choose community privacy and public trust over mass surveillance.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Ellis Dingman.
And is Ellis present?
And Ellis, you will be followed by Michelle DeDragon.
Elizabeth Gibbons.
And Julie, if these individuals can please make their way up to the seats.
And Ellis, please begin.
Hi, my name is Ellis Dingman.
I'm from District 2.
And I, we've seen how Flot gets used.
I'm not going to spend my two minutes rehashing the helpless cases of police using these
cameras to pursue personal vendetta instead of actual public safety.
The only reason that I can think of at this point that you still like Flot is an obsession
with a bird theme.
So we'll put this into language that I think you'll understand.
Every system has vulnerabilities.
When Flock collects this massive amount of information
about every single person in this city,
you are putting all of our eggs in one basket.
One basket with a history of having foxes come and eat the eggs from it. And in this metaphor, those eggs are lives, those eggs are our ability to go to school without being followed by police, by police ten miles away, because we had a bad vibe.
This is allegedly about public safety.
I don't feel safer.
I don't feel safer knowing that the police can see me go
to the LGBT center or a pride parade.
I don't feel safer knowing that the police can see me
go to a protest.
None of this
is what safety is.
Being watched by strangers.
No matter what job those strangers have
It's not what safety is.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your testimony.
Our next speaker is Michelle.
Good afternoon, Michelle Desjardin.
The people that spoke before me said it all,
that this is a gross violation of the Citizens of San Diego
as privacy rights.
It does not serve the public interest.
It does not promote safety.
It promotes surveillance of innocent people just going about their daily business.
It is or willian.
It buys into what is happening nationwide by the current administration.
And it should be stopped.
Thank you.
That was our sixth speaker to the ALPR and surveillance items.
Our next speaker is Elizabeth Givens.
Thank you.
It's long overdue to cancel flock, and I have eight reasons, one, cost, especially in
this time of budget crisis.
Two, data errors with high error rates, innocent people are caught in its web.
Some have been jailed, including a San Diego man.
These are expensive lawsuits.
The payouts have been huge, not necessarily here, but they will happen.
the Vallejo police department did a study.
They found a 37% error rate and that's huge.
Third, police officers nationally have used
flock to stock women.
There have been several such cases for.
Flock adoption here is based when
when I consider to be corruption.
The police captain who aggressively pushed Flock,
then went on to work for Flock after retiring.
Five, flock data will be a target for federal agencies like ICE and CBP.
You argue with that guardrails will suffice, but when you are threatened, say, with losing
federal funding, you will take just like universities have law firms, media companies.
Six, flock is a bad corporate actor.
It is irresponsible and unethical.
numerous news articles have been documenting this, just look them up.
Seven experts consider such warrantless massive surveillance to be a fourth amendment violation and eight.
More than 80 cities have canceled, clock, including LA, San Diego, must follow.
Please, and by the way, the reason for the cancellations sharing of data in violation of city rules.
So please let's fund libraries, parks, recsetters, and arts instead of flock.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Julie.
Is Julie present?
Amanda?
Valerie?
I'm Valerie Traina District 4.
Every dystopian society begins with mass surveillance of the common people.
I'm purposely wearing an orange top today to signify danger.
History books will publish one of the following statements about you all.
One, San Diego City Council members voted to be traders to their constituents or two.
Members of San Diego City Council decided unanimously to protect San Diego's from an increasingly
fascist takeover of their government.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Simone Fuller.
My name is Simone from District 5. Hi, Marnie. Congratulations on your recovery.
To the committee, I ask you, is it feeling safe in your neighborhood
and being able to move freely across San Diego,
not a vital part of public safety.
Thousands of San Diego's over almost a decade
have voiced their descent on ALPRs,
but you guys do not listen.
Today, I ask you all to also think about our youth,
maintaining contracts with flock,
traumatized with communities,
and harms the educational development of young people.
Policy Innovation Center's 2026 report on youth
and well-being found that Hispanic students in San Diego
We're most likely to skip school due to feeling unsafe
higher than the state in national average.
