Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee (psfss) - Regular Meeting

Alright. Let's call the meeting to order. Before we begin, I want to remind the public safety finance and strategic support committee members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings. This including commenting on the specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speakers will not engage in a conversation with the chair, council member or staff.

All members of the Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee, staff and the public are expected to refrain from abusive language. Repeated failure to comply with the code of conduct, which will disturb, disrupt or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may result in removal from the meeting. This meeting of the public safety, finance, and strategic support committee will now come to order. Can the clerk, office please take a roll call, please? Council member Solace? Here. Casey? Here. Mulcahy? Here. Kamay? Here. And Duan? Thank you. Any public comments?

No public comment. Okay. We're going straight to consent calendar on the bimonthly financial report for March and April 2025. Can I have a motion?

Move we accept the consent, Callery.

Second. Thank you very much. Let's vote. Motion passes unanimously. Alright.

Well, before we, go into the report, I want to say thank you so much to council member Salas and his contribution to this PISFIS to the city. And he is, this will be his last PISFIS meeting. And my heartfelt thank you to him that he's been very compassionate, kind, caring, and very supportive of our city. Thank you, council member Salas.

Very kind of you and I have many words to say but I'm gonna hold them till my last council meeting.

Okay. Alright. Well, thank you. So we go to the report to the committee. Number one, it will be advancing ratio and social equity through cultural and practice annual report. And do we, who do we have here? And we have a presentation from Andrea Aguilar Aguilar, sorry, and Lydia Bustamante.

Yes, thank you. Good morning Chair, Council members, staff and my name is Andrea Aguilar, I'm the racial equity manager here in the office of racial and social equity. I'm joined here by my lovely colleague Lydia Bustamante, yeah you got a lovely. And Solma our director regrets that she is unable to be here but we are excited to be here to present and answer any questions for you. So I'm gonna go ahead and move forward with our presentation.

So here on this slide you'll see our vision and our mission and really this year in our presentation for this report for our annual report for the fiscal year 2024 and 2025 reflects a year of progress, learning, deep collaboration across departments and our community members. As always, we remain grounded in a clear vision, a San Jose where everyone belongs, thrives and no disparities exist. And in today's presentation, we are presenting this report from twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five for your acceptance and more importantly for your reflection and support. The report covers our key accomplishments during this fiscal year across our three core portfolios, racial and social equity, inclusion and belonging, and disability affairs. This also covers some of the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead.

You'll not just see numbers but stories of change, institutional progress that are helping our city become a more equitable, inclusive and responsive San Jose. And so in this next slide you'll see four strategic objectives that are part of this year's work plan and you'll see here they're written on our screen. And first, we work to normalize equity as part of our city's everyday culture, that's our first strategic objective. Our second is that we build the infrastructure that makes this work possible through training, policy and accountability. And third, we work to support inclusive practices that truly welcome and empower all residents.

And finally, we focus on removing systemic barriers particularly for immigrant communities, residents residents with disabilities, and others who've been historically excluded excluded from full civic participation. And why do we do this? Because we know that when we design city programs and services for those that are most impacted by disparities, everyone benefits. So in this next slide I'm excited to present our racial and social equity highlights and in this first data point here you'll see that 86% of our city employees see how inclusion and equity relate to their role. And this data point really signals how growing shared ownership is growing across the entire organization and this kind of progress shows that we're not just teaching and training equity concepts, we're really embedding them to the day to day mindset of our workforce.

In the previous racial and social equity action plan, departments completed a 160 racial and social equity actions. And in this new iteration for this year with 55 over already complete in this cycle and 184 are currently in progress. These racial and social equity action plans are published on our website and we're really excited to announce that every department has designated a lead staff member who's responsible for managing these plans and this really helps with better coordinating, supporting these team and in these sessions that we meet together we really work to learn, analyze their collective work and a 100% of those that come to these sessions say that it's worth and valuable use of their time. And in accompaniment of these racial and social equity action plans, we're excited to announce that dashboard is a company next to it. And so community members in an effort to be transparent are able to see the progress of these equity actions.

So you're able to see what's in progress, what's not in progress right now and then also what's been completed. So now I will be passing to my colleague Lydia.

Good afternoon or good morning. It's

funny still.

Good morning council members, staff and community members. I'm Lydia Bustamante, an assistant to the city manager leading the inclusion and belonging portfolio in the Orsi team. You might recall from last month's presentation on the welcoming San Jose plan that we emphasized that building belonging isn't the work of just one office. It's a shared commitment across departments, community partners, and residents alike. This idea of welcoming and belonging really belongs to our entire community, and that takes all of us.

As a certified welcoming city, we've continued to lead in trust building connection. The San Jose Civics Masters Class, which is a free multilingual program, helped over 350 residents, 84 of them were born outside of The United States. And we helped them learn how to engage with local government, many for the first time. We strengthened our know your rights infrastructure, trained hundreds of city staff on safe site protocols, distributing over 5,000 multilingual know your rights cards through city systems, and equipped almost 200 frontline staff with trauma informed de escalation tools. We also expanded legal accesses, excuse me, legal access for immigrant residents supporting over a thousand people from 73 countries.

