Fort Bragg Police Department
Biennial Report 2020-2021
Chief John E. Naulty Captain Thomas N. O’Neal
New Faces and New Positions
This reporting period we have been blessed with the number of new team members we have added to our roster. At the same time, we took on the task of updating our internal leadership, promoting Sergeant Shaw to a permanent Sergeant’s position and Sergeant Welter to an Interim Acting Sergeant’s position.
Chief Naulty also created a Captain’s position which was assumed by Captain O’Neal. The new Captain’s position allowed for direct supervision of the Patrol Division allowing Chief Naulty to focus on Administrative duties and on meeting with the public and outside organizations.
D’Ann Garcia came to us from the Public Defender’s Office already armed with knowledge of the Criminal Justice System from the court’s side of operations. D’Ann works part-time in our Records Office with our professional staff and assists in covering vacations and other record related duties. D’Ann is also the face of the Department’s 2021 Extreme Weather Shelter maintaining all records related to the program.
Aldea “Al” Mile started her hiring process for a Police Officer position with the Police Department in late 2021. Officer Miles was born and raised in the Bay Area but spent the last several years living in the Central Valley. Officer Miles is joining our Department with her wife and daughter. Officer Miles comes to Fort Bragg with some unique experience including holding her Associates Degree as a veterinarian technician and working as a counselor for developmentally disabled youth.
Antoinette Moore has lived in Mendocino County since 2009 and she joined us as a Community Service Officer in early 2021. Antoinette quickly cleared the Department’s training program and will be attending the police academy in the Spring of 2022. During her time with the Department, Antoinette volunteered to establish the Department’s child safety seat inspection program and to assist with the Department’s open and new missing person investigations.
Chaplain Smith is the father of one of our own, Officer Tanner Smith, and is a volunteer with our Department. While Chaplain Smith resides in Elk Grove where he runs a successful K-9 training business, he makes frequent trips to the coast and has been available 24-hours a day by phone to assist both our community and to support our Officer’s mental health and welfare. For the last 18 months, Chaplain Smith has been the first person Chief Naulty and Captain O’Neal call when a Department member or a community member needs a supportive shoulder to lean on.
Jarod Frank came to us from Elk Grove, California, as an entry-level police officer having graduated from Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Academy. Jarod has been an amazing addition to our team leading the Department in traffic citations, driving under the influence investigations and crime cases since he has been released from the Field Training Program. Despites Jarod’s aggressive approach to crime prevention, he is widely recognized by the community for his courteous and amiable approach to contacts. Amongst his multiple positive recognitions from the public he most recently was recognized by a visiting tourist with a letter to the Chief stating “If these are the kinds of interactions your officers are having with citizens on a daily basis, I am confident your town and department are headed in the right direction.”
Officer’s McHugh and Beak both started their careers with our Department as Community Service Officers. During the last two years, both successfully attended the Santa Rosa Police Academy and were promoted to the position of Police Officer. Both have completed the Department’s Field Training Program with Officer McHugh showing amazing natural potential as an investigator and Officer Beak bringing a contagious smile and positive attitude to both the Department and the community.
The Heart of the Department
Lesley Bryant and Laura Godinez have a combined 17 years with the Department and are assigned as Police Services Technicians. Lesley has been with us for 15 years starting out as a Community Service Officer before moving into her current role as Records Supervisor. Lesley has been the face of the Department’s community events volunteering numerous hours supporting the community’s youth at Police Activities League events and other Police Department activities.
Laura serves as the Department’s Evidence Technician and she manages the Department’s Public Meetings. Laura is also bilingual and commonly assists with translations on the phone, in writing, at the Front Counter, and in the field when no bilingual Officer is on-duty.
Lesley and Laura are assisted in the Records Department part-time by D’Ann Garcia. The Records Department is the true heart of our organization, with every document our Department creates passing through their Office. Besides record keeping, the Records Department answers an estimated 10,000 calls annually providing information on everything from directions, to law enforcement assistance, to directing individuals to appropriate local resources. Our Department could not function at the level we do without the efforts of these two, and we are honored to have them as a part of our team.
Hiring Locally
Retention and staffing remain an issue for Police Departments nation-wide with many agencies reporting vacancies of up to 40-50% of their authorized positions. While the Fort Bragg Police Department has fared better than this, retention and hiring of qualified candidates remains an issue. To combat this decade-long problem our Department has focused on hiring locally, with the goal of starting local community members as Community Service Officers and then later sending them to the Police Academy. We have also begun focusing on identifying more bilingual Officers to join our ranks in order to better represent the community. This year we have three local individuals attending the Police Academy at College of the Redwoods with an expected graduation date in June of 2022.
Antoinette Moore has lived in Mendocino County since 2009 and she started her career with us as a Community Service Officer.
Tyler Baker has lived in this community since he was a young teen and is known by many due to his volunteer work coaching youth sports.
David Franco is a Captain with the Fort Bragg Fire Department and a life-long local and contractor.
