One Look Back, Four Years Forward: Public Safety
As I begin my second term in office, I offer the third installment of my review of our past work together, and our future plans, with a focus on public safety. You can read recent months’ summaries by clicking through these links for housing affordability/homelessness and transportation/traffic.
I’ve focused this discussion on three areas of City services that most impact public safety: police and crime, fire and emergency medical response, and finally, disaster prevention and response. I’ve discussed traffic and pedestrian safety a bit in an earlier piece, and we’ll return to it in the future. We’ll look at each in turn.
A. Police & Crime
1. How Safe Are We? Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
I’m often asked at community meetings about what is perceived to be “rising” crime, based on whatever that resident has read on social media or heard through word of mouth. Responding to such inquiries with, “well, actually, the statistics show….” isn’t a path to a terribly productive conversation, of course. If there’s been a rash of burglaries in your neighborhood — or worse, if your home was among the burglarized, as mine has been a couple times in the last decade — the crime rate is 100% higher to us, and statistics won’t persuade us otherwise.
Crime statistics have plenty of flaws, but far deeper flaws infect mere speculation about crime without any data. And speculation is largely what forms the basis of our public knowledge; anyone who habitually checks their NextDoor account will reasonably conclude that crime is skyrocketing. Burglaries that may have occurred without notice seven blocks away in 2005 now invade our consciousness with every email auto-notification. Are we really less safe?
The data is ambiguous. According to the SJPD’s crime data, violent crime has shown a worrisome rise over the last decade, particularly for robberies and sexual assaults, while homicides have dropped sharply in the last three years. Felony property crime — for such offenses as auto theft and burglaries — rose sharply until 2012, and has dropped and stabilized since then.
Picking a different starting point for comparison, however, yields dramatically different results. For example, FBI data shows that both violent crime appears much lower in San Jose today than in the 1990’s, when the crack and methamphetamine epidemics wrought a severe toll here and nationally:
The data on property crime reveals a similarly dramatic reduction:
Further, comparing San Jose to other large cities nationally reveals that we still remain a relatively safe city. According to the data aggregator site AmericanViolence.org, San Jose had the lowest homicide rate among any large U.S. city last year, that is, of any of the 35 cities with at least 500,000 in population. Their infographic ably describes the comparative homicide rates over last four years, with the yellow, smaller circle (for San Jose) indicating much lower rates than the larger, reddish circles that we see elsewhere in the state and nation:
Other studies — looking at broader periods of time, or incorporating other violent crime data from the FBI — generally confirm that San Jose remains among two or three least violent big cities in the U.S.
Of course, the city’s status as being “statistically safe” is no consolation to the family who has lost a loved one in senseless gang violence in the Poco Way, Cadillac, or Santee neighborhoods. Nor does it make any Willow Glen resident feel better after they’ve suffered a burglary.
We also know that the data doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, San Jose’s low homicide rate likely benefits from the life-saving efforts of top-quality local trauma care units that other cities may not have. On the other hand, rape has shown a disturbingly upward trend, but the FBI’s definition of rape has changed in the the past half-decade, and the crime may be more likely to be reported today than before the “me too” movement. Is rape actually happening more, or just being reported more frequently, and differently? It’s hard to know.
In any case, we know that we have much more work to do to reduce violence and to address the many quality-of-life crimes that vex too many of our neighborhoods. Police officers are essential in any crime prevention or suppression strategy, so we’ll start there.
2. Rebuilding SJPD
San Jose has long had the most thinly staffed police department of any major U.S. city. That generally didn’t matter much when the incidence of crime remained low. But we saw an uptick in crime in 2012 as the number of San Jose officers dwindled, through a half-decade in which it lost more than 500 officers through layoffs, pay cuts, retirements, hiring freezes, and pension reform battles. When I began my term in 2015, the SJPD’s hemorrhaging had become critical, with officers fleeing for other departments, and small numbers of recruits headed to other cities. The resulting officer shortage created excessive overtime demands, increased fatigue, and worsened morale. Residents felt the impacts acutely, as the dearth of patrol officers undermined both reactive response to 911 calls as well as proactive efforts to prevent crime.
