Public Safety Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah. Call the meeting at 06:02PM.

At full call vote. Vice mayor Begore? Commissioner Kwan?

Yep.

Commissioner Safaharam?

Yep.

Vice Chair Rovaraam?

Yep.

Chair Das? We'll go to the approval of minutes. Does anyone have any questions about the minutes? If I could get a motion to approve?

Yeah. Motion to approve the minutes of September.

K. And could I get a second?

Yeah. I second that.

K. Roll call. Commissioner Beggar? Commissioner Don? Commissioner Safal Haram? Yes. Vice Chair Raharam?

Yes.

All right. The motion carries.

I did raise my hand. Alright.

No. We do not have any postponements. I do not see any requests to speak in person. Do we

have any request to speak online?

We have no request to speak online. Alright.

So

I'm gonna go ahead and report in the first of the new business, start with communication. I'm on file and.

As requested.

So you you're what are you looking to bring it online?

No. I'm giving my presentation.

Okay.

When we do your comments, then

Okay.

This is a brief overview of outdoor emergency sirens. I picked a couple cities and counties, some in California, some outside of California, who are using or have in the past used outdoor emergency sirens. Just as a reminder, emergency alerts can come through WIA, emergency alert system, or a NOAA weather radio. The overall system is called iPods. And then outdoor sirens can be a part of of systems of alert.

So just a quick history. Pre World War two, outburst irons and bells were used to call fire fighters and civil defense. So as we keep going, some of the cities that implemented the more modern sirens had already had these older sirens and had already from World War II, mostly used for civil defense and to alert air raids. Cold War to alert of nuclear fallout. And like I mentioned, Midwest and Deep South were already using, the sirens or bells to, let people know that something was going on, and it became more codified as tornado.

Generally, in The US, emergency sirens are required within a 10 mile radius of nuclear power plants. Some of the benefits of outdoor sirens is that they can reach people outside who might not see emergency communications through the TV, radio, or phone. They are very attention grabbing. I don't know if all of you have heard some of these outdoor sirens, but they are very loud. And, ideally, they prompt residents to seek further information.

The more modern systems can have either different sounds that can differentiate between hazards or, voice communications. They're an additional layer of redundancy in alert and warning and have been found most useful in rural areas or areas with limited cell service. Because, again, if we're sending alerts through the phone, if you don't have phone service, you need another way. Some of the drawbacks, the sound is muffled indoors or in a car. For an event that happens at night when most people are going to be asleep, there is not evidence that the sirens are loud enough to wake people up.

Also, not a lot of instruction is given by just a loud siren, so it takes a lot of community education. Also, alert signals and meaning vary. So I said before, Midwest and Deep South, the same sound might be a tornado there, but in California might be warning of a wildfire. So for people who move, there's some there can be some confusion. And then additionally, any sound based system is going to exclude, those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Some manufacturers have tried to mitigate this, by adding, lights. And then I was told that one company was looking into, including ASL. Not quite sure how that's going to work, but, it is a consideration. So, the first kind of case study is San Francisco. Originally, they had 50 phone only sirens.

In, 2011, voice capability sirens were installed. So those were the ones that a message could be sent out, not just a loud tone. The sirens have been inactive since 2019, partially due to cybersecurity concerns, and because they were expensive to upgrade to modernize them to, the current systems. In, San Luis Obispo County, they have, the sirens. I believe, commissioner, that was the one that you heard.

They are single use. They are specifically for the Diablo Canyon power plant. As I mentioned before, in most cases, sirens are required within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. When I spoke with their alert and warning coordinator, they mentioned that part of the reason

that they

have the the sirens outside of the legal requirement is also that because PG and E is the plant operator, PG and E handles most of the costs. So if that ever changed, it would be a very large funding problem for the county. And these are only placed within the emergency planning zone. So, again, within 10 miles of the nuclear power plant. And so, theoretically, they could be used to ward off other things, but because of their placement, it is quite limited.

And they also mentioned that anything that they would alert using, these sirens, even if they did expand to different incidents, they would still be using WIA and emergency alert systems. Beverly Hills recently installed, 12 sirens. They, are using the voice systems, specifically English, Farsi, and Spanish, which are their three threshold languages for the city. This is to give a brief idea of how much these cost. So this is from their fiscal year 2022.