Our partnership with 38 immigration attorneys, including 24 who served pro bono, created pathways for survivors seeking u visas and t visas. These joint legal and naturalization clinics show how San Jose treats immigrants immigrant rights not as a problem to fix, but as a shared community responsibility. Behind the scenes, we actively supported 17 California state bills on equity and inclusion and co developed the San Jose welcome plan and with 24 partner organizations and 15 city departments. All of these actions send a clear message to our immigrant neighbors, you belong here. This was a foundational year for our disability affairs work.

We conducted 25 site visits of San Jose facilities, most of them owned by the city, with a 130 staff to evaluate signage, look at language access issues, and look at their service design. We trained over 150 staff in ableism and disability awareness, supported Vice Mayor Foley and Council Member of course in hosting the sixteenth annual disability awareness day with our partners bringing together over 500 attendees. And we're on track to being compliant with digital accessibility federal standards by April 2026. These steps towards making accessibility an expectation, not an exception. Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about challenges.

We recognize that this work is happening at a time of national pushback on equity initiatives, and locally, locally, capacity across departments is frankly uneven. But we also know that San Jose has laid a strong foundation. Looking ahead, we intend to stay the course. We'll continue to standardize equity practices, implement the new equity ordinance and council policy and expand departmental support. Our aim is for every city service and decision to reflect the values In closing, we want to express our deep gratitude for the leadership of this committee, for our city colleagues, and most of all for our community members.

Every milestone we've shared today is the result of partnership, is the result of listening, co creating, and staying committed even when the work gets hard. Equity isn't just a program. It's not a buzzword. It's not a sound bite for us. Equity here at the City of San Jose is a practice, and it belongs to all of us. Together we're building a San Jose where everyone regardless of background or ability has the opportunity to thrive and we'll take any questions from the committee. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. Do we have any public comments? No public comment. Well then I will go straight to council member Mulcahy.

Thank you both and thanks for the whole group's efforts on the city's behalf. You're right, it has sort of penetrated into every area of the city. Was in two different DOT meetings yesterday at staff level sort of updating on paving and then one on traffic safety. And in the presentation is baked in equity. It's sort of spelled right out, right upfront.

So obviously your hard work is paying off throughout the city. A couple of questions that I wanted to ask. So we just went through the budget and we increased commitment to immigration services. A lot of the non profits were here encouraging that. Do you have a is that pool of funds directed by then your office in relationship to the support to the community whether it be for legal services and so forth or is that going outside the city but yet still marshaled by your department?

Yeah, that's a great question. So my understanding it was that the city council directed the office of racial and social equity to develop a MBA with a recommendation of $250,000 which we initially did in coordination with other funders including the county and some philanthropic partners as well in order to make sure that we are leveraging each other's investments in local services and coordinating those efforts. The next step would be to go back to our community of practice of local funders that are funding immigrant services and figure out given this new direction what would that look like. So yes it would be directed by the Office of Racial and Social Equity, but again intended we need a little bit of time to able to figure out exactly what is going to be funded in the next fiscal year which the county will determine by July 1 in order to make a recommendation. That said we're happy to give some additional updates to the council offices over the course of the coming weeks.

That's great and you beat me to it. Was going to ask I'd love to sort of stay passenger on learning more about how we're going to deploy those resources and I love the fact that you're already talking about how to partner with others to gain some overall effectiveness even greater than we can do on our own. So that's cool. You talk about site visits and you talked about city facilities, does that include community centers?

Thank you for your question council member. Yes, it does include some of the community centers that our city facilities have.

Would you just make a note to check if Gardner Community Center has been on your route of visits. It's an unfortunately forgotten part of our city. It's been lobbied between District 3 and District 6. We're working super hard to make sure that whatever resources we can bring, it's a closed community center for the most part. And any opportunity to engage with that community is super important and it's a disenfranchised community in many ways.

And so we're trying to boost them as much as we can. So I'd appreciate knowing whether Gartner's on your radar and I know Hardy has been visited by the department. So thanks for that. And then the last thing on ADA, I have sort of a mixed relationship with the way that ADA laws are used and unfortunately abused by lots of lawyers out there. So I'm curious relative to the ADA work that we're doing, we have another program in OEDCA which supports CASP reports for business owners and property owners.

Do you have any sort of engagement with that work that they're doing kind of over there? Or is this completely separate work? And if you're not aware of what that is, a CASP report basically is, you know, you have an expert come in and tell you all the infractions you have in your business or in your property. And what it does is, is it essentially gives those lawyers, if you haven't fixed the 25 recommendations and you've done 23 but you didn't do two because it was too expensive or problematic, it's actually evidence against you in a court of law relative to ADA if you haven't done it. So I have this real conflict between some of this work that we're doing in the city and how we're advising businesses and property owners.

So I'm just curious is there any visibility between programs you're doing about elevating equity with our disabled community and that program over there?