As I came into office, then, my mandate was straightforward: rebuild SJPD. I heard clearly that dissatisfaction with pension reform — which voters approved as Measure B in 2012– undermined officer retention and hiring, and the courts struck down a portion of the measure anyway. To address these issues, I encouraged city negotiators to sit down with eleven unions to hammer out an alternative. After more than a year of difficult negotiations, we brought a proposal back to the voters that would save taxpayers some $3 billion in retirement costs over the next three decades — about the same as the 2012 Measure B. Voters’ strong approval of a revised pension reform package in November 2016 and a new wage contract the following year, allowed us to make SJPD a competitive employer again.
In the roughly 30 months since the passage of Measure F, we’ve added more than 220 police officers to our department, and we have two full police academy classes graduating in the months ahead. We’ve implemented measures to recoup training costs for officers seeking to leave the department post-academy, and we’re seeing several officers who left the department return to SJPD from other cities. We’ve nearly filled all of our existing vacancies in budgeted positions. This year, we’ll expand the budget to add 41 more officers, and accelerate hiring in anticipation of looming retirements.
Perhaps most importantly, Chief Eddie Garcia and his team have dramatically improved morale. Patrol units are being restored, reducing overtime-related fatigue. Although we’ve got many more officers to add — we remain the most thinly staffed big-city police department in the nation — Chief Garcia has been able to deploy officers on more proactive work, rather than merely reacting to 911 calls. For example, through months of painstaking and collaborative work with landlords and frustrated neighbors, Vice unit detectives shut down 140 illicit massage businesses — primarily bases for sex trafficking and prostitution — in neighborhoods citywide.
Two new units have been created to further “lean in” on proactive policing. First, a Burglary Prevention unit enables SJPD to focus investigatory and enforcement resources on the relatively small number of criminal rings responsible for the great majority of burglaries in our neighborhoods. More recently, SJPD launched a Street Crimes Unit that focuses on walking patrols to address quality-of-life crimes. For the first time, this unit also enables SJPD to perform routine, proactive patrols of homeless encampments, both to protect the homeless living within the encampments as well as the surrounding community. My recent Street Crimes “walk-along” a couple weeks ago was illustrative: within the first minutes we encountered two men — both with active warrants for felony domestic violence — living with two homeless women. In addition to seizing their methamphetamine, the officers arrested the two men, likely saving two residents from future assault and victimization.
3. A New Approach to Policing
Restoring officer staffing will take several years, and we must continually find ways to improve public safety in the meantime. Innovative approaches and new technologies can better leverage the scarce time of our patrol officers, and provide an opportunity to rebuild an SJPD that is more nimble and effective than before.
This requires we look at policing differently. For example, we know that many lower-priority calls for police services don’t necessarily require a police officer to respond. A well-trained non-sworn SJPD employee — that is, a Community Service Officers (CSO) — can respond to the scene of an hours-old burglary to lift fingerprints, take witness statements, identify missing property, and write a report. Deploying a CSO to the scene enables sworn SJPD officers to focus on their most critical tasks: responding to emergency calls, proactive patrolling, and investigating crime. Since the pilot CSO program launched a few months before I got into office, we’ve doubled the size of the team, and now have more than four dozen CSO’s serving our neighborhoods.
Second, Chief Garcia and his team have worked to use technology — particularly data and video — as a “force multiplier.” As I’ve urged, we’re using data analytics to better anticipate “hot spots” of crime and we’ve devoted budget dollars to upgrade in-car mobile computers and license-plate-reading cameras on patrol cars. We’ve launched an on-line “crime camera registry” to help officers quickly find video recordings from neighbors to help with follow-up investigation of nearby crimes.