I wonder how much their fear will rise with the expansion of
flock in ALPRs.
Chervon Wilbur, if you allow committee vote for ALPRs,
your campaign promise to stop ICE will lose
any shred of credibility.
As they're used by federal law enforcement in
Trump's deportation campaign,
Vice chair, we're all King Peo, you're labeled yourself as a bridge to community, but please think about the bridges that you will burn.
Committee member Whitburn, your district relies on tourism, safe streets, and public transportation.
Yeah, ALPRs and contracts will block will directly take away from any expansion to NTS and safety in our streets because people will not come visit us.
Committee member Campbell.
As a supporter of the creation of Commission on Police Practices,
you must know that ALPR's brings and so's mistrust amongst our law enforcement officers
when they actually do need to follow through on serious crimes.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Andrew Dingman and Mr. Dingman.
You will be followed by Owen M.
Alexandria Castillo.
Carmen Penalosa.
And Lilliana, sorry, I don't know if those individuals can make their way to the front of the room at the reserve seats.
So I once again, before we set your time, I've been cautioned by the city attorney that under roll 272 that we're only supposed to have eight speakers on a single topic for not intended public comment.
I'm not done.
No, no, no, no, I'm not done.
What I was going to say was, but I also have
the discretion as chair to liberally interpret that rule.
And so I want to let you know I want all of you to speak.
And so please feel free to just come speak
because you came all the way down here
and so we want to hear from you.
So that's what I was trying to say.
Thank you.
All right.
So I mostly came because I wanted to support my kid in their view.
But I will hardly concur with them.
As an IT professional, I can't view a system's block or a system like it as anything but an attractive nuisance for all sorts of abuse.
There are ways that automated systems can be used to approve policing and make it less discriminatory,
but a system like this, anything that retains a drag net of records with no probable cause, no reason for it,
It does not serve that goal and flock in particular has a history as a bad corporate actor,
but I would not encourage you to replace them with a better corporate actor, pitching
a better system.
That would not make things appreciably better.
It would still be an attractive news, it would still be temptation for abuse, far beyond
it's actually utility.
This is not something I want in my community.
That's all I've got to say.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Owen.
Well, first of all, I want to start by saying that I very greatly oppose the implementation
of the ELPR's in this community and in this nation. First starters, you know, as many people
I've said before, it just accelerates the abilities of law enforcement to continue making and
selling mistrust in our communities.
Additionally, I think it's also important to note that a lot of the conversations
had in this forum today have all been about police training, which was something I was
hoping to speak on as well.
But the fact of the matter is, is that police officers need way more training than, you know,
I heard one of the officers say he was in training for seven months.
That is unacceptable for people to be growing and being in the communities that represent them
and wanting to feel safe, you know, in the queer community and for people of color, knowing that
officer is, you know, not spending adequate time to train and learn about diversity.
This country is in equal practices in terms of, you know, systemic racism.
Various things, you know, I can continue going on.
It's devastating.
You know, I grew up being very patriotic and being very connected and rooted in.
Um, what I thought these countries, countries, morals were, um, and I've been disappointed
time and time again with the way that this nation has decided to make its choices.
Um, so yeah.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Alexandra Castillo.
Hi.
Good afternoon.
Council members.
My name is Alex Castillo and I'm a district eight resident.
Previously, I was a part of the public comment efforts to restore OCYS and various other
fundings to other departments and yeah all of that. In particular right now I'm concerned
with a certain contract that facilitates criminal activity that I think we're giving way
too much money to as you guys have heard before. This allows cops to use the contract's
technology to stop their ex-girlfriends with this technology. People are misreading license plates
and it's leading to a wrongful arrest across the country, not just in San Diego.
And with this technology, it's been used by ICE and legal loopholes,
they're getting the footage from their friends to detain our friends and our neighbors.
This technology, of course, is flock. It's our well-earned and the contract.
We are not going to live the fate of Winston Smith. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Carmen.
Okay, hi, guys.
My name is Carmen.
I'm a resident of District 9,
and I'm also the Policy and Research Intern at Youth Will.