Thanks for your question. As you know our council excuse me our director, temporarily overseeing the disability affairs portfolio given the current vacancy that we're currently hiring for. So let us do a little bit of research into that and we'll do a follow-up with you after the meeting.

My colleague wants to talk. So I think that was the end of my questions and I'll defer my time to council member Kamay.

Is that okay? Yes. Absolutely.

But but thank you for all the work you're doing. Appreciate it.

Just just through the chair. I, because I sit on CED, I also, am aware of the collaboration that, the office of, racial and social equity does with our economic development and we actually have grants to assist small business owners to be able to make conversions in their in their facilities to be able to facilitate that. And last, I think it was last year they had a, a session to be able to to, inform, small business owners of, you know, the things that can be done, how we can facilitate it, and really just bridging the two departments to be able to, get the word out.

I know we're not supposed to have a conversation chair, but I do need to say something more about that. And and so council member Kameh, it's exactly the reason I'm raising this issue and I've raised it with OEDCA and the folks that are working on those grant programs for CASP which I just think it's a potentially slippery slope and I've asked our city attorney to look into it because I think it's super, look I've got disabled family members and I'm really really inclined as a property owner and a business owner myself to make accommodations. Where I am concerned is our small businesses are falling prey to frivolous lawsuits that are using the ADA as a weapon. And I just wanna make sure that the support we're giving to our small business community is helping them and ultimately in the end not hurting them because when you do a CAST report it gives you all kinds of recommendations, many of which are economically often infeasible. And so or require a property owner to do it and the property owner won't cooperate.

So it just sort of sets up evidence against you if you don't act on the report and the requirements or the infractions called out in the report, you are susceptible to ADA lawsuits. That's, we don't need to continue to go to it, but that's really the crux of what I'm trying to raise for the city, for our small business community and for our grant programs that we're already in the midst of offering. Thanks. You.

Councilmember, thank you the robust information there.

Just wanted to add to your point councilmember, is that the design of the disability affairs work to provide those site visits is really intended to provide technical assistance and training to the staff that are at these different sites, not necessarily to play a game of gotcha. So in that process reviewing reports about the site as they already exist, but also working with them to identify other issues including language access and other issues as well. So if we can provide folks with some technical assistance, they can improve those things and not feel like they're buried by the red tape, if you will.

Okay. Well, thank you Councilmember Mulcahy. We're gonna go to Councilmember Salas.

I wasn't gonna comment on that, but I need to. So exactly what council member Mulcahy is saying has happened. I have a couple little vendors that I Merchants that I am the landlord of. Small Asian bagel shop in Afghanistan, an Afghani pizza place, and this exact same thing Mulcahy said is it's just it's rampant. And by the way, heard they just ravaged Japantown.

They go to the small merchants and I won't go into too many details, but there's a 2% grade on this nice ramp that goes into the bagel shop, and they come out and it was was 3%, they measure it and it's 3%, and then that's all they need. And my point is, I don't know that it would fall on you, but you should be aware that in a way, if I had grants, would be to pay for some attorney fees because once they come in, it doesn't matter what they've done, they will get you, and especially small merchants. So anyway, just a comment that maybe doesn't bridge on you, but I have some other difficult questions for you. Number one, you talk about in one of your slides you said remove systemic barriers. Just wanna ask, when you talk about site visits, there is no question in my district, you know, essentially downtown, but much more than downtown, the periphery of downtown.

Let's take Japantown or even my neighborhood. DOT, code compliance, does an amazing job there. They ticket people right away, right away. On this side of town, Washington neighborhood, Spartan Keys, there are so many RVs, the parks are so bad, and I don't know, some of my other council members maybe on the East Side would say the same thing, but there's a visual disparity in my district between how code compliance works and how our parks are maintained, and I think a lot of it is probably because the neighborhoods aren't as organized, but it is a visual and striking difference, particularly if I will on the homeless and the RVs, but PD does a great job, in fact they would tell you probably the same thing because they spend much more time over there, and some of it is because it's that broken window theory where when you have a broken window and you don't fix it then more people kinda pile into that area, but I just wanted to mention, does is your scope include that looking at the disparity between subsections of the city relative to how poor the parks look, how many, how slowly they, DOT and code compliance response?

Thank you for question Council members and thank you for highlighting economic disparities that are across our city and that really folks really experience the burden more in certain areas and we work closely with our departments, Department of Transportation, our Parks and Rec, and then as well as PBC as part of our racial and social equity actions plans, as well as doing technical assistance and working with them to really understand root causes of those systemic barriers and that you know, I think we all know as a society and as a city these things also take a lot of time, a lot of investment and also work to do and so we've been in close collaboration and partnership with our departments to continue to look and iterate and improve upon on those policies.