This was proposed costs. And as I'm sure you're aware, as projects go on, they incur a couple more costs. Pierce County is up in I spoke with one of their alert and warning coordinators. So, originally, they used the the sirens only for one thing, for volcanic mudslides. Now they are considering broadening that.

But one thing that was mentioned was that in the last bullet point, it took twenty years of education and outreach to get to a point where the county feels comfortable that the public knows what the sirens mean. And there is some concern that if they expanded, what the sirens mean, that there would be quite a bit more confusion. And then as we've seen everywhere else, the sirens are not the only way of communicating. Right? They're also using PC alert, which is their version of alert SCC.

Lahaina in Hawaii, I I brought this up at the last meeting. So for a quick overview, the Maui fires were in Lahaina, and something that had come up was that when the sirens went off, people were trained to expect a tsunami, and they and in some cases, went towards the fire instead of evacuating safely. From their after action report of the Lahaina Fires, there were a couple things that were a bit concerning. A major one is that the sirens use a mobile connection. They're sending an alert to these sirens, whether voice or a, you know, a typical siren.

If there is any disruption to cell service, you can't use sirens. So there's definitely a concern there. What they also found was that because they're just so expensive to maintain, at any particular time, only 20% of their sirens are functional. And then, there was the false missile alert in 2018. So there's, definitely some hesitancy in Hawaii to use these sirens, and other alerting methods unless they're absolutely positive that there is something that, requires action by residents.

Open up to discussion?

Oh, yeah.

So, I guess, I think commissioner Sabaharam has something to

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. So, yeah, I did conduct some polls on Nextdoor and WhatsApp and somewhat in Reddit forums. Oral, it's not too much engagement what I've seen. And what I've seen is 70% of people, you know, president probably, that they responded. They say it is they're they're not interested in this. And then 10 only 10% showed some enthusiasm to explore further based on the these surveys. These are informal surveys. It's not like overall, turnout is also low.

These are connected on social media. Then also informal discussions I have with some of the five staff, they also didn't show too much fast tunes. And then, again, I tried to have some one on one council outreach, Not not much clear policy support from the council members as well. So with that, I also I I I think great research by Martha. So whatever she's been like, what I found mostly online and going through some of those other public safety forums and the other online stuff.

So I think, again, considering the ROI and the cost of it. Right? So it's like typical cost per siren is 25 k to 50 k. And even for a 20 sirens, it would be easily 500 k plus one time cost plus, you know, upkeeping OpEx and additional cost. So so with that, I think what I'm seeing from the community is that they prefer deferring this Cyren Explorer equation for now. That's what I've seen based on some of these exchanges I had with some of the community members. I just wanted to share. Cool. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I I think, like, I think last meeting, like, we also had that presentation about AlertSCC. I mean, like, it sounds like one of the big bottlenecks is actually with that because, like, people have to, like, sign up and, like, give their expressive consent to get the alerts. And that's probably, like, more valuable in a sense because it comes right to the to them, like, to their phone, like, whether they're indoors, outdoors, wherever. I guess, like yeah.

I guess maybe one of the things that I think we kinda briefly touched on this last meeting, which was, like, maybe getting in touch with, like, the, I think, the vendor, like, who does the alert SEC, like, the vendor for alert SEC and, like, kind of investigating whether there's easier ways to sign up than having to create, like, a username and password, like, security questionnaire, all of that, because that might be one of the, I think, reasons why people probably just get deterred from signing up for it.

Yeah. And also, I think I don't know how much integration we have between alert SCC under general alerts, WEA alerts, wireless emergency alerts. Right? Like, for example, Amber, what we receive, what is the integration. For example, recently, I've seen one of the Cupertino some old, I think, was missing for a few hours. Only it's there in certain forums. It, we didn't see any of those alerts. I mean, hardly I see any alerts sent from Aleptus CC. So I think to understand and the indication, right, okay, what is covered by Aleptus CC? What is covered by WEA?

What are the other, like, integrations we have from the Cupertino City? Maybe we can outline that. I mean, not not to invest too much time or money on it just to say that, okay, this is what covered on Allot SCC. This is where you want you if want to go register. This this is what you need to follow, step one to step five, whatever. And WEA, I think it's by force. Everybody gets it. But, again, like, what is the criteria? When would somebody get this alert versus that that alert? And are there any other alerts? I think in your presentation, you showed few more alerts. So I think we just document that and maybe share with everybody.

