I still say this will never decrease when we have committed felons running around on their seventh and eighth offenses with no long term jail time ! I would love to see statistics on the actual prosecution and prison time served for these criminals. It’s a revolving door and we are the victims of liberal judiciary

Crime is not up in Bel Air, California – and they are part of the same state and legal system we are up here.

Bel Air has private patrol to augment the LAPD. Their crime rate is 50% lower than the national average, with property crime 47% less than the national average. Atherton's crime rate is just 32% lower than the national average, with property crime just 28% lower than the national average. (FBI report from September 2020).

Otherwise, the communities are remarkably similar in terms of affluence and other factors that might influence crime rates. However, Bel Air is not paying for its own police department

In Atherton, we pay very dearly for police resources. Because the town is so small, and the cost for overhead and officer benefits is so high, there are not many officers on duty at any given time.

If we outsourced to the Sheriff, and used the millions in savings to hire private patrol, this would have a real impact on property crime. The same dollars (or in fact a lot less) would lead to a lot more crime prevention boots and vehicles out on the streets.

This would also have the advantage of not continuing to bankrupt the Town's future through growing unfunded pension liabilities.

Unfortunately, you won't see any of the council members talking about this or other logical solutions to make our tax dollars go further to accomplish goals for the residents. The APD is a "sacred cow", and they've made sure all the council members know that.

Neighboring San Carlos, which did outsource its police department to the SMC Sheriff, has a crime rate 52% lower than the national average, with property crime also 52% lower than the national average.

Neighboring Woodside, which did outsource its police department ot the SMC Sheriff, and has a similar affluence level to Atherton, has an overall crime rate 64% lower than the national average, with property crime also 64% lower than the national average.

You can look these statistics up here (and for Atherton, and for Bel Air):

Web Link

The net result is we are paying a lot more for police services, but have (much) higher crime than neighboring communities that outsourced and are paying less!

Town Council, are you listening? Do any of these facts actually matter?

"In Woodside you have a 1 in 111 chance of becoming a victim of crime. Woodside is safer than 70% of the cities in the United States."

"In Atherton you have a 1 in 60 chance of becoming a victim of crime. Atherton is safer than 56% of the cities in the United States."

You are not spending our tax money in an efficient way, that delivers solutions to residents. You're simply perpetuating a tradition.

By the way…Atherton's crime ranking cited above is BEFORE this latest burglary wave started. It would be even worse now, and likely below the median of all cities in the U.S. The notion that APD reduces crime in Atherton is simply not true according to the actual data.

$95 an hour! Seriously I don't know why more people haven't tried this, I work two shifts, 2 hours in the day and 2 in the evening…And whats awesome is Im working from home so I get more time with my kids.READ MORE Heres where I went,

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"The net result is we are paying a lot more for police services, "

Atherton pays roughly twice as much per capita for police services as does Woodside. And Atherton also pays a small portion of the costs for the Sheriff's Office.

And Atherton has a BIG unfunded pension liability for its police department while Woodside has no unfunded police pension liability.

Atherton residents, in the main, seem to want their own police department and are pretty adamant about it even in the face of the monetary cost and higher crime rates than other wealthy towns. One can only surmise why. Because as residents they are never written traffic citations by APD? As residents they are never arrested for DUI by APD? Because they like to see police officers doing menial things like picking up newspapers, water lawns and bringing keys to locked out residents?

Atherton could contract with the Sheriff for police services for half the cost and no unfunded pension liability. And spend a small amount of the savings to pay a private security service to patrol the town in addition to Sheriffs Deputies. This could result in around $2 million a year in savings and no debt (unfunded pensions). The people of Atherton are not stupid. They didn't get wealthy by being stupid or financially imprudent, yet when it comes to paying excessive costs for a police department they choose to do it. It just lends credence to the possible reasons posited above.

@Meno Voter – I would hypothesize it's because most residents are completely uninvolved in the issues, and the Town Council has abrogated its fiscal and fiduciary responsibilities with respect to the police department because of political pressure by the police union.