I so appreciate what you're doing but I do wanna make sure you say even in close collaboration, I'll drive you to Washington, the Washington School area and I'll drive you to the Spartan Keys area right now and it's striking the disparity and then I'll drive you to Knightley Park or Japantown, it's striking. So keep your eyes open, that's all I'm asking and I really appreciate what you're doing and appreciate you listening to me. Secondly, I'm kind of summarizing something I read in your report, it says the coming year presents meaningful opportunities to deepen impact, foster collaboration, and build a more inclusive city for all. I know you must be concerned about what's happening at the federal level relative to DEI, and to me some of the biggest, it says opportunities, but you have some huge challenges coming up. Have you talked about what's coming up relative to the directives that we can't get any federal money, that we can't do so many things relative because we have DEI.

Are you having those discussions internally?

Thank you. Yes, of course. We would be remiss if we weren't addressing those what's going on at the federal level and what we anticipate to be coming soon. We're in close coordination with both the city attorney's office as well as the inter government relations team in order to be able to analyze policy. The intent at this point is to continue to implement the city's equity policy and ordinance and stay the course until we receive a different direction.

Thank you. I'll just close by saying when I moved to San Jose in 1974 out of college, somebody came up to me, was at some meeting and he said the nice thing he knew I was new and he said the nice thing about San Jose is that all you have do is work hard and nobody cares who you are and that was in '74. You guys continue to do a great job and I'm I'm really proud of this city for exactly that reason. So thank you for what you do.

Thank you council member of Salas. We're gonna go to vice chair Rosemary Kamay.

Thank you so much chair Dwan. I, I really want to appreciate all of the work that you do and how, you know, in the last few years, it has really moved forward throughout the organization. And and and I wanna say congratulations. There's a lot more yet to be done, but, certainly, we're going in the right directions. And I would like to move acceptance of the annual report.

Second. Oh, thank you. Sorry. I

was supposed to

do that. Anyway, I I I do have a question for the office of, racial, equity there and social equity. Now I I'm gonna piggyback off to council member Salas regarding the federal administration. How do you prepare for the onslaught of the funding going to be cut? And they definitely looking at DEI and just dismantle what we have now. Are you preparing for that?

So if I could answer, I think from a Jennifer Shembry, Deputy City Manager,

I think from

a funding perspective, I don't know if that's really in your wheelhouse. I think that's more of the city manager's office, the budget office, so absolutely. And I think there was an MBA that was put out regarding federal funding. So Jim Shannon, Lee, Jennifer absolutely are monitoring and continuing to monitor that and we'll keep you updated on any changes.

Well, thank you. I've always believed in preparing for the worst case scenario. Right? So if we don't get the funding, how do we continue to support our community that are underserved, multicultural and they're hurting? That's keeping me up at night a lot.

Anyway, thank you so much for the excellent work and keep up the good work. We're in it for a big long fight, we'll come out okay, I believe. Right, let's vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much.

And we'll go to item number two is our Police Department Operation and Performance Quarterly Status Report. We will have a presentation by our deputy chief Gina Tabaldi, our captain Steve Donahue, our lieutenant I'm gonna put you to this. Nakae Sheri. Sheri, yes. And then our lieutenant Paul Hamlin and our crime prevention supervisor Sandra Garcia.

Okay. Good morning. I am deputy chief Gina Tivaldi, the executive officer for the San Jose Police Department and they've been introduced but with me today is captain Steve Donahue of the support services division. We have Lieutenant Nakwai Sherri of traffic enforcement, Lieutenant Paul Hamlin of Research and Development, and Sandra Garcia our Crime Prevention Supervisor. We are here today to present the department's quarterly, sorry department's operations and performance quarterly status report.

Okay so I will begin by providing the latest citywide crime statistics which will include for the first time in over two years a year to year comparison of the first five months of 2025 versus 2024. After that, Lieutenant Nakwai Sheree will provide a brief recap of last month's Cinco de Mayo activities and then captain Donahue and Sandra Garcia will provide a report on the department's latest community engagement efforts. With crime statistics, we will begin with crimes against persons. As you can see in our quarterly breakdown, the overall number of crimes against persons went down from quarter one forty two eighteen to quarter two thirty nine seventy '4 to quarter three with thirty six fifteen. With the vast majority of these crime categories, we saw decreases from quarter to quarter.

However, with murder, we saw a 25% increase from q two to q three which equated to one homicide more than in quarter two. With kidnapping and abduction, we saw an increase in nine events from q two to q three. Next is a year to year comparison of crimes against persons for the first five months of 2025 versus 2024. Due to the switch to the National Incident Based Reporting System or NIBRS in April 2023, this is the first time in over two years we've been able to do a year to year crime comparison. As we do this comparison we see improvements in almost every crime category.

We see a large decrease in homicides, five fewer than the same time last year. While we see a large decrease in human trafficking, rape and sex offenses, I believe these numbers may level off a bit as the year progresses because these crimes often experience delays in reporting and the 2024 data better takes into account these delays. The data gets updated regularly and is based upon date of occurrence not date of reporting. Turning now to crimes against property, we see the overall number of offenses in quarter three which was ninety one sixty one was down from both quarter two ninety six fourteen and quarter one, 92.5. Robbery was down 11% in quarter three and down 13% in quarter two from quarter one.