I believe that's covered by the county's alert and warning ads.

Okay. Maybe you can help Martha to share if it is if you have it handy. Right? And maybe I can put it in some of the social forums so that it's easier and it's free of cost that we can share with the the community.

Pat, do you wanna go over how, Amber Alerts get sent out and how they're different?

So Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, Sanity Alerts, all those alerts are managed by the California Highway Patrol. It's essentially we contact them after, a certain case that meets the criteria, of reporting it. The California Highway Patrol, then pushes it out, how they do their own system. So they manage that, all those alerts.

So I have a follow-up.

Recently, in Cupertino area near my home, there was a helicopter making voice announcement saying that this person is missing. Yeah. So I mean, a lot of confusion in the under my neighborhood saying that what is that alert? And for it's again, the voice was not very clear. So people were initially worried that, you know, there is a safety issue. Everybody's kind of trying to stay indoor. Right? There is a lot of confusion. So what qualifies I mean, even we were debating that we should reach out to you, I mean, the sheriff's department, nonemergency to see do we even report that we are hearing this from helicopters?

Yeah. You could people residents always, if they see a helicopter and there's announcements, they can always call the non emergency line and the dispatcher can relay what the message is going to be. Typically, we do that at an at risk and within a short time frame of the missing person. So they may be in the area. So that's what we utilize the helicopter to try to see if a person with dementia or Alzheimer's wandered away, maybe within a couple 100 yards from their house at the at the time depending on when they were last seen.

And so if the time is of the essence, and so as soon as we can get out there and get the information and maybe garner the public's assistance, we might be able to find that person. We wouldn't do this for somebody that just call a good day or something like that. It wouldn't be beneficial. There's it's more of the immediate assistance from the public because we need it now, I think.

Also, that was from sales department? From the CHP?

No. So we have a helicopter, and San Jose Police Department has a helicopter. So we can push that information through our helicopter. And if our helicopter is not up, we can we can ask San Jose Police Department for you to voice things. These are these are immediate instances where we need the people to stay in place, shelter in place, or we need somebody to take a look in their backyard to see if there's somebody that maybe on there maybe missing. So

Okay. Thank you. That's the information.

Again, any time fusion following our numbers line. We don't have every helicopter, so sometimes people call our inspector and say, where's the helicopter in my house? But the inspector will define that. PG and E has their helicopters. Everybody has a lot of different kinds of there was a helicopter flying around over our substation the other day that was I think it was PG and E. So they have different companies have their own helicopters.

Makes sense.

Yeah. I guess I guess on the topic of the sigh on the sirens and alerts, like, maybe also, like, including the contact info, the alert SNC vendor, and maybe, like, send out, like, a message to them about suggestions for how to make that much easier for people to, like, sign up for.

I I will have to go through the calendar for that.

Okay. Yeah. But great presentation. Great material. Thank you. Totally. Yeah.

Awesome. I guess any public comment on this matter?

We have no public comment in person and no public comment on Zoom.

K. Cool. Yeah. I guess we can move on to next item. I report by fire.

K.

Good evening, chair and members. Good to hear you tonight. So we're reporting out on, this is the month of September. This date is October 13. So, on this report, significant events, fire.

Now what this ended up being because it was significant event or classified as significant event, it's because it ended up getting a a full first structure response. The structure response is usually a couple of engines, a truck company, a rescue, and then a time g. In an instance where it looks like it's a working fire and a structure or something significant, has a lot of potential, they'll upgrade it, which adds another engine, truck, and then, lead and a PC, so for overhead. This one involved three vehicles at one time, and so it was, precautionary for first for, extension into any buildings, things like that. So, it's the interesting thing is that the, damage or the loss was 171 k for three vehicles, which, you know, perhaps doesn't sound like unusual or extraordinary, but, it was for, the month of September, the single, significant event that, was noted in this report.