So yeah, during this past budget review process,
I also came along here with Youth Will
in a variety of different community members
and organizations to advocate for the funding of OCWIS.
And for U.S. representatives to assess
where funding should be pulled from and reallocated.
And one of the biggest issues that folks constantly mentioned
was the fact that OCIS which we successfully
restored almost entirely would help use
feel connected to their community and provide them with a sort
of safety and a variety of different ways,
and that's kind of the way that we want to see resources.
Reallocated that the city has and I was very disappointed
it to see like a lot of other folks have mentioned already that the contract was not cancelled
and everyone already said it, it's dangerous, it's creepy, it's really scary and it's
I guess the reason why I come here a time after time to advocate against vlog is just
because I'm a daughter of two immigrants and I know that this is directly impacts those
communities in our most vulnerable communities, which are already constantly being targeted
and this just facilitates that exponentially.
So yeah, it's just kind of really sad to see how we're using money to stock and target
vulnerable communities instead of investing it towards solutions such as mental health care
and public transit accessibility, affordable housing, all that kind of stuff.
So yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Liliana Soriano.
Hello committee. My name is Liliana.
I serve as the director of policy at Youth Well where youth led youth advocacy, nonprofit, organization.
Aside from what you've heard today from other colleagues in the room, I want to refresh your memories as well from a couple months ago during budget season where many voices centered community safety and we're very, and they were very specific about what that vision looks like, including us young people that you heard from right now, and our organization youth will.
Joy is investing in community programs, not police policing, especially in this new era of AI departments like the police department.
And now, the city has a whole constantly request trust from the people, but when you contract with wealthy corporations, your message is that machines and technology that are unreliable to serve that funding even when the city is in a financially bad position already. Please listen to your constituents. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Karina Vega.
And Karina, as you make your way to the
lectern, you will be followed by Andrea, Cecil,
Sopua, and Lori Saldania, if these
individuals would like to make their way down to the front seats. And please begin.
Okay, Gatina Vega from District 8, not canceling the contract with all ALPR's not just
block.
It's going to increase ISIS brutality and surveillance and reinforce the fact that they don't
care about public safety.
Recently, it came to light that there's two cases of tuberculosis inside the concentration
camp we have here in San Diego and they failed to disclose that during the inspection that they
also delayed from February this year. So again, tuberculosis isn't airborne disease. There are
over a thousand decademies a day there in this concentration camp that we have here in San Diego in
2026 and they're not only putting them at risk, they're putting everyone that lives in the surrounding
neighborhood that risk. So that means me, everyone in district eight. So again, ice is using
this LAR, LPR system. It's invading our privacy. It's also invading our land. Apparently
national park services is also using flock now. So the places we go to as human beings to
be surrounded by nature to distress from this capitalistic corporate life that we have here is
now being tied to this surveillance system and it's not okay.
These data centers, and then again, the way they track all the data is through data centers.
And it's, they shouldn't be called data centers, it should be called pollution centers.
They're polluting our water.
So many rivers are draining.
We need water to live.
So please cancel this flux system.
We are able, PLR system.
We don't need it.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony, Andrea.
Well,
my name is Andrea and I'm a lifelong resident of District 8.
I am once again asking the City Council to suspend all ALPR contracts in our city.
Today we talk about flock, but tomorrow we'll talk about flock competitors.
Regardless of the vendor, all ALPR softwares share the same three fundamental flaws.
Actually, for you, Ms. Wilpert, I will add a fourth.
Number one, the technology indiscriminately crapsors, details such as car descriptions, passengers,
and plates.
This technology can actually be stacked with additional technology that paints a clear picture of who is in the vehicle for how long and for how often
This creates a clear image of a person's personal life as they go through their as they go through
their day-to-day which goes far and above what these vendors
As high as possible
Which brings us to number two the technology shares data across agencies
which means law enforcement across the nation
contractual for whatever reason.
As we've stated, there's a lot of law enforcement
that will take advantage of this,
which leaves our most vulnerable members of society
open for abuse.
From domestic abuse victims to activists
to the undocumented,
anybody who could even be suspected of such a status?
