Jim Howes, vice chair of the Public Safety Task Force, says he knows the Santa Cruz City Council won’t be able to address all of its 56 recommendations.
It’s safe to say there’s overwhelming support for a good chunk of the 56 recommendations from Santa Cruz’s Public Safety Task Force, though things get plenty more controversial on the issues of homelessness, needle exchange and medical marijuana.
Many of the task force’s priorities focused on education, youth outreach and crime prevention. “Youth programming initiatives that make an investment in our community to provide pro-social opportunities, mentoring and jobs will go a long way toward solving public safety challenges in our community,” task force chair and Seaside Company spokesperson Kris Reyes said at a packed meeting that backed up into the overflow room in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium across the street. “They might not solve it tomorrow. But in a generation if we can give more kids opportunities, we’ll have a better community.”
The Dec. 3 city council meeting was Hilary Bryant’s last full meeting as mayor. The council created the task force last March, after a crime spike that including the killing of two Santa Cruz police officers. The group spent four months listening to speakers, and then two compiling their recommendations.
“The results were from everyone’s input,” says Jim Howes, vice chair of the task force. “We know council will not be able to address them all, or do anything with some of them. Some are for other agencies and the supervisors at the county. But they were recommended to work with the county and other agencies.”
The council voted to study items—most of them hand-picked by councilmember David Terrazas, who made a motion immediately following public comment—including park improvements, youth programs and a new police officer position. It’s unclear what will happen with the rest of the recommendations, but they might go to the council’s public safety committee. Here are five highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view) from the task force:
CRIME: The task force recommends growing the police department to national levels, which it estimated was 140 officers for a city of Santa Cruz’s size. That would be an increase from a current force of 94 with six vacancies. “I found it hard to believe we were that far short,” said city councilmember Don Lane, who looked at it from another angle. Lane crunched the numbers, too, and found that out of 14 Northern California cities with populations between 55,000 and 65,000, Santa Cruz had one of the two largest forces. Councilmembers Lynn Robinson and Pamela Comstock questioned some of the stats’ applicability. “More than anything, what’s important is the experience of the people in the community: what’s their response time? What is their interaction?” Comstock said.
DRUG TREATMENT: The task force wants the city council to work closely with the county’s Health Services Agency to make sure drug treatment programs work efficiently and have enough funding—an idea that resonates with people all over Santa Cruz’s political spectrum. In 28 months, 146 people accounted for 3,598 arrests, just over half of them drug-or alcohol-related. Funding is the trickier part. Like new police officers and many of the task force’s suggestions, drug treatment doesn’t come cheap. If the city council wants to tackle the more ambitious and expensive ideas, it might need a new tax. If the council wants to do that this November, the public hearing process will have to move quickly in order to create a parcel or sales tax measure popular enough to secure two-thirds of the vote by August.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA: It’s time to explore a zoning regulation that keeps medical marijuana out of residential areas, according to the task force. Members also want to force tenants to get landlords’ permission before starting indoor grows on their properties. Measure K ordered SCPD to make adult marijuana use its lowest priority when it passed in 2006 with 64 percent of the vote, in a much looser political climate. The law did not apply to minors, driving under the influence or selling to minors—all things the task force wants cops to focus on more.
HOMELESSNESS: Transients, homeless individuals and those connected with Homeless Services Center accounted for 40 percent of arrests and 30 percent of citations, according to the SCPD. In response, the task force wants the county to create a special court to deal with “substance abusers, veterans, mentally ill and/ or homeless offenders.” And in order to crack down, it recommended making three consecutive failure-to-appears a misdemeanor because at that point a suspect becomes the responsibility of county district attorney Bob Lee—not the city attorney. Furthermore, a task force idea to make defecating in public and illegal camping misdemeanors fits into a “broken window policing” strategy of cracking down on nuisance crimes. City councilmember Micah Posner and activist Steve Schnaar say that would be unfair in a city with no 24-hour restrooms, and more transients than shelter beds.
NEEDLE EXCHANGE: Two months before the two-and-a-half week crime spike that shook Santa Cruz, Ken Collins, Jake Fusari and other frustrated Westsiders marched along the railroad tracks to a city council meeting, picking up discarded syringes they found along the way. The community uproar surprised the Street Outreach Supporters, who ran a needle exchange program and provided no figures on how many needles they took in. City attorney John Barisone sent the needle exchange, which collects and distributes syringes, packing for operating without a permit. The county picked up the program at its health building, just outside city limits in the Emeline neighborhood. The task force recommends keeping the exchange away from residential neighborhoods in the unincorporated area. Meanwhile, research from San Francisco-based Alex Kral, director of San Francisco’s Urban Health Program, shows needle exchanges not only reduce disease but also hazardous discarded trash. County health officials have said the exchange should be near drug users and the urban core in order to do that.
JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT: Worried that county judges are letting criminals slide, the task force pressed for more collaboration with county government and suggested a county probation officer be ordered to appear before the city council every six months to discuss what his department is doing to address “probation-related offenses.” Thanks but no thanks, said Superior Court Judge John Salazar, who outlined the history of the city and county's working relationship in a Dec. 2media advisory and passed on the offer. “Lastly, the court will decline to accept the task force's invitation on a regular basis,” Salazar wrote. “The court will remain a separate branch of government and continue to uphold the separation of powers doctrine.”