Burglary was down 7.6% in quarter three from quarter two. Arson and embezzlement both went up in quarter three, but both were down in quarter three compared to Q1. Property crime in general is cyclical. So in other words, we tend to see the same quarterly trends every year which is why the year to year comparison is so valuable. As we look at the year to year numbers for crimes against property for the first five months of 2025 versus 2024, we see that robbery had almost no change.

With larceny and theft cases, we saw a 7% increase or four seventeen additional cases, but this actually is no surprise to us at the department. Our organized retail theft team has been working with businesses to increase reporting of these types of crimes and is collaborating with the DA's office to prosecute them. Also we did see vehicle thefts decrease 25%. This is seven eleven cases. In speaking with the various investigative units throughout the department, this could be attributed to multiple investigative units working crimes associated to a network of criminals stealing vehicles to commit their crimes.

Finally, we turn to crimes against society. These numbers, well they're kind of all over the place, but the takeaway from this is that the numbers are largely based on the proactivity of our officers. So when we see an increase in the number of narcotic cases, this is because our officers are being proactive and making arrests during pedestrian stops, vehicle stops, calls for service, etcetera. I think the year to year comparison actually provides a better outlook on what's happening with crimes against society. So if we look at the year to year comparison we see that animal cruelty is down 46% or 23 cases in the first five months of 2025 compared to 2024.

We're not quite sure what to attribute this to but it is a win and we will take it. When we look at the narcotics cases and see an increase of forty eight percent that's six hundred and ninety two cases. This as I mentioned is the proactivity of our officers and it's positive. With gambling we see essentially no change just one case. With pornography and obscene materials cases we had a decrease of forty one percent or thirty cases.

And then with prostitution we see the biggest decrease it was seventy six percent or sixty five fewer cases. So this can actually be directly attributed to the police department's limited resources. As the demand for dealing with unpermitted vendors went up, the department was asked to address it. And the team who focused on prostitution proactively was redirected temporarily and so that's why you're seeing the decrease in that proactivity with the prostitution. With weapons violations we saw a 31% increase or a 102 more cases. And this again is attributed to the proactivity of our officers on ped stops, car

stops, etcetera. So when our officers make a car stop and pull someone over and they have a gun in a

car and make the arrest, that gives us a stat in this category. So it's a win if the numbers go up because our officers are proactive. Proactivity So having said that all, I'm gonna now pass it over to Lieutenant Nakwai Sherri who's gonna report out on Cinco de Mayo weekend.

Good morning. The Cinco de Mayo operational period for us was between Friday, May 2 and Monday, May 5 of this year. It was our intent to facilitate a safe environment for Cinco de Mayo weekend. Every effort was made to allow citizens residing or conducting businesses in or near the area affected by potential road closures, the ability to leave or return to the residents and our businesses without unreasonable delay. There were three sanctioned events that the city had over the weekend.

The first one was on Saturday, May 3. There was Cinco de Mayo car show, it was directly in front of the SAP Center and that was scheduled between 9AM and 4PM. Estimated attendance for that event was about 900 folks. Preplanned street closures for this area was Santa Clara Street at Barack Obama Boulevard and then West Santa Clara Street from Stockton Avenue to Highway 87. The other two events were on Sunday.

The first one being celebration and parade that was between 10AM and 4PM. And the parade and festive festivities on Story in King Road and Amber Push Park. Estimated attendance for that was about 10,000 folks. Preplanned street closures on was King Road between McKee and Highway 680 and then between 680 and Story Road all along King Road. The second event for Sunday was second chance to life between 11AM and 10PM and that was located at Plaza De Cesar Chavez Park.

Estimated attendance, five to 8,000 folks, and there were no preplanned street closures for that particular event. If we look at our daily summary of police operations on Friday, May 2, the vehicular and pedestrian traffic in both the downtown and the Foothill Corridor was moderate throughout most of the evening. No traffic diversions or road closures were necessary and there was very little sideshow activity throughout the night. Offers were released at approximately midnight hours. On Saturday, May 3, vehicle and pedestrian traffic in both the downtown corridor and the Foothill Corridor was moderate to heavy throughout most of the night.

No traffic diversions or road closures were necessary. There was very little sideshow activity throughout the night and officers cleared parking lots where large crowds were gathered and a little bit of sideshow activity was occurring. Officers were released on that night at 01:00 in the morning. On Sunday, things picked up a little bit for us. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic was heavy in the early afternoon in the downtown foothill corridors.

There was extremely heavy pedestrian traffic in the Astoria and King Road area primarily due to Cinco de Mayo festivities. At sixteen hundred hours when they laid out, several 100 people jumped into the Storey And King Road intersection to watch the low rider vehicles leave the area. Over the course of the next few hours, the vehicle and pedestrian traffic seriously increased in both the downtown and foothill corridors. Full vehicle traffic diversions were activated in these two areas between the hours of 09:15PM and 11:30PM, which is relatively short period of time, only couple hours. Officers cleared parking lots, broke up problematic crowds all evening.