Lastly, well, actually, number three.
From what little research is available,
the technology isn't even actually all that effective.
Disentangling the effectiveness of ALPR
for traditional crime, solving methods, and from the overall national trends of downward-facing
crime is proven really difficult for researchers.
EFF's 2021 report puts this technology at about a 0.5% effectiveness and an article
that was published on the 2025 Justice Evaluation Journal found that there is little evidence
that ALPR expansion was associated with the reduction of violent crime in general.
Notably, San Diego has not invested on any resources in a third party analysis for cost investment for any of its surveillance technology, this has been a point of contention across the city.
And lastly, specifically for you, Ms. One Wilbert, you stated that you are heartbroken.
Thank you.
That concludes your time.
You stated that we are heartbroken that our police cannot fund.
And
as we have to give everyone able time by law,
so please, are happy to talk after thank you.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Cecil, or Cecil,
I apologize for the pronunciation.
Thank you, yeah, my name is Cecil.
In the last few days, I've learned that at least a 39 officers
across the country have been caught stalking their exes
using flawed cameras around the country.
A couple examples, an officer named Snowman was charged with misdemeanor computer access,
according to an online court record reviewed by people magazine.
Her document information did not list her plea or attorney information, but stated that
she only had to post $5,000 bomb, bond, excuse me.
On two occasions, her use of flock data or ALPR data to track her ex was done while she was
off duty in accessing those computers.
Elizabeth and Snomon, allegedly used those cameras 31 times for personal use to track her
boyfriend's ex-wife and was only charged with misdemeanor computer access, craziness.
On August 12th of this year, surprise Arizona announced their decision to suspend their use of ALPR technology after a recent routine audit identified an anomaly in the use of the system.
The city has launched an investigation into a potential violation of its ALPR policy and a surprise police officer has been placed under administrative leave until the investigation can be completed.
Chandler Arizona is another city that recently had to announce a problem with their automated
license plate readers.
On August 10th, Apache Junction Police announced that one of their officers resigned after
using plate readers improperly.
A day later on August 11th, 10th, police announced that they will end their license with
flock plate reader data sharing with flock.
Someone earlier brought up the cost.
It's a matter of time before this happens in San Diego, becomes a personal lawsuit and
all of us the taxpayers our money. It's not keeping us safer. I'm not the first person to bring it up,
but just a couple of months ago, the San Diego Islamic Center was fired up. Thank you.
That's good. Thank you. We need
to thank you. Our next speaker is Sophia.
I'm Sophia and I'm from District 4. Float cameras in fringe on the privacy of everyone.
There have been many cases of law enforcement officers using Float cameras to
to stock former romantic partners and ever-state-staymen used to track women participating in
reproductive health care.
And, Florida, please officer, Christopher Goodson, used flat cameras to track the movements
of this strange wife, 717 times.
Under, under, the guy is willing to track where his children were when they were with her.
Flat cameras no, contribute public safety rather than take away from it, having flat cameras
and our city shows that our government doesn't care about the city of its citizens.
If you're really cared about the city of people living in San Diego, invest more in public
housing, in health care, homeless care, and education.
If law cameras just do not help anyone at all, they've been misused many times, and they've
been used to falsely accuse others of crimes, which just further adds to the danger many people
face from them. As other people mentioned, one man spent over a month in jail due to
Faulkhammer's broadly identifying him as someone who had commit a crime.
That is all.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Lori Saldanya, and you have submitted visual materials,
so we will pull those up if you can please let us know when to move through them.
Thank you. And thanks to everyone who's speaking on the flock issues. I'm speaking now
And another public safety issue, the city is issued an advisory about flooding related to
El Niño Preparedness.
As if it's in their future, this is currently happening at High Tide in Mission Beach.
Council member, this is your district, or Mission Beach, I think, maybe I think it's district
too.
I've been going down during High Tide the last few months, and the storm drains are now flooding
during High Tide.
