HomeMy WebLinkAbout6/16/2020 Item Public Comment, Burkle
Clerk, Intern
From:Paul <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Public Comment, 6-16-2020, SLOPD Funding / Role
To SLO City Council and Mayor Harmon,
Please consider redirecting a substantial portion of the SLOPD's budget towards community support programs
like mental health, social workers, homeless outreach and assistance, education, and related. Our department
is militarized and massively over-funded. If every SLOPD officer is trained in de-escalation techniques, they did
a woefully inadequate job as we saw the other week when teargas, flash bangs, and related were used against
peaceful protesters. We are asking too much of our law enforcement, to be mediator, social worker, and
trained and authorized in the use of deadly force all in one. I think they need to be only used only in extremely
dangerous situations requiring the potential use of deadly force. As those situations are incredibly “Hollywood
Movie” level of rare, we need to drastically reduce the police force and funding, and instead create parallel
programs to help “serve and protect” the public good, without having people with deadly weapons with nigh-
legal-immunity deployed on our city streets as a “normal” thing.
We have been asked to not believe our “lying eyes” the last few weeks about the excessive use of police force
and escalation taken a few weeks ago, which I doubt any law enforcement official will be held accountable for,
and I think the department needs to be de-militarized and greatly reduced. We can better spend our tax-payer
dollars on homeless outreach, substance abuse recovery and assistance programs, and mental health. I realize
that situation with the gunman up in Paso Robles was a multi-jurisdiction affair, but I find it counter-intuitive
that we, as a society, will spend so many resources on a massive and very flashy multi-day manhunt, but
continue to cut funding to social services programs designed to prevent such things from happening in the first
place.
I have learned, over the years, to not ever call the police unless there is a life-or-death situation unfolding, and
even then I have to weigh if the police will just make the situation worse. We need mental health workers to
help people having a really tough time, and not 2 or 20 cops to show up and jump someone being
“inconvenient.” Our police department acts as a great hammer, but everything is looking like a nail, whether it
is a screw, circuit board, or passing pigeon. The occasional nail comes up on occasion, but I think we can
redirect our funding in a much more effective way by decreasing law enforcement funding and increasing
funding to programs better suited to deal with neighbor disputes, mental health issues, petty disturbances,
and the like, without having someone arrive on the scene with a deadly weapon.
We ask the police department to be the end-all-be-all for dealing with societal woes, and that is not realistic
nor fair to ask of them. They cannot be trained in the use of deadly force as well as have the education of a
law degree and the patience and tenacity of someone directing traffic and comprehensive first aid skills and
the talents of a social worker and the deep-background that a mental health professional needs to have on the
job. Split these tasks up and keep the police in reserve for situations that “truly” need such great intervention
with potentially deadly force.
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Please consider a direction San Fransisco is exploring by having highly trained (and unarmed) public servants
respond to non-criminal complaints, such as neighbor disputes, someone wandering into traffic, someone
having a really bad day and yelling at people, etc. We don't need potentially deadly force brought into every
situation that can escalate. Have a 911 dispatcher send a mental health professional, or a domestic dispute
expert, or medics, or someone to document property damage, or the fire department, or a social worker, to
the vast majority of things that need attention. We don't need the “hammer” hitting everything it sees in
sight, and thus please decrease their funding and increase funding on other programs to address those needs.
It will better serve the community, decrease the potential for lawsuits, better allocate our tax dollars, lead to
better outcomes with an ounce of prevention vs. a pound of cure, and allow people in law enforcement to be
retrained and reallocated to far more specific areas of public service. We don't need an occupying army to
keep the peace, and it would be great to see former law enforcement in new roles going around and giving
food to people and helping improve people's lives. We are asking way too much of them, it is hurting them, it
is hurting the community, and often times when they are called in, they make a bad situation worse by
escalating things to a potentially deadly confrontation. I don't want that to be the case for anyone involved.
Thank you for your consideration,
Sincerely,
Paul Burkle
SLO
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