And as far as the actual numbers, they look very similar to the they've have in the past. So what I'll do is I'll just go over them very briefly and then open it up for questions so that we can dig in on any, metrics or

any

the other things that might be on top of your mind. So with that, our numbers are, 24, 25. You can see we're actually low leveling off. I'd say at this point, we are absolutely safely in back to normal from twenty twenty, time frames. Right back to was gonna go back and take a look at those.

So, to see exactly if we're back on track, so you can see that that we were at this point, I would say three percent, annually is probably what you'll expect to see in call volume increase, and you'll see a few more things with the building construction break ground, and start to affect traffic and other things. That, summer case seems like still about a little bit more time. So time of day, same stuff. Freeways, hours, you'll probably see these shift in the next few months or in the next month or two because of the time change.

With the

weather today, the atmosphere at River, I'd say that you'll start seeing a lot more accidents. You'll see because of the time and, getting dark at 04:30. You'll see the the hours probably shift over about an hour, one, you know, one and a half to two hours. And then, the actual structure fires, vegetation fires. We had a couple of structure fires that will will be coming up in the next couple of reports.

So there's some interesting stuff there we want to talk about, but we've had a few structure fires and other types of fires in Cupertino. Now that is now we'll start transitioning away from wildland fires to more structure type as people, especially with the weather change, space heaters, candles, things like that. And then once we get into the holiday seasons, you'll you'll see those things start to increase. Call processing time, turnout time, total reflex, urbanization, and rural coast, once again, for the density of of a square mile. Talked about those in in in last report.

So if you wanna review on any of that, can provide that. And then I will, take a I wanted to give you an idea of the public education efforts that have taken place. So the ones that I see that were long here, there were quite a number of, attendees. We had a lot of varieties. Some of them were more, events.

So, but just to name a few, the programs that were included were, programs like, there was a kiddie academy, ready aired, a lot of station tours, and request for apparatus. So as the as the warm months started winding down, people were getting their block parties, and we had two two block parties. Three Oaks, annual block part block party. Is it, Tonita Way has one? There was a CPR AED training, that's done on request.

I know that our, we had club scout pack four eighty five for station tours, Valley Church, and the Rotary Club, had, vehicles or or fire equipment that was, provided at at their request. And so we we saw a pretty good variety of the citizens in in Cupertino in this month of, 12 programs, but I was able to make, contact with about 24, 100 people. That was either through larger events or one on one. Any questions that you have, I'd be happy to answer.

Or you mentioned, like, there'll or you mentioned, like, there will be some structure fires, like or does that mean, like, October Or or

Yeah. So we've been pulling data on those for the next reports. I see. They're coming up. So we did have a couple of structured fires. One was on De Anza Boulevard, and that was involving some businesses. And then there was a residential structure fire that happened three weeks before that.

But I just would give you

a high level. No injuries to any citizens or fire personnel occurred during those fires. Mainly, property loss, there's a couple of things that we're looking into still, so then having a little bit extra time to gather that, pour out some some outcomes. It might be a a nice thing to be able to do if we have a little bit more time.

And then, like, with regards to, like, the winter related, fires, like the space heaters and stuff, is it just like, yeah. I guess, like, what would be, like, an example? Is it, like, people leaving things unhanded? Or

Yeah. Candles. So we had a it wasn't in Cupertino, but we did have a couple of events that were due to candles. One actually had progressed pretty significantly. Just somebody wanting to relax and use candles, but, know, that time of year also when you have power outages, this is a a a an important weekend, for example, with the atmosphere at rivers coming through.

If there's a power outage, sometimes people don't have all of those things ready to go. So later on in the in the winter, they might have those things because there might have been a short outage where they would have gathered their flashlights and things like that. They might opt for candles. So that would be one of those things from a public education standpoint, you know, looking for, making sure your your flashlights have good batteries in them or new batteries. Make sure that, you know, you know where, all of those things are and, try to stay away from candles. It's pretty much kind of becoming the message for us. Anytime you can you can avoid an open flight.

Thank you, Patricia. Hector, I have a question. Like, what about the, like, the fireplace inside the home? You how hazardous is it for anybody?

The the fireplace?

The fireplace.

Oh, the fireplace. So most places actually can't burn. So I think there might be an ordinance that actually does doesn't allow it. I know that we have spare the

air For the new construction. Right? For the old ones?