This is not rainfall.
this is flooding in the streets. You can go to the next video, please. And a few a week ago,
I went down to the midway area. Oh, forgot to show the fountain, the Bellagio effect. The storm
water division has welded down the covers of the storm drains to present them from rising up. So now we
get the tide pushing up against them and creating the Bellagio fountain effect. And it's spectacular,
but also extremely harmful for infrastructure.
So the recent advisory about preparedness,
we can go on to the next images.
This flooding is happening now.
This is not a future problem to deal with.
It is immediate.
And this is what mission beach looks like.
This is sea water, corrosive salt water.
Keep going, please, could I only have a few seconds?
this is Midway Drive. Now, not in the future. Now, the stormwater people are out there.
Do not build Midway sinking because people cannot drive on these roads today.
And if you add thousands of people to this community, the high tide is already flooding.
You are only that's Mission Beach. That's not Midway, but that is what Midway will look like sooner, not later.
to not build a midway thinking project.
It is a public safety issue right now, not in the future.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Manuel Enriquez.
It's Manuel, Mr. President.
Joyce and Yada.
Ms. and Yada, you'll be followed by a Darth Vader,
Roger Ralphs, Olivia Howard,
and Jason Simmons.
If those individuals can please move to the reserve seats
at the front of the room,
thank you for your patience, Joy.
Please begin.
Can
you hear me okay?
Yes, thank you.
I will be speaking on non-verbal communication,
Replace officers, but also,
I'll be giving you a living example
of what I'm doing with non-verbal communication
and with the homeless population.
So regarding police officers,
nonverbal cues form the core baseline for officer safety, tactical assessment, and de-escalation.
Examples, personal space, voice tones and inflection, body posture and movement, gaze and facial cues.
Nonverbal cues, public perception with an officer, nonverbaly, has to do with demeanor, such
as attention, attentive listening, postures, and respectful eye contact.
All of this heavily drives community trust in citizen satisfaction during routine stops.
I'll be speaking more on this to you in the future.
Non-verbal communication is bigger than we can even imagine.
There's all kinds of figures out there.
Some people say it's 90%, 70% of our communication.
I'm studying it.
I'm using it with homeless.
And I'm having success.
I'm watching.
I'm observing my own non-verbal cues.
And I'm changing them with the homeless, including those areas that I pointed out to you.
And it's working.
I'm feeling better with them.
I'm engaging more with them.
And so I just can't say enough.
I'm going to speak more on this in the future.
But it's a great topic to look at.
Thank you.
It's been a great day.
Love to all.
Thank you, Darth Vader.
The
emperor is a fan of flock and we must continue utilizing flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground from playground to poor from poor to gymnasium because we all know
So that the flood cameras are not only following the license plate readers, they are following children, they are following children in parks, and gymnasiums, and we need this. I need this so I can stock my ex-girlfriend. Also, it should be known that the people of this town, the purers that want their storm drains cleared, they should not have their storm drains cleared, because in order to do that, we will have to raise taxes.
and how will the people trust this city council when this city council continues to vote for surveillance technology that imprisons them.
Ms Campbell, you must work on your Jedi mind tricks.
Do it like this, and when you do it, make sure that when you're double speaking them into telling them that police services have become more humanitarian, make sure that you don't emphasize the detail that you put a ban on camping.
And you put a ban, you made criminalizing homelessness illegal, and that is why there is no such thing as humanitarian policing for the homeless.
Because we have the effectively criminalized homelessness which is good.
Now we can staff that we can fill our jails with free prison labor.
Especially like that of the O.T. Mason Detention Center where they are making one dollar a day for working for 12 hours.
and there have been multiple cases of tuberculosis.
Yes, and this is good, this is what the emperor needs.
This technology will help us find the rebel scum,
and they're hidden based on a hawth.
This technology will help us find Luke Skywalker,
as he traverses the universe in his X-wing.
This technology is unnecessary.
Necessary force.
Thank you, Roger Rouse.
Is Roger Rouse present?
Olivia Howard?
