A new vision for public safety services in Menlo Park

"San Francisco officers will stop responding to non-criminal activities such as disputes between neighbors, reports about homeless people and school discipline interventions as part of a police reform plan the mayor announced Thursday.

Mayor London Breed said in a news release that on calls that don’t involve a threat to public safety, officers would be replaced by trained, unarmed professionals to limit unnecessary confrontation between the police department and the community.

“We know that a lack of equity in our society overall leads to a lot of the problems that police are being asked to solve,” she said in the release. “We are going to keep going with these additional reforms and continuing to find ways to reinvest in communities that have historically been underserved and harmed by systemic racism.”

""San Francisco officers will stop responding to non-criminal activities such as disputes between neighbors, reports about homeless people and school discipline interventions as part of a police reform plan the mayor announced Thursday."

And believe me the officers will be happy not to have to handle those kind of calls.

Over the last few decades police departments across the country have armored up and hardened up to be prepared to face the worst case threat. Our police oficers now carry guns, tasers, pepper spray, batons, handcuffs etc and are properly trained to use each of those items. The unfortunate result is that they often respond to calls with literally ten of pounds of "defensive" equipment" and their appearance and training automatically escalates minor situations into potentially deadly conflicts.

We as a community need to deescalate this situation - it serves neither the interests of the community or of the fine police officers who serve us.

Please let's redesign Menlo Park's public safety function so that a much smaller group of well trained and properly equipped police officers can serve us to protect us from criminals. And then let's create a well trained, unarmed public safety force that deals with the issue of the homeless, neighbor disputes and civil infractions.

I think Peter's proposal is a good one. We hated dealing with the calls that didn't involve crime. We were there to enforce the law, not as baby sitters, marriage counselors or psychiatrists. And we weren't really trained for that stuff anyway. A separate corps that is specifically trained to deal with those non-violent situations and people is a much more effective and better use of the money that frees up police to actually deal with crime. Police handling law enforcement and social workers handling social work. What a novel concept.

I agree with Peter, fewer sworn officers, separate criminal enforcement from community outreach.

My ABSOLUTE preference is to give it ALL to the San Mateo County Sheriff, but our City Council's fiduciary blindness will not let them see the RIGHT thing to do.

Peter, you are right on target, we need to stop answering every call for additional support and reduce the cost of law enforcement to the residents of Menlo Park.

Roy Thiele-Sardina