Oh, so those will typically be gas. Okay. Those are engineered units. They're they're pretty pretty safe. They're also the fireless fireplaces that are currently being installed. And so those are electric units. They don't actually have a a flame. But those gas units do have a pilot that will strike just like on a on a barbecue with a electric igniter. So, if those don't work, if the power's out, then people have to remember that the striker doesn't work. So if they turn it on, it'll it may it they're designed not to flow gas if they don't have, but there could be an instance where people would have to be just aware of knowing how the equipment works within the home.

But, you're seeing especially in an an incorporated, like, area like this, Bay Area, air quality is pretty strict while open burning, so you all see that as well. For any outdoor pits like that in neighborhoods are also things that that are not typically allowed, unless it's for cooking or something like that, barbecue kind of things.

No. Very informative. I think what I did in the last couple of months is I used to and created some campaigns and advocated the next door, especially on the helmet safety from the last meeting and not to look at the mobile while crossing or failing. Those were, like, very successful. I've seen at least in next door, like, a lot of people responded to it or liked it. So like that, I think can scandal safety. Any other tips that you want to that we can share it in the social media?

I would say right now, fall prevention is one because of weather. And then I'd say just strip some of the the winter maintenance around the house that is gonna, provide for a little bit more safety. So that would be, you know, gutters once again. Before, it was gutters because of fire risk. Now it's gutters because of just having a lot of extra water coming down, and pouring over your and overtaking your your gutters or the capacity of your gutters.

And then when we get to the colder months, the frost. So slip slip and fall kind of challenges there that, will be, probably more, more common. And then as we get into the colder months, we'll start transitioning away from heat related injury, but would be looking at cold. So if, someone was to lose their power, you know, do they have a warming, a place to go for for, you know, community warming, or or is there a person in the family that can help by, moving them out of a a place that might not have electricity and just checking in on some of your, your more, dependent, or older family members. So and I would extend that to, friends

and this phone.

And on our website, we do have, quite a few things, and I'd say just pay attention, folks, during this.

Excellent. Thank you, mister. Yep. Is

there any messaging that gets sent out at the city kind

of website? Also

So that too. So we have programs that are targeting, like, for example, the elderly, or people demographic where they they need some additional help. So things like the, the fall prevention or their senior their senior focused, programs that we have that we're available for, which have, associated, media on our website. So if you go to our County Fire's website, we're gonna have to show Mark with those stuff on the county on the city's website as well and add us that type of things to both sites to look for that. And I know that there's some on the counties as well.

Right.

And if you've seen that there's a need or a gap, our search division has been making videos, and they'll make them for whatever is the relevant, you know, need at the time for that, wherever that is, that we need to try to reach out towards.

Yeah. Thank you very much. Right.

Yeah. Any public comment this item?

No speakers in person and no speakers on Zoom.

Cool. Alright. Yeah. We can move on to, Jared's bullet point.

Good evening. We'll start off with our our response times, for the last two months of, September and October. Specifically, more in the priority one realm, we had we did have four priority one calls in September, and we had zero in October. Overall, we're still within our our average response times for response times for priority one calls. If you can see on the on the total, we've had 36 priority one calls.

Our target response time is five minutes, and we're at the average of three minutes and seventy three. So we're still within good average, of all of all the contractual abided response times. Priority two calls were at nine minutes, and we are well below that by five minutes. And then prior to three calls, response time is twenty minutes, and we're at five minutes on that as well too. So overall, we're doing, pretty good catching up with some of these priority one calls and stuff like that.

So, moving right along the, crime stats, I think the what I wanna highlight here is the mode that we're we're, that number should be maybe I got you the report late. I apologize for that. But we had a lot of burglaries in October. We had 13. So we are at 88 for the month of October total so far, which is puts us 10 more than we had the year before.

We need to be more we try to pick up some more educational pieces, but, you know, folks are coming back and they're doing what they're gonna be doing. So we need to partner homes and and do more public awareness with with with the city and and maybe bring back a a couple of these, you know, maybe we watch groups that may have been dormant for a little while. Because that's always been a successful gauge of preventing, property crime. So that's the one I wanted to bring out the most out of all the other one. Everything else pretty much stays on trend for right now.