My name is Olivia Howard. Some also speaking about the
vlog cameras. I think a lot of it has been covered already. It does feel very
dystopian. I feel like we've had so many works of fiction that are kind of like a
warning, you know, about master valence and other things that we're also seeing
have been seeing about like other people making you know a public enemy and I think those two things
kind of work together. And a lot of the time a common theme is that they say it's about safety and
they want people to believe it's about safety when really it's about control. Being able to know
everything about us and I could see the way that this kind of technology could be beneficial if
we're being used for the right purposes, but I don't think that it will be. I think that it's
basically our data is being gathered for reasons that are not about our safety or about our
well-being. I think I've never trusted especially the federal government less,
and flock cameras are just very, very concerning to me. Yeah, thank you for your time.
Thank you.
And our final speaker here in Chambers is Jason Simmons.
Hi, I'm Jason Simmons of District 4.
Thank you for hearing from us council members.
I appreciate the ability to make my voice heard
and hearing my constituent fellow residents opinions as well.
I would just like to reiterate a lot of what other people have said about
block and not just block because they're a very small part of it, there are lots of other
ALPR manufacturers that create these cameras. If it was a perfect system and if it worked
as it should, it would still be inappropriate and offensive. It does not work, it has not shown
any increase in solving crimes, there is constant malfunctions in the system, misidentifications
because AI is unreliable in every single situation. AI doesn't work at a level where we
can trust what it says. It has to be double-checked and is just not reliable. So in addition
that I want to say the companies giving us these products are lobbying, lobbying, government,
the government and cities themselves and they present the police stations with these pictures
to sell them. It is all for profit and there is no peer-reviewed process within these companies
to show how their products work.
There's been no tests of the flood cameras.
There haven't been any peer review tests
or public oversight on these at all.
Thank you for hearing all of us here today.
Thank you for your testimony.
This does conclude public comment here in chambers.
So I will begin the five-minute timer
for all those in the virtual queue
to indicate if they wish to provide non-agenda public comment
at this time. We currently have nine hands raised and we will begin testimony with Francine Maxwell.
Please unmute and begin. Thank you, Francine Maxwell. It's about the Eastern San Diego resident.
I'm a little concerned when we were talking about discipline and the recommendations and IA.
It all seems very performative because our sheriff's department recently arrested
two of our STPD for being drunk in public and so where is the professional unit that is going
to make a recommendation on something like that. Again, we have the best training. We have
the best professional unit and we have pretty good I.A. But again, nothing is being done with
the unlawful search and seizures of our citizens throughout District 4, 8, and 9, we have
two attorneys on this committee. And both of you know that the CPP, which was overwhelmingly
supported, does not have their independent attorney. You both attorneys know that oversight for the
our disability is more than needed, but you continue to sit there and pretend that everything
is okay. So as we continue to look at the chair for her promotion, remember that things
that you have not done, that you continue not to do, and you have the discretion. The same way
you did the performative set aside right now, very appreciative that everybody that took time
other business schedule got to speak because normally it would have stopped after eight very appreciative
of that today, but it was informative. Perform and get us an attorney on CPP so that we can
have our independence that we need for the city so that when we tell our neighbors continue to
complain about the unlawful search and seizures that are being done by STPD. Thank you for allowing
me to speak. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker is Becky Rapp. Please unmute and
begin.
Good afternoon, my name is Becky Rapp and I'm here today regarding the recent action
by the city attorney's office against 11 smoke shops accused of selling cradum and I want to
recognize the city attorney's office and our enforcement agencies for taking this issue seriously.
Residents are paying attention and we are seeing the results. In fact, I recently noticed that a
lowing crave cratum sign. They had been displayed in the window of a smoke shop down the street
from my home was finally removed and that may seem like a small thing but to residents
it is significant. When the city follows through with investigations enforcement and consequences
it sends a message that our laws are going to be enforced and our neighborhoods are going to be
protected. I encourage this committee to continue supporting strong enforcement and ask for regular
updates on creative violations, illegal advertising, and other intoxicating products being sold
through smoke shops. We also need to make sure that enforcement doesn't address one business
or one location. If these products are being sold illegally, residents deserve to know that the
city is identifying and addressing these violations. Those businesses that are cited must be
followed up with continually being checked to ensure they continue to follow the law. It would
wise to increase these penalties, including licensed revocation, a strong message needs to be
sent to businesses that they must follow the law if they want to continue operating in our
neighborhoods, as well as the public that the city's top priority is protecting our neighborhoods
and forcing our laws and making sure illegal products and advertising don't become normalized
in our communities. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker is phone number
ending in five eight six eight you can unmute by pressing star six phone number ending in five
eight six eight if you can please state your name for the record and begin.