The parking lot surrounding Story And King Road, Monterey and Southside, Santa Clara and 7th Street, and Santa Clara And 19th Street were significantly problematic areas as there were multiple vehicle burnouts, sideshow activity, vehicular and pedestrian traffic congestion, drinking in public, firework and altercations. Officers were released at this night at about 01:00 in the morning. On actual May 5, which was on Monday, vehicular and pedestrian traffic in both the downtown and the Foothill corridors was moderate until about nineteen forty five hours, which is 07:45PM when a large crowd began taking over Lane Number 2 at Santa Clara And 7th Street. At this time, vehicular and pedestrian traffic increased significantly in the downtown corridor and in the Foothill Corridor in the Cardenas parking lot at Story And King Road. At about two thousand one hundred hours and 09:00PM traffic diversions were set up only at these two locations due to an increase in vehicle burnouts, large groups of people in the roadway consuming alcoholic beverages, people hanging out and moving hanging out and moving vehicles, and extremely heavy traffic.

Traffic diversions were lifted at about two thousand three hundred hours. Again, that's only in those two particular mentioned areas. Officers were released that evening at 11:30PM. Officers were very, very proactive throughout the weekend which encompasses the success of the weekend. Felony arrests were made throughout the weekend was 35. Misdemeanor arrest and or citations was 39. Warrant arrest was 23. We issued about two eighty three citations. Vehicles impounded were 10. And most importantly, the amount of, loaded handguns recovered throughout the weekend was 15, and most of these were recovered from suspected gang members.

So I think that's an important note. Officers worked hard to ensure the citizens of San Jose enjoyed a peaceful Cinco de Mayo weekend. There were no reported major injury assaults or any major use of force incidents that occurred during the operational period. That completes my report for Cinco de Mayo weekend. Now I'll turn it over to captain Donahue for his report on the department's community engagement efforts.

Good morning, council members and chair. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. We have with us Sandra Garcia from our crime prevention unit. She's gonna be assisting in the presentation. So let's see. There we go. This report was commissioned to help us assess and enhance how we connect with the community, particularly in our non enforcement settings. It's also a proactive response to national and local events that challenge public trust and policing in 2020. Those events prompted multiple independent reviews of our department. And from those reviews came 31 separate recommendations suggesting that we need to work on our community engagement.

Now to move those forward, we partnered with Placeworks to lead a comprehensive and community driven analysis. Their process included interviews with San Jose leadership, a national best practices review, a statistically valid community survey, community meetings, and multilingual focus groups, and one on one interviews with stakeholders. The survey was a highlight of the project, particularly because it was statistically significant. This means we can rely on the results community as a whole feels about us rather than generalizing based on certain loud voices or select groups. The survey was conducted in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese with over 1,200 San Jose residents.

Now the results tell us that seventy seventy five percent of residents feel safe when a police officer is around, over 60% trust us to protect and serve them, and more than half feel that we treat people fairly. We recognize there are still areas for improvement, and we're working every day to increase our visibility in and collaboration with our communities. This report includes 29 actionable recommendations which fall into eight focus areas which I'll go over now. The strategic plan revisions will be implemented soon as they cost nothing and can be completed within our current workloads. Officer expectations and support include continuing our strong culture of community engagement, but also dive into increasing staffing and training.

Enhanced community engagement is directed at specific outreach and engagement opportunities like the community advisory board and our community policing officers. Community cooperation reflects our relationship with community based organizations and our transparency in reporting. Internal coordination speaks to how we communicate with department and our engagement activities and projects in and outside the department. Web and social media improvements are, well, just that. They're our public facing community engagement online.

And events and programs gives recommendations on revitalizing some past engagement opportunities and developing new ones. Ongoing tracking and evaluation recommends that we track and evaluate our success over time, and we're working on ways to do that into the future. Now these recommendations give us a great path forward, and we're treating them as a call to action, not just a checklist that we'll work on someday. Now of course many of these recommendations have cost implications. In total, it estimates four I'm sorry.

It estimates 47,600,000.0 in ongoing costs and 73,400,000.0 in one time start up costs primarily tied to hiring officers if we were to implement everything recommended in the review. Now without those staffing related items, the remaining recommendations would cost about 5,100,000.0 annually and 654,000 in one time start up costs. Any item with a budget impact will be reviewed through the formal budget process with careful consideration of both department and city priorities. Budget Now importantly, we are not waiting to begin this work. In fact, we already have.

We've redeveloped the Chiefs Community Advisory Board to ensure broad representation and consistent collaboration. We're in the final stages of launching the Community Partnership Academy, which will give residents first hand insight into our department and its operations to build trust through transparency and education. And we've stood up a new community engagement team by reassigning two experienced crime prevention specialists to a department wide role focused entirely on strengthening and coordinating community engagement. This is just the start. So moving forward, we will prioritize the recommendations based on their impact, budget, staffing, workload.