Finally, using methods both tried and new, we’ve worked to build trust in the community. San Jose has avoided much of the tragedy and drama experienced by other cities — particularly around issues of race, uses of force, and civil liberties — by taking accountability and community engagement seriously. We’ve deployed body-worn cameras on every patrol officer. Chief Garcia has made it mandatory for patrol officers to undergo additional training on implicit racial and other biases, de-escalation of violent conflict, and addressing episodes of mental health crises. We have published use-of-force data on the SJPD.org website. After engaging external experts at University of Texas-El Paso to evaluate SJPD’s arrest and detention data for racial disparities, Chief Garcia then released the report publicly, revealing criticism and opportunities for improvement. We’ve begun negotiating with the police union to expand the authority and scope of the Independent Police Auditor, to improve accountability and strengthen review. Finally, Chief Garcia has engaged in a series of efforts to better engage with our community, hosting events like “Coffee with a Cop” in high-crime neighborhoods, creating a “junior academy” for San Jose youth interested in a law enforcement career, engaging with immigrant communities about their fears in communicating with the police, and even deploying a police-manned ice cream truck to encourage positive relationships with kids.
4. Crime Prevention: The Community’s Role
We all can play a role in reducing crime and making our neighborhoods safer, through prevention and community engagement. For example, we know that we could do more to prevent teens and young adults from making bad choices that can result in lasting harms to them and to others. This reality came home to me in my first weeks in office in 2015, as we looked at arrest data from a recent spike of burglaries in the Southern Division: more than half of the arrestees were juveniles. Simply, gangs were getting to our kids before we were.
That year, we identified funding to boost SJPD’s school truancy enforcement in East San Jose, to break the well-documented link between cutting class and daytime property crime. We also launched “San Jose Works,” a program with a simple mission: provide crucial “first job” opportunities for teens living in gang-impacted neighborhoods, enabling them to build resumes rather than rap sheets.
San Jose Works depends enormously on partnerships, such as the Silcon Valley Organization and it’s STRIVE initiative, and dozens of community-minded local employers like Bentek and Jabil willing take a chance on an eager 17-year-old. We worked with financial partners like Bank of America and Citibank to support job training, counseling, and financial literacy classes for the students. We leveraged the efforts of the Work2Future organization to run the program, which has now benefited thousands of young people in its first four years.
Marissa was one of those teenagers; she failed out of high school in her freshman year, as she routinely cut class to smoke and hang out with the “wrong crowd.” Her mother urged her to take advantage of a San Jose Works job opportunity at Roosevelt Community Center, working with younger kids in their summer program. Marissa soon began to learn the value of responsibility, and dependability, but it didn’t come easily. She had plenty of ups and downs, but her supervisor and counselor wouldn’t give up on her. Last summer, she began learning about advanced tech manufacturing through her job in Bentek’s North San Jose facility, and she’s graduating from high school this year with straight A’s. Out of all of our efforts on public safety issues, I’m most proud of our collective work in launching San Jose Works, for the thousands of kids, like Marissa, who have begun building a resume..
We can all play a greater role in making our communities safer. We’ve invested substantially in crime prevention by bolstering the team of prevention specialists at SJPD, who can come to your neighborhood to help residents understand how they can reduce the likelihood of being victimized by crimes like burglary. Equally important, they can help neighborhoods organize for themselves — by forming NeighborWatch groups, encouraging neighbors to get to know each other better through National Nights Out and block parties, and registering their crime cameras on the SJPD.org website. You can reach out to the crime prevention specialist in your neighborhood by clicking through the interactive map here.
5. Our Work In the Months Ahead
Gun Violence
Coincident with the proliferation of gun sales in Santa Clara County, which have exceeded 400,000 in the last two decades — gun violence is also on the rise Unfortunately, substantial gun control reforms require action by Congress and the California legislature — the courts routinely preclude more substantial intervention by local governments in gun policy — but I’ll continue to press where I can to mitigate firearm risks.
In the months ahead, the Council will consider my proposed update to our decades-old firearms sales regulations, to require gun shops to deploy audio and video recording to crack down on “straw purchases” of firearms by rings that funnel guns to convicted felons and gang members. The SJPD — which seized nearly 400 illegally-owned guns last year — recently announced an initiative to seek federal prosecution of cases involving felons illegally possessing firearms, to take advantage of stronger federal sentences.