V and I am in district five. Marnie Vaughan will participate district and I'm glad and I said you
I'm glad everything went well with you and I wish you the best for your health. Miss Vaughan will
I would like to speak about flock, and I also was aware of the incident with a person called Hugo
Potter, where he and a friend in Alfa Romeo were wrongly stopped, and their car was misidentified
as being involved in a crime with assault with a firearm, but was even more disturbing as it took
He was in jail 30 days before he was able to be released
in the charges drop.
So that's not only was there an issue with the procedures
about flock and identifying his vehicle,
when his vehicle was five miles away.
But why in Earth did it take 30 days for him to be released?
I checked the flock, transparent sea portal in December,
And that gives you the amount of detected vehicles in the last 30 days.
In December, it was 2.9 million detected vehicles in the last 30 days.
And this morning I checked the transparency portal of 4 million and it said unique plate
reads.
So I don't know if that's 4 million different vehicles or a million reads.
No matter what your college flock is a surveillance system, and it doesn't matter what business
that you use, it's still laying the foundation for a surveillance system.
So, no matter how many safeguards you guys put in, no matter the reduction of time,
you keep the information, you're doing your best now to put the safeguards in,
but people in government change, and we have no guarantees for the future.
Thank you. This does conclude your time. The five minute timer has also
lapsed with six hands remaining in the virtual queue. We will take know their
callers beyond these remaining six hands raised. We will continue with the
Judy strain. Please unmute and begin.
Good afternoon. Public safety committee. Thank you for allowing
San Diego PD to speak to us today and thank you for the comments that we've
heard today from our students as well as others regarding flock.
I came because I'm back to school preparing it for after school programs in which I've been
involved for many years and I've noticed something that to my mind is a public health educator
a little troubling.
Now we all know I would hope that our school sites are smoke free and bake pretty by California
law.
However, the streets, the public streets in front of these schools are not and I've noticed
Just as I've come out, often with children and with me, that people are walking by and they're
smoking or vaping, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and how distasteful it is to
the children.
They're well aware of the smell and how pervasive it is.
And we in public help really want safe and smoke free environments for our young people, because
we know that they're considered a vulnerable population due to their size.
Many of our city, several here in the county, have smoked free public place ordinances.
And we've asked before, and I'd just like to suggest, because it's come to my mind so forcefully being back to school.
That we here at the city of San Diego consider it.
It seems like it would be money well spent to put this policy in place.
It's self-inforcing, believe me children would make it very clear if they knew that the law was on their side.
to bring smoke free, bake free public places to information as a policy.
We certainly would have the support of all the major medical associations and the
surgeon general in this policy.
I may ask public safety to consider it going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
Our next speaker is Ale, please unmute and begin.
Hi, my name is Ale, and I'm here representing the Youth Justice moment, some team at
city can. I work with an intergenerational organizing team, full of system impacted, formerly incarcerated, young people, credible messengers and really folks who are participating in civic engagement to further enhance what real public safety actually means.
One of the first things that comes to mind as I'm hearing about this new technology that's being used by our San Diego Police Department, that by the way is the second highest referral agency to juvenile hall, so it's the second highest agency in the San Diego region that refers young people into incarceration.
This surveillance technology.
We would absolutely increase those rates. But nonetheless, where was the community here that demanded surveillance?
I exist in juvenile court. I have one-on ones at juvenile hall working with some of these young people that have been impacted by the San Diego City Police Department.
And I work with credible messages that, again, like I said, have transformed their lives and not participate in leading that change in the community.
I've taught, I work with these folks on a daily basis. I've never heard them say that something that would have saved my life was more surveillance.