We will do those we can absorb now, continue what we are already doing, and move through the budget process for others. Of course, we will continue to hire more officers because as you know, officers means more opportunities for community engagement. Thank you very much for your time.

Well, you so much for the report. I wanna say how much our community appreciate our police department. There are some negative out there, but majority of it is, at least I encounter is very positive. We've done, our police department have done an incredible job with the amount of resource that we have. And we as council members and we'll continue to support our police department because I don't think any other Metropolitan's out there that had a 120% homicide saw right in this major metropolitan.

And I just wanna congratulate you on that. And sorry I didn't I missed the public comments. Do we have any public comments? No? No public comment. Perfect. Does any of our colleague would like to chime in? Alright. We got a few. So we're gonna go to council member Mulcahy.

Thanks for the report and for all the work that you're doing out in the community. As a new council member, we've taken advantage of some of the partnership to coordinate the crime prevention for example meetings with some of our neighborhood leaders and neighborhood associations and they've been really effective. There's a couple of things I think Captain Donahue that you know that I was feeding back through the Chief of ways to maybe modify some of the communications that come through, namely the idea that I think the community understands that we don't have the desired number of police officers that we all hope to achieve. I think that the messaging around why and how important recruitment is can be really helped as we're out there talking to people on the ground and at the same time not necessarily focusing so much on our lack of officers because your data shows what a safe community we are. So I think it's just a modification and the messaging would be super helpful because I think maybe the way it's being communicated leads to perhaps this notion that we aren't a safe city and I think we all want to be the safest big city in America again and Gina I appreciate kind of the pointing out of as you're looking at the data sometimes when you see a number rise, you get worried, but I've got to twist my brain a little bit to how you look at it, is more arrests in one area certainly leads to that.

We don't have enough officers in different key places, but when a number goes up somewhere else it's actually because we're being really intentional about going after it. So thank you for making that distinction and just want to recognize you for all the work and I'll move to accept this report. Thank you.

Thank

you Councilor Mulcahy. We're going to Vice Chair Kameh.

Thank you and thank you so much for the report. You know, I I know that we only have the the two years that we've been using the new system, but, I think that, it's it's good information. I too, similar to council member Mulcahy, you know, sort of like looking at the recruitment and retention because you know obviously, you know, we don't want to move people around in in different areas that just because we are not able to be fully staffed it becomes an issue. But but I will say that we're getting better. And I attended the last graduation and it was really nice to see more and and hopefully the new academies are growing.

And and I know that, you know, the chief and others are doing, know, a lot more to try to, be more inclusive and try to encourage and, and so I'm delighted that we're, going in the right direction. So thank you so much for your work and thank you for all you do for the community.

Thank you Vice Chair Camille. We're going to Council Member Salas.

Yeah, the reason I care so much about San Jose is I have, and especially PD is I have never, and I work a lot on the ground level with some of your ground level officers, I have never encountered one of them who isn't warm, professional, and helpful. Not a single one, it just makes me so proud to be in San Jose and I was here when you had 1,400 officers, and a lot of them there are other staff that I work with occasionally who who fall back on over understaffed. I have never heard any of your people say to me at the working level, I'm understaffed. They they are really really great, and I'm I'm just proud to be part of San Jose because of BD, I wanted to thank you for that. And this report, of course, but really.

And getting the bad guys. You know, I also tell my constituents when they oh, didn't come out in a minute when we call 911. You know, you're getting the bad guys and and we really appreciate that too. The point that Duan made about, council member Duan made about solving all the murders, I mean, we're getting the real bad guys and I don't know how you do that and have the attitude you do working with the community. So again, I just wanna thank you all.

Thank you, Councilor Salas. I do have a few questions for all of you. Well, know that we're have a large attrition rate Our recruitment is we're fighting against many other departments and county and states for the same pool of officer. What can we as council member support you and make it more attractive or more desirable to get more people coming towards San Jose Police Department?

Thank you. Well I do want to start off one with one positive fact and in June Academy class 53 is gonna have 43 recruits. So we are seeing those numbers grow and we have 66 in backgrounds for the October as of right now. So things are looking up, we are working hard, we're getting word-of-mouth out there, and with everyone in this community, every you know member of our city workforce, put word out there for us. It is a great department with a ton of opportunity, and we're hiring, and we'd love to have people apply. So it's it's word-of-mouth helping us get out there, inviting us to those community meetings where we can spread word-of-mouth, and it's us really engaging our community.

Thank you deputy chief. And I I just wanna say this, you might end up with one of my staff. I'm not I'm very supportive of him, but I hate to lose him too as well because everywhere I go everybody think, oh, that's my security detail He's a you know, a marines veteran. So he he stands out and and it'll be a great addition to to your department and to our city. So but I wanna give a big shout out to captain Ken Tran.

He he's amazing. When I when I call, he I mean, all of our council members here is like when I call, we share we share our borders. And he is active, proactive, and he gets people out there and making our community feel safe. And I I I appreciate that. I have a question for captain Donahue. Has our neighborhood watch increased or decreased over time? Do you know?

Actually, she does.

