Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: REGULAR AGENDA (ACTION)
To: City Council
Subject: ANNUAL POLICE CHIEF REPORT TO THE COMMUNITY
Date: April 23, 2024
Written by: Chris Simmons, Chief of Police
Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council receive and discuss the annual police chief report to the community for the calendar year 2023.
Background
In 2021, the Chief of Police presented the first annual report to the City Council and the community, which covered activities and statistics from the previous calendar year (2020). Since then, there have been a total of three annual reports presented (2020, 2021, 2022). These reports are posted publicly on the City of Cotati website for ease of accessibility. By presenting this report annually, the community may better understand the undertakings that the police department is involved in and the ways in which we continue to make our city safe.
This current presentation marks the fourth annual report and is presented for the 2023 calendar year. As with the previous reports, the 2023 annual report is a tool for open discussions and will be posted on the website for greater accessibility and transparency.
Analysis/Discussion
In 2023, the Cotati Police Department continued to address various challenges associated with staffing and operations. Chief Parish retired in December of 2023, with newly appointed Chief Simmons taking over in February 2024. Some of the officer vacancies were filled toward the end of 2023 and we are now just starting to realize the benefits of those appointments as the new officers start to come off training and permanently fill operational vacancies. The Department continues to actively recruit to fill dispatch and police officer vacancies to reach full staffing.
The annual report consists of numerous data elements related to police and SAFE (Specialized Assistance For Everyone) calls for service, arrests, NIBRS (National Incident Based Reporting System) crime statistics, traffic citations, citizen complaints, and uses of force.
A large portion of this year’s annual report is dedicated to RIPA (Racial Identity Profiling Act) data and the Cotati Police Department’s pledge to ensure equitable service delivery and treatment of our citizens and visitors. RIPA was formed as part of AB953 (Weber, 2016). The RIPA Board is a diverse group of members that represent the public, law enforcement, and educators.
The goal of the RIPA Board is to strengthen law enforcement-community relations in California through collaboration, transparency, and accountability. The California Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Attorney General, has the primary oversight of the RIPA Board.
One of the responsibilities of the RIPA Board has been to develop a “stop data” collection process. On July 1, 2018, the eight largest police agencies in California began collecting stop data and reporting the information to the DOJ.
A “RIPA stop” is defined as any detention or search, with the goal to “collect perceived demographic and other detailed data regarding pedestrian and traffic stops.” The bill requires an agency that employs between one and 334 peace officers to issue its first annual report to DOJ by April 1, 2023. (All police agencies in Sonoma County, including the Cotati Police Department, are in this category).
For transparency, the Cotati Police Department decided to collect RIPA data before the scheduled mandate. Early collection was implemented as part of the Sonoma County Public Safety Consortium, which the City is a member of. Other members of the consortium include the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, cities of Cotati, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and Windsor (Sonoma and Windsor contract services with Sheriff’s Department).
Collectively, the consortium agencies started collecting RIPA data using patrol cars mobile computers and smart phones on July 1, 2021. The data is collected by the consortium and transmitted to the DOJ daily for review and quality control. This data set then becomes the single “point of truth” for validated data statewide.
The RIPA Board stated in their January 1, 2024 report that 535 agencies (including Cotati Police Department) conducted a total of 4,575,725 stops from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022.
There are 25 additional agencies required to report RIPA stop data, but they reported zero stops in 2022. Stops for 2023 are not anticipated to be included into a report from the Board until the release of the report in early 2025.
Per the Board’s report, the stop data for perceived ethnicity in the state of California in 2022 was as follows:
White 32.5%
Hispanic/Latine(x) 42.9%
Black 12.5%
Asian 5.5%
Note that Middle Eastern/South Asian (4.5%), Multiracial (1.1%), Pacific Islander (0.6%), Native American (0.3%), and Other (0.4%) categories were also reported.
The stop data for perceived ethnicity for the Cotati Police Department for 2022 and 2023 was as follows:
2022 2023
White 57% 54%
Hispanic/Latine(x) 30% 31%
Black 6% 6%
Asian 3% 3%
Various other RIPA data is available throughout the annual report (attached) and provides information on perceived age, gender, reason for the stop, searches conducted, types of property seized, duration of stops, and results of stops.
The remainder of the report centers on organizational, procedural, and training aspects of the Cotati Police Department, including numerous community outreach efforts that staff were involved in throughout 2023.
Financial Considerations
Sizable data extraction, analysis, formatting, and ultimate reporting require extensive staff time.
The addition of the new records analyst position has greatly helped to streamline the process of mining and charting the data and information, especially since the RIPA data, in particular, is challenging to decipher from the raw Department of Justice data. The continuous mining of data and analytics associated with providing enhanced details of such data may have greater financial impacts in the future.
Environmental Issues
This action is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it is not a project which has a potential for resulting in either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, pursuant to CEQA Guideline section 15378.