Youth and Crime
Of particular concern has been the rapid growth in the commission of serious crime by youth countywide, including San Jose. The Santa County District Attorney’s office reports that Countywide, we’re seeing dramatic increases in youth-involved burglaries, auto thefts, robberies, felony assault, and carjackings. Those crimes all reached 5-year highs in either 2017 or 2018. Last year, for example, the majority of carjacking arrestees were juveniles.
In response to this disturbing data, we need more of everything: more enforcement, more deterrence, and more proactive programs to encourage youth to find a better path. We’ll continue to press efforts to provide better options to our youth through San Jose Works, extend outreach with youth intervention workers, engage more teens in programs like midnight basketball and digital arts, and bolster truancy enforcement to keep kids in school and off the street. Working with non-profits, police, juvenile probation, and the County Office of Education, we’ll integrate outcome data — on school attendance, criminal recidivism, and the like — that will enable us to better assess which programs are really working, and which aren’t. This year, I’ll urge Council to re-organize and rename our Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force to refocus on reducing youth violence over mere gang prevention, in recognition of the rapidly changing dynamics of youth criminality in recent years.
But more and better programs won’t alone suffice to address juvenile criminality. Several of the programs are award-winning, and lauded as models nationally, but the data tells us they’re clearly not working by themselves, and they won’t reach any youth living outside the county but offending here.
Simply, we need accountability, and consequences. Past proclamations from local political leaders about their aspirations to “close down juvenile hall” make for good press releases, but largely amount to problem avoidance. Still worse, policies that align with those aspirations may harm the very troubled youth they purport to help. In recent years, too many of our officers have arrested juveniles for predatory crimes, only to see them back out on the street immediately.
Putting a methaphetamine-addicted 17-year-old back into his pre-existing, dysfunctional living environment after a robbery and burglary spree isn’t doing him any favors. Despite the good intentions, doing so will also produce more of the same predictable harm to others. Enforcement and detention is required for those juveniles who have committed serious offenses, and have done so repeatedly — both for their safety and for the community’s. Even a few days of detention can give treatment providers an opportunity to engage the youth after he’s come down from the drug, and to enable him to make better — and more sober — choices. The threat of confinement provides counselors, juvenile probation officers, and parents with an effective, behavior modification tool as a last resort . Along with carrots, we need sticks.
Partnering with SJPD and the District Attorney’s Office, we’ll encourage partners at the State and County to slow what has become a “revolving door” for high-offending juveniles in the current system. This will take all of us working together to create a system that optimally integrates rehabilitation with accountability, rather than positioning them as competing alternatives.
More Cops
Finally, we’ll keep hiring police officers. The demographics of the existing force tells us to expect many retirements in the next couple of years, so I’ve allocated $14 million in this year’s budget for a “hire ahead” program, to ensure that we have street-ready officers to backfill the retirees’ departures. The passage of a 2016 revenue measure enabled me to push to increase our budgeted police staffing to 1,151 sworn officers beginning in July of this year. We’ll need to keep hiring aggressively to reach that number, however.
As we get more of our rookies get through training and out into the street in the years ahead, we’ll see a growing presence of police on patrol. With funding approved by our voters in the 2018 Measure T, we’ll build a new police training facility that will enable us to free space at the Bridgen Southern Police Station for deployment of patrol officers. We’ll expand deployment of units like Street Crimes, and more proactively address quality-of-life crimes that still plague too many neighborhoods. Above all, we’ll push for improved response for all our residents.
B. Fire and Emergency Medical Response
As I came into office in 2015, we faced serious challenges in responding to fires, medical calls, and other emergencies. Several “browned-out” fire stations remained as vestiges of the Great Recession, with existing crews responding to expanded response areas to save dollars. Our response predictably waned; we repeatedly failed to meet our prescribed targets for emergency medical service (EMS) response, which resulted in financial penalties from the County that only worsened the resource shortfalls.