The the last thing I wanna talk about is the, we can actually go down to the, the combined statistics right there. Oops. Okay. So October 22, in October 22, our traffic team, in conjunction with Palo Alto Police Department, Los Altos Police Department, Mountain View PD, Sunnyvale Department of Public Cert Public Safety, and Santa Clara Police Department did a targeted target traffic blitz, due to the number of traffic related complaints. This was primarily focused around our schools, and hazard areas have been reported.

Most of the citations that we were looking for was fairly yield to pedestrians, speeding, ignoring road signs, illegal use of handheld devices while driving. Again, specifically around our schools. So with the assistance of all these other agencies, we we our deputies went out and gave multiple warnings and in total, a 101 citations in Cupertino for multiple moving violations. There's a there's a video on our on our social media, if you guys wanna take a look at that, of just the involvement of all these police department. And, essentially, our traffic team is doing really well about networking with other police departments.

We're assisting them in their traffic issues. Traffic seems to be like a we're lucky in Cupertino to have number of traffic deputies because of other agencies, you know, they're due to, you know, staffing levels. That's the first thing they have to scrap is their traffic enforcement. So helping them out, they help us out, gives us more of presence out there to to curb behavior, especially with driving driving behaviors. So that's pretty much what I have for for everything. And, like I said, if if you have any questions about our tracker splits, we'd more than happy to talk about that and

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. I guess, like, with regards to the burglaries in October, are those, like, glass backdoor, like, any kind of pattern

Same same exact thing again except starting to happen again. It's the just sliding glass door. They break the glass door. They're coming in, rent second master bedroom, going after jewelry. So it seems to be a very, very fast and opportunistic way to make a lot of or get a lot of stuff. So we have to get out there and have to educate the public. If we're if we're gonna put safe someplace, it's master bedroom is not the place for it. Plus breakage alarms, you know, some people have installed them, they still found that that it's able to break in. So testing those and make sure they work correctly, you know, with your alarm company. So and then also reporting suspicious behavior.

That's the biggest thing. You know, having your neighbor if you're gonna be out of town and a lot of these victims of these houses, they're they're gone for days, you know, on vacation, and they're really terrible way to come back from a vacation with your reporting of burglary. So, you know, it's keeping having neighbors help each other out, keep an eye it. We just we'd love to be everywhere at one place, but we just can't. So

So would you say, like, the the main kind of, like, challenge right now seems to just be, like, the houses that are getting broken into. Like, you get there, and it's like there were things they could have done to deter it, but they didn't? Or

Yeah. We've had we've had we we have residents that that didn't have an alarm turned on. Uh-uh. Weren't equipped with any alarm system at all. Didn't notify the neighbors that they're gonna get out town, you know, which is which is understandable. But if you if you do trust a neighbor, you know, maybe pick up your mail and stuff like that, have them, you know, assist them, keep an eye on the house. But there's there's been a couple where people have been extended gone for an extended period of time, couple of weeks at a time. And I think we just need to be a little bit better than I think, you know, maybe we had a a little low on the in the time that people maybe got to place it or something, but we go back to the basics of hardening our our homes, to prevent this from happening. So That's

Oh, I have a comment or question, actually, rather. This is a very good report. As as usual, I think the metrics are great. Like, as we get colder months, you gave some suggestions. Right? Do you see generally in the past few years the client trend to increase during the colder months because guest after fast or something, or any other tips, anything that we can share in social media?

Yeah. We we start to see a trend usually towards the holidays because people are going away from and that's always the the, you know, we try to ramp up as much staffing as we can during during holidays, and we anticipate people might be gone for an extended weekend. And and as we're getting closer to the end of the year, we have a lot of these, like, extended weekends, you know, where we're we're gonna go see family during Thanksgiving, and we're gonna be leaving on Wednesday, not going back to Monday. So, typically, yes, that's that's been the pattern. It's these extended periods of time where where the crooks know that people are not gonna be home and and making their house look like there's nobody home over a period of time. So

Excellent. So so you do wrap up the staffing and as well as residents can request you to make, like, a additional visit when they're out of town. Right?

Yes. So it's gonna go online, and you could just type in you just type in your Google Santa Clara County Sheriff patrol check request. It'll take you to the page, and you can just type in your residence. We try to do the best we can to make it up to these the homes and and do, like, a once over. We get a lot of we get a lot of positive feedback from residents where they say, was in Hawaii, and I I saw the deputy walk in my backyard in my Ring camera. So so if they're they're doing it, it's just sometimes it's, you know, it's hard.