Oh, well there we go.

Well due to actually burglaries being down, the neighborhood watch tends to stay stagnant throughout the years. But usually in the summer that's when we hear, we get more requests for neighborhood watch is usually in the summer.

Yeah that's one of my goal is to create more neighborhood watch in District 7. People out there become our eyes and ears that tell us about stuff that we don't have the opportunity to see. And I think it's important that we'll continue to do so. And one of the thing is I noticed on slide number 14, our residents really strongly agree with foot patrol and bicycle patrol because it gives the officer out there an opportunity to be engaged with our community. And they actually see the officer not just stopping the bad guys, actually educate and talk to our neighborhoods businesses and show that they care.

Do we have any plan on having more foot patrol increase if you will?

Well the goal is to always have our officers in their free free time

when they're not responding to calls for service to get out on foot, to take out a bike, to engage

goal with our community. That's always our number one goal and I think as our officers increase and the workload is dispersed a little bit more so, then they will have time to engage in more of those activities, but I think if you look at like our narcotics numbers, our gun numbers, they are getting out. They are making those stops and those contacts, and then of course if there is overtime money available, we're utilizing it for walking beats, for hotspot policing, for really focusing on the areas that need it the most when they need it, and that involves a lot of engagement and and working with the community to solve crimes.

Thank you so much. The the only last question I have is is in my district right there off of Tolley And King, And right in that geographical area, I would say they're probably anywhere between five to seven massage, coffee shop slash sex trafficking and human trafficking and prostitution. And I get a lot of concern from our other business around there that they want to report it anonymously. But they are also very fearful for their lives and their businesses. And so right behind the coffee lovers, I know there's a couple of plays down there and I hope that we we can get our undercovers and and and work on on reducing that amount, especially on Tully Road.

It's just I hear it from not only the residents, the businesses, sometimes visitors, and it has become very concerning. And I have worked with the RDA talked about this, but I would hope that you hear my concern and our resident concern or businesses. And we we need to do some type of prevention if you will. And because it's come with prostitution, come with jaunt, come with the drug, the crime, and and there's a huge problem with gambling. And as we know, the gambling industry in California based on the Asian community.

And there's a lot of these shop that does illegal gambling as well. And I know that go through code enforcement, but I would hope that we can catch all three one shot and decrease that amount.

We'll definitely pass your concerns on to your captain and your captain can work with our vice unit, with our special operations, etcetera, to target the area and really focus on that criminal activity.

Thank you so much and continue with the incredible work. We're here to support you and support our communities. So let's vote. Two more quick questions. Oh, sorry, we got a quick question from council member Salas.

I have to look

at my life. I'm sorry, I was

Hey, I have two questions. One, would like to help you with recruitment. What rolls off my tongue relative to what's the minimum requirement? Do you need a two year degree? Can you have a high school degree? Do you know what the minimum require, because people always I say oh you know they're hiring but then I don't know what the minimum is.

Off the top of my head I think it's 64 units that we require. 64 units. Okay

great. Thank you. And then I just go ahead.

Just wanted to add, I think you can substitute that for military service is that correct?

Correct. You can also have a military service and then like an AA degree, any degree but 64

Great. Thank you. And then I just got a text and he said, and they don't know I was in this meeting so it a coincidence, but there's the No Kings march is this weekend. It's gonna be a protest, a demonstration. He's asking if he should put his plywood up on his office, on his commercial office on Santa Clara Street because of you know, with some of the vandalism that occurs in these marches. Have you are you guys planning for that this weekend and should he put his plywood up?

As far as this weekend, because I'm not in operations, I don't know everything going on this weekend. We do regularly have protests and marches throughout San Jose and for the most part they've been largely peaceful.

Yeah. It's been good.

If it is occurring, I imagine we'll have units out there monitoring to some extent and the plywood I mean that's really a personal option. San Jose PD will do their best to prevent criminal activity and if we see anything that is occurring, vandalism, know acts of violence, we will take action and do what we need to do to keep the businesses and the community members safe.

Great. I had forgot about it. My wife told me it's forming in Saint James Park and apparently it's gonna be large, but I'll check with the captain. Thanks.

I just wanted clarification. Is that semester units or is it quarters units?

Steve just pulled it up. We'll let him read it.

So the minimum qualifications, it's on our sjpdu.com page. A little plug there if you're looking for So the minimum qualifications, you have to be at least 20 years old at the time of application, no older than 70. You have to possess a valid driver's license. You have to have a high school diploma. College credits of 60 quarter college credits are 40 semester. You don't need to have an AA, but you need to have that many credits. However, we do have honorable discharge can substitute four years of active duty in the military for the minimum college credit requirement. Requirement. Alright? And reserve time for that is excluded.

Well, thank you for that clarification. If I get through my second term, I might get a chance to join the San Jose PD.

Take you.

We're accepting all former firefighters.

Oh, thank you. Less vote. Motion passes five to zero. Okay. We have open forum. Do we have any public speakers? No public comment. All right. Meeting adjourned.