I don't think that you could go into any of these communities and that they would say what I need most is more surveillance.
We have here millions of dollars that we're willing to invest into surveying our communities,
but when young people are asking for mentors, when young people are asking for work development programs that would support them,
and getting out of the dangerous and inhumane environments that they're living in in their communities,
we choose to survey them and to further police them. What is this, guys?
We're trying to work with y'all so that we can make our community safer.
Please listen to us.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
Our next speaker is Viani Rubel Kava.
Please unmute and begin.
Good afternoon.
My name is Janine Rubel Kava.
I live in District 3.
And I want to voice my opposition to the use of ALPR and Flock.
These systems need to be removed and banned in those technologies should be used.
As we heard, this tech is mired in controversy and has an alarming track record of misuse from stalking by officers who are wrongful convictions.
This is an unlawful search in the public realm and an infringement of our privacy.
Soak is a private company driven by profit without proper safeguards against the sale of our personal data.
and it's vulnerable to data breaches. The use of AI to process this data also opens it to
security vulnerabilities as these AI companies are also private and it's harder to track what
they do with the data that is fed to them. I don't think that master valence is justified and it
does more harm than good. So I urge you to invest in community infrastructure like affordable housing,
transportation, health care, and workforce and use development instead. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is Madison. Please unmute and begin.
Hi, good evening and thanks for letting everyone speak tonight. I'm here as a mother and an advocate for
youth substance use prevention. When we talk about public safety, I hope we remember that prevention
is one of the most effective forms of public safety that we have.
Every new cannabis storefront, every expansion of commercial cannabis access
and every increase in the visibility of these businesses
creates another layer of enforcement responsibility.
And we already know that enforcement becomes much more difficult
when illegal products are being sold alongside these permitted businesses
and when high-potency products are widely available
And when the young people are exposed to the normalization of marijuana use,
our schools and law enforcement agencies should not have to spend more resources
cleaning up problems that we could have prevented in the first place.
I especially urge this committee to think about the long-term consequences for young people.
The earlier a child begins using an intoxicating substance,
the greater the potential for it to interfere with judgment,
academic success, mental health, and healthy development. By the time a young person is struggling
with addiction or repeatedly coming into contact with law enforcement, prevention opportunities
have already been missed. We should be investing upstream before there is a crisis. That means
funding youth prevention, supporting families and schools, and giving law enforcement the resources
necessary to address illegal sales and protect children. Public safety is not only responding
to crime after it happens. It's making decisions today that reduce the number of problems our
communities will have to deal with tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony and the final
speaker in our queue today is sent the hall. Please unmute and begin.
Thank you council. Thank you for
hearing the public on this issue today, and I appreciate the chair giving people some extra
time to talk. I think that I hope that the people who know and the people who are listening today
will understand that while we are continually asking for the city to make whys and and
careful decisions about mass surveillance and while we continually ask for ubiquit and flock to be kicked out of the city so that we can use our resources in ways that protect San Diego.
And while we continually do all of that, this committee and the police department know full well that they are in the midst right now of proposing not a withdrawal
of technology from our city, but instead they are proposing a new tsunami of
mass surveillance to come into our city via a mass network of cameras
connected across the city via underwater surveillance via drone surveillance.
The department has already performed the community meeting that is required to
this process. So I hope that people know that when the city council members respond to this
request with the little thing and remarks suggesting that you all deserve this surveillance
because you use a cell phone or they do performative things saying that they want budget for bathrooms
or housing or homelessness while they continue to fund all of this surveillance, you know,
the community hears your concerns even when the leaders do not and I hope that you reach out
to people around you and that connected because we're going to have to solve this problem ourselves.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony and share this concludes non agenda public comment
for this afternoon. Thank you very much for everyone for being here and for calling in and thank
to my colleagues and to these staff from here as well that brings us to the end of our agenda.
Thank you for everyone for your participation.
I will now adjourn this meeting at the Public Safety Committee to our next regularly scheduled
meeting on Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 6th at 2 p.m. We are adjourned. Thank you.