After years of belt-tightening and budget cutting, I began my term in 2015 with the recognition that we simply needed more revenue to support our basic public safety functions. With the passage of two revenue measures in 2016–including an increase of a business tax that the business community supported — we reactivated browned-out fire stations with additional firefighters. We added several two-person medical “squad” units — which can respond more nimbly than large four-firefighter apparatus to low-grade medical calls — freeing up those crews for more serious emergencies. Chief Robert Sapien also implemented new approaches and technologies — including signal preemption software and internet protocol-based crew alerts — to substantially improve response. The signal preemption effort appears particularly noteworthy; SJFD, Public Works, and IT staff worked together to find a solution for retrofitting more than 900 traffic signals to enable green lights to let emergency vehicles have priority in congested traffic. While the standard hardware-based retrofit would have required finding tens of millions of dollars, the team creatively identified an innovative software-based solution at a small fraction of that cost. For the first time in at least a half-decade, the Fire Department now routinely exceeds the County’s monthly emergency medical response standard, and has done so for nine consecutive months.
The Fire Department has proved its mettle, despite the shortage of resources, in numerous other ways. The devastating floods of February 2017 left more than 300 elderly and residents needing water rescue by SJFD, who performed the evacuations without a single serious injury or loss of life. A serious fire at a Summerside Drive apartment complex left dozens of residents seemingly stranded on the deck of a burning building, but firefighters astutely enabled all to escape safely.
Looking forward, our hard-working and understaffed firefighters will continue to face rapidly increasing rates of fire and medical calls, and growing commitments to mutual aid calls for wildfires statewide. We’ll need to continue investing in technology to improve fire response, such as by ensuring dual network connectivity that will better enable SJFD to identify and dispatch the units closest to each emergency call. With our voters’ approval of Measure T, we’ll begin design and construction of new stations, including the long-planned construction of Station 37 in south Willow Glen, an additional station in the south-central portion of the city, and likely more. Staffing those stations adequately will require the Council’s fiscal discipline and focus. We’ll also build out new emergency communications infrastructure, and the sale of our outdated fire training site to Google will provide resources we’ll need to build a new and improved fire training facility south of Downtown.
But we’ll also need to think about how we deliver services differently. A Fire Department that responded to only about 80,000 calls year when I started my first term in 2015, now responds to 100,000 such calls, with the same number of fire engines and trucks. The nature of the calls has changed dramatically as well. Our population is aging: emergency medical service calls now outnumber fire responses by a ratio of five to one. In particular, SJFD finds itself increasingly responding to individuals seeking non-urgent medical attention that could be better provided by a local clinic.
Against the rapidly rising tide of call volume, we can only ensure effective emergency response by triaging non-urgent calls, to focus scarce resources on life-saving. This requires finding more appropriate — and much less expensive options — for responding to a sprained ankle call, or for transporting one patient from one County facility to another — than with four firefighters on an engine. SJFD and other big-city fire departments in California would like to have more flexibility in their response, but the challenge comes in the form of regulatory mandates that no longer optimally align needs with resources. In the months ahead, we look forward to rolling up our sleeves with our County and State partners to create protocols that will enable better means of response — such as dispatching a taxi or Lyft to transport a resident to a local clinic — that will enable our firefighters to focus on saving lives.
C. Disaster Preparedness and Response: Building a More Resilient City
Within weeks of the start of my tenure in 2015, then-City Manager Norberto Duenas recognized serious inadequacies in our disaster preparedness, and immediately set about making investments for long-neglected needs. A consultant identified for the Council a series of vulnerabilities across a series of likely risks: earthquake, flood, terrorist attacks, cyberattacks, and more. Addressing our numerous vulnerabilities would take many millions of dollars and several years to shore up, but we knew we could only begin by dedicating dollars to long-neglected needs, such as communications upgrades and IT security software. To better align resources and focus, we’ve created an Office of Emergency Management under the City Manager, providing stronger oversight into the multiple departments needed to effectuate a preparedness program.
Nonetheless, too many deficits in our emergency preparedness remained when our first disaster confronted us, with the floods of February of 2017. In their immediate aftermath, heroic efforts by many — including our firefighters, thousands of volunteers, housing and building inspections staff — prevented any loss of life, and enabled us to rehouse and stabilize hundreds of displaced families within weeks. But the aftermath plainly exposed failures that left too many residents vulnerable to fast-rising waters: poor communication with the Water District about flood risk, and poor outreach, warning, and notification of our residents. We had much to fix to make San Jose better prepared.