We get bombarded with them

a lot. You know? So it's hard to get to all of them, but we do our best we can. So

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I have, like, kind of, like, an unrelated question, but I guess it's still related to tariffs business. I read, like, an article, like, the other day about I think I think it was in Redmond, Washington, like, flock cameras being I think, like, the city or the county or something, like, disabling them. Is there I guess, like, is there, like, any activity about that here, you know, it's already

Yeah. So this all started there was a article that came out from the East Coast where I think the Department of Homeland Security had been had had an account with Flock, but it was the the drug portion of it, not the immigration portion of it. But because there was so much pushback from the community, Flock suspended their account. And and that's how we talk to Flock about this. But there's been that uncertainty whether or not these cameras can be accessed by Department of Homeland Security for immigration purposes.

And and we have a very strong law in California where we're not allowed to share any any information regarding immigration status or immigration whereabouts. And so a lot of cities are taking that that stance and, you know, Los Altos Hills has also brought it up too that they may cancel their stuff. There's no indication that any of our cameras have ever done that. We're actually a closed system, so we don't actually share with anybody. But we receive a lot of information that people share with us.

There's a we're we're trying to work that around there till we share with our our local agencies nearby, like Los Altos and Palo Alto. And we do still share with them if if Palo Alto Police Department calls us and says, hey, we're investigating a burglary, and we think that this car was associated. Can you look up your cameras? Here's your event number. We can still do that, but it is a a little time consuming. So we're trying to switch that so that at least our in our county, we can still share it. But that that was a lot of the the speculation that that that there was a a portion of the Department of Homeland Security that was that had their own FLAC account. And so but FLAC had mentioned that they did take that away from them even though it had nothing to do with immigration. It was more for drug trafficking.

So Got it.

Yeah. It's all for me.

Oh, on Flock, I think a couple of months back, you advised that you are seeing positive trends. You still see the positive trends with respect to capturing the crooks related to this?

They they take some time, but, you know, the the crooks are getting smarter. They know where the cameras are at, you know, so they avoid them. They also know that if they stole a license plate, they have about maybe a good hour to two hours before somebody may notice that their license plate might be stolen and before that's entered into the system. So they take advantage of that by by putting their crimes during that time frame and then switching out license plates as much as they possibly can. So they they're they're aware and they get, you know, just like anything else, you install an alarm system, folks are gonna figure out a way around it. So it is a tool. It again, it doesn't really provide a lot of information except the license plate number. So we still have to do all the other work around it.

So one of my neighbors wanted to check with me. Like, so they parked their car on the street and somebody damaged a bit. So they wanted to check if the sheriff's department can help investigate, like, from the flock cameras. I I we don't have anything near our community, but from the flock cameras, any damaged car pass through it, in window, is it possible or not? Was the No.

It it takes a it it does a picture of the back of the vehicle. Uh-huh. So it can do make, model, color, and maybe distinguishing features like a bumper sticker or like a tow hitch. But the size of the vehicles is doesn't really capture any of that stuff. But we can use it for an accident if we have a good narrow window to look. Believe it or not, when we run the you know, say, okay. How many hits of of license plates in a certain camera? You can get, like, thousands of hits within couple hours. So and and, again, no information is provided. You have to kinda go individually through every one of those and and run those license plates individually. So but if we have a good narrow window that could happen this time and it was it looks like a red car, we might be able to do something about that.

I see. Thank you. That helps. Awesome. Yeah.

Thank you so much, actually. Any public comment?

The speaker's in person, and no one on the ground chair. Vice chair.

K. Cool. Yeah. I guess we can move on to

Great. Staff update. For the block leader program, we had a meeting on the twenty second discussing the active transportation plan and then looking at the the future of the program. So what specifically volunteers wanted to see going forward, what they found most useful, things like that. And we also had a build a kit event on the seventh that was actually hosted at the Saratoga library, funny enough.

