Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: REGULAR AGENDA (ACTION)
To: Cotati City Council
Subject: ANNUAL POLICE CHIEF REPORT TO THE COMMUNITY
Date: March 25, 2025
Written by: Chris Simmons, Chief of Police
Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council receive and discuss the annual police chief report for the calendar year 2024.
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 four annual reports presented (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). These reports are posted publicly on the City of Cotati website for ease in accessibility so that the community may better understand the undertakings the police department is involved in and the ways in which we continue to make our city safe.
This current presentation marks the fifth annual report and is presented for the 2024 calendar year. As with the previous reports, the 2024 annual report is a tool for open discussions and will be posted on the website for greater accessibility and transparency.
On February 27, 2025, the Community Police Advisory Committee had their inaugural meeting and received a presentation from the Chief of Police.
Analysis/Discussion
In 2024, the Cotati Police Department continued to address various challenges associated with staffing and operations. Chief Parish retired in December of 2023, with Chief Simmons taking over in February 2024. Though some officer vacancies were filled toward the end of 2023, there was attrition in late 2023/early 2024 that continued to maintain vacancies at the officer level.
Chief Simmons hired two officers in 2024, one of which is still in the field training program and is scheduled to permanently fill an operational vacancy in the Spring (2025). The Department continues to actively recruit to fill dispatch and police officer vacancies to reach full staffing. We currently have officer and dispatch candidates in the background process.
The annual report consists of numerous data elements related to police and South County 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.
As was the case the previous year, a large portion of this year’s annual report is dedicated to RIPA (Racial Identity Profiling Act) data and 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. Our Police Department is a member of a Public Safety consortium. 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 released its eighth annual report on January 1, 2025. The 2025 report contains an analysis of more than 4.7 million police stops conducted in 2023 under RIPA. The full report is available at https://oag.ca.gov/ab953/board/reports.
Per the Board’s report, the stop data for perceived ethnicity for the state of California in 2023 was similar to that of 2022, and is as follows:
2022 2023
White 32.5% 31.96%
Hispanic/Latine(x) 42.9% 43.07%
Black 12.5% 12.14%
Asian 5.5% 5.72%
Note that Middle Eastern/South Asian (5.03%), Multiracial (1.22%), Pacific Islander (0.57%), Native American (0.28%), and Other (0.53%) categories were also reported.
The stop data for perceived ethnicity for the Cotati Police Department for 2022, 2023, and 2024 was as follows:
2022 2023 2024
White 57% 54% 51.5%
Hispanic/Latine(x) 30% 31% 34.5%
Black 6% 6% 5.9%
Asian 3% 3% 3.5%
Various other RIPA data is available throughout the annual report’s respective slide presentation (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.
Calls for service and officer-initiated activity totaled 12,610 in 2024, representing a comparative increase of 1,393 events to the year prior (2023 totaled 11,217 calls/activities/events). Calls for service were up by 292 and officer-initiated activities were up by 1,101.
This increase can largely be attributed to the department’s commitment to traffic safety and focused vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle safety/enforcement, as outlined in the City of Cotati Strategic Priorities Work Plan 2024-2025. Even more specifically, the department centered its priorities on safety and enforcement related to driving under the influence (DUI); DUI arrests nearly tripled in 2024 to 224 (78 in 2023). As a result, overall reporting, proactivity, arrest statistics, stop data, and associated contacts increased in 2024.
The remainder of the annual report centers on organizational, procedural, and training aspects of the Cotati Police Department, including numerous community outreach efforts that staff were involved in throughout 2024.
Financial Considerations
As has been the case, especially over the last year, sizable data extraction, analysis, formatting, and ultimate reporting continue to require extensive staff time. The addition of the records analyst position has greatly helped to streamline the process of mining and charting data and information, especially since the RIPA data in particular continues to be 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.
Attachments:
Cotati Police Department Annual Report 2024