Lessons Informing Action
Since that February, the improvements have been dramatic and immediate. We simplified and clarified warning and evacuation protocols, and established better communication with the Water District, so that badly flawed Water District flood projections would not again undermine our ability to timely warn our residents. We improved warning systems. Some of that improvement took the form of technological investment, such as in deployment of push-text notification technology, better protocols for use of the Alert-SCC mobile phone warning system, and the purchase of a Long Range Acoustical Device (LRAD) that can broadcast audible information up to a mile away. As we learned too well, however, disaster warnings also require decidedly “low-tech” approaches to be effective, such as by identifying multilingual City employees and volunteers for door-knocking in times of peril — as we successfully deployed a few weeks ago when the Guadalupe River nearly cleared its banks.
In 2017, we also hired a new director of the newly-created Office of Emergency Management, Ray Riordan, who brought with him decades of experience in disaster preparedness and response. Through my budget message that year, Council approved expanding his staff, to better address the cross-departmental importance of emergency preparedness.
Ultimately, making San Jose more resilient and safer requires capital investment to rebuild our city’s century-old bridges and storm sewer systems, and failing roads. In the last three years, we’ve embarked on construction of a major storm pump in Alviso, purchased several more mobile pumps, and embarked on a $1 billion reconstruction of a 1950’s-era sewage treatment plant. We’ve also sought to support efforts of other agencies, such as the Water District’s work in building levees to protect against sea-level rise in North San Jose.
Bring In The Voters: Measure T
But far more is needed. In 2018, I led an effort to bring the largest bond measure in San Jose’s history, Measure T, to the ballot. With the hard work and leadership of environmental leaders, public safety workers, and neighborhood activists, the measure passed with overwhelming support (71%). In the years ahead, Measure T enables us to invest $300 in rebuilding San Jose roads in the worst condition, and another $300 million in replacing and upgrading basic public safety infrastructure. We will rebuild deteriorating bridges, repair and add fire stations, and construct a state-of-the-art emergency communications center. With the issuance of the first bonds this fall, we’ll get to work building a safer and more resilient San Jose.
Another $50 billion from that bond will be invested in “natural infrastructure,” through the purchase and protection of land in Coyote Valley from development. By investing in an undeveloped buffer along San Jose’s southern border, we can mitigate wildfire risks, expand flood retention areas, and protect against contamination of aquifers needed for fresh water supply. We’ve embarked on negotiations with local land owners, in partnership with the Peninsula Open Space Trust and the Open Space Authority, with an eye to preserving these lands for wildlife, for future generations, and for the safety of our city.
It Takes a Community to Protect a Community
Beyond Measure T, we’ve found other ways to engage our community’s time and talents to make us better prepared and safer. Through the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation, we’ve launched a program called “Unleash Your Geek,” to leverage our community’s creativity to tackle civic problems. After the January floods, we challenged local Santa Clara University and SJSU students in devising superior flood detection monitors along our creeks and rivers. We’re deploying and testing early-stage LIDAR sensors now, and hope to expand deployment citywide. We’ve also launched a first-in-the-nation partnership with Airbnb, which has graciously volunteered the use of its platform to engage hundreds of San Jose homeowners to be “on call” to house displaced families in the event of a future natural disaster. At the intersection of technology and community, San Jose is showing the world how we can better tackle our city’s challenges.
Finally, we’re bringing back some old ideas as well. This year, we’ll restore the Community Emergency Response Teams program, a volunteer-based “train the trainer” approach to improving disaster preparedness in our neighborhoods. Several neighborhood leaders have already signed up to participate, and you can help your neighborhood become better prepared by emailing the CERT team at SJCERT@sanjoseca.gov or by calling the Office of Emergency Services at 408–794–7055.
Using a combination of these high-tech and high-touch approaches, we can make our community better prepared. I look forward to rolling up our sleeves and working with our many community partners to build a safer and smarter San Jose.