And in that, we are focused for for that group of residents on earthquakes just because that was what they wanted to hear about. But the building kits are just like everything Cuberdino does, an all hazards focused approach. This is because I realized that we've said quite a few times that the city works with a lot of partners, and this is we're part of a much larger whole. So this is a overview of most of my calendar. So just to give you an idea of of, you know, we're working with the county.

We're working with, Valley Water. We're, doing the great shakeout, the operational area meetings. So those are county wide. The disaster council meeting that was here with the city, and the livestream of that is on the, city city meetings YouTube channel. City I don't know what the YouTube channel's called.

Yeah. Cooper Jima City Meeting channel. So the same the same channel that the commission meetings are livestreamed on. Right now, there's a lot of focus on the upcoming Super Bowl in February and the World Cup that will be this summer. We are hosting a couple games in, the Bay Area for the World Cup.

We will find out what countries will be playing on December 5, which is when they will do the draws for the matchups. So there's been a lot of planning and exercise based around both the Super Bowl and FIFA. And then I I believe I've spoken about it before, but the language and accessibility for alert and warning was also today focused on FIFA specifically about how to figure out which languages to translate into. Do you focus on the the areas, most common languages? Do you focus on the countries of the teams that are gonna be in the area?

So that right now is a pending question. And, right now, we're we're starting to get into the rainy season. We've already seen today. So looking at, Valley Water and the National Weather Service, getting updates on what to expect. As you can see there, the, October 9, Valley Water went over their emergency action plans for each of the dams.

We are in a dam inundation zone in parts of Cupertino. So if a dam fails, there would be flooding in parts of Cupertino. Obviously, Valley Water is doing everything they can to prevent that. They, right now, are going through structural checks to make sure that everything is working before we start really getting rain, and making sure that we know where exactly water would be flowing, how much, and what impacts that those would have. Any questions on any of these?

The orientation, was that recorded, or is that available to

I don't I don't know if it's available to the public, but I can reach out to Valley Water and see if there's even an overview that they could get.

I would be interested in that, actually.

Thank you. Thank you, This

is really helpful. So what can you explain more about alert SCC working group?

Yeah. So this is a working group of the people who are the alert originators in the county, so the people who actually send out the alert SCC messages. Right now, a lot of what we've been discussing in the working group has been about increasing sign ups. Countywide, we have 9% of the population signed up for alert SCC, and that is not where we wanna be. Right?

We wanna be much higher sign up rates than that. And then also, working with Everbridge, which is the vendor that we use for alert SEC, to make sure that the languages spoken in our area, and used in our area are compatible with their software. So for a very long time, Everbridge was English only, and any special characters would show up as, like, a string of numbers or just an error. So we are trying to figure out if we can get into, languages that don't use the Latin alphabet. In our area, specifically, there's a lot of concern about Mandarin and Cantonese, making sure that we can send out messages and those messages come through correctly.

So can we participate, or can we get more information after the meeting from the public safety commissioners?

Yeah. Give updates on this.

In the next meeting? Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. I would also like to participate, if you could, from the other SCC working group.

So this is staff. Staff? Yeah. The different Understood. Stations.

Got it.

I can reach out to Charles Harris

Oh, yeah.

Who is at the county and see if there is any way that that residents can get involved. I'm I'm not sure if there is anything, but we can ask.

Thank you. Yeah. I I guess I need a public comment.

No speakers in person and no speaker's message.

Yeah.

So I guess future agenda setting, I think the alert SEC is something you can definitely have some kind of tangible impact on. Like, I guess, would it be a would it be so our next meeting is in January. I think it might be, like, an interesting exercise to, like, investigate ways to increase sign ups on alert SEC, whether that's, like, having them actually change the way that things are that people sign up for it. I'm pretty sure that's, like, a big reason why people aren't signing up signing up for it. Like, it's probably too, like, contrived to do it.

And then maybe, like, some other ideas might be, like, marketing, that kind of thing, sharing it in our networks, and then we can come back in January and present ideas, things that we think would, like, push the needle in that sense?

Can I get a second to add that?

Okay. Yes. A second.

Or sorry. Can I have someone make a motion?

Oh, yeah. Motion to, discuss ways to boost alert SEC sign ups.

Great. Any other future agenda topics?

Yeah. None. Okay.

That's the meeting if you'd like to adjourn.

Cool. Alright. Yeah. Adjourn the meeting at 06:57.