Raising the Bar and Setting the Standard
One of Chief Naulty’s first tasks as Interim Chief was to update the Department’s long-overdue Policy and Field Training Program. Assigning Captain O’Neal to the task, Captain O’Neal worked with the Department’s Sergeants to review the Department’s approximately 300 different policies bringing them in line with National standards and the recommendations of the Nationally recognized Lexipol. Lexipol provides review services to law enforcement agencies ensuring that Departmental policies are up-to-date with current law and court decisions while also minimizing liability to agencies and government organizations. This was the first time the Department had overhauled its entire policy program in approximately six years. During the same time period, our Department recognized the calls from the public in light of recent law enforcement events and took the initiative to ban chokeholds and “no-knock warrants” prior to legal mandates to do so.
With the policy program updated, Captain O’Neal moved on to overhauling the Department’s Field Training Program. The program includes an approximately 1000 page training document covering nearly 600 different areas of expertise. After nearly three months of working on the project, the entire program was approved by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training bringing the department into compliance for the first time in 14 years.
Our Department is proud to boast that over half of our Patrol Staff have fouryear college degrees with all of our Sergeants and Command Staff currently working on or having earned a Master’s Degree. Our Department will continue to make civilian education a hiring priority in the coming years.
Our Police Sergeants are one of the most critical positions in the Department as they represent the direct line of authority between the Command Staff and the Patrol Officers working the street. Understanding the critical importance of this role, the Department created new testing standards for Sergeant’s promotions. The new testing standard including participating in a Community Oral Board, a Law Enforcement Oral Board, a written test, two written assignments including a detailed self-evaluation, peer evaluations, and an Executive Oral Board. The written test was supplied by a nationally recognized company and mandated that the applicants review three texts containing over 1500 pages of information. This cycle we were lucky enough to have Mayor Norvell and Councilmember Albin-Smith sit on the Community Oral Board in order to provide their input on the next candidate.
This cycle we had three applicants with Sergeant Shaw placing first in all categories. Acting Sergeant Welter and Officer Ferris were a close second and third. Sergeant McLaughlin serves as the Department’s Senior Sergeant having held the position for the last seven years.
Focus on Public Safety, De-escalation and Mental Health During the last two years the Fort Bragg Police Department has continued to shift our Department’s culture to one focusing on de-escalation and public safety first. Our Department has sent multiple Officers and Command Staff to “train-the-trainer” courses intended to provide tools to our Patrol Staff which enhance our team’s ability to safely de-escalate potentially violent situations. Alongside those tools our Department continues to build an effective and meaningful relationship with our local mental health organizations including Redwood Community Services and Adventist Health-Mendocino Coast. This included the Police Department supporting and advocating for the new Coast Respite Center. These strong partnerships have allowed our Department to be more effective at keeping individuals with mental health illnesses from entering or remaining in the criminal justice system.
Besides our training and partnerships within the community, our Department additionally deployed new tools to our Patrol Staff intended to reduce use-of-force incidents and injuries to the public and our Officers. These tools included the BolaWrap which allows Officers to utilize a projectile fired Kevlar tether intended to inhibit the movement of a resisting suspect, and the new Taser 7 which can safely end a violent encounter or allow the officer to deter physical resistance through an electric arc display.
On the vehicle side of de-escalation, our Department has purchased and deployed a Nighthawk Pursuit Termination device which allows our Officers to quickly and safely end vehicle pursuits from a distance. This device replaces the older spike strips previously used which forced officers to stand alongside the roadway as the suspect vehicle approaches and then attempt to throw or pull the spike strips in front of the speeding vehicle. The new Nighthawk device can be quickly set-up and deployed remotely while the Officer remains behind cover.
Protecting the “Houseless” and the Community
Our Department has long prided itself on its efforts to create working relationships between the community and the homeless that live alongside us.
The Homeward Bound Program funded by the County of Mendocino allowed our Department the ability to reconnect our local homeless with support systems and families in other communities. Our Department recognized that many of the individuals living on the street in our community had family members willing to support them back home. After identifying these individuals, our Officers and Professional Staff were able to contact family members and rekindle relationships. With the financial ability to purchase bus tickets, tanks of gas, and meal vouchers, our Department now was able to safely get the houseless to a family home. During the last two years, our Department has assisted approximately fifteen individuals with re-uniting with their families or simply making it to a community where they have established support. Several of those individuals have checked back in with our Department to let us know their transition was successful and to thank us for the assistance.
Homeless encampments represent environmental dangers to our waterways, blight, and unfortunately are often the source of crimes. Over the last ten years, the City of Fort Bragg has spent a significant amount money and staff hours cleaning these encampments and returning the area to normal. This year to combat this issue, our Department created a program where Officers conduct monthly checks of common encampment areas in order to prevent encampments from becoming ingrained and creating significant environmental hazards. When individuals are encountered in these encampments, our Department connects them with available local resources.
Most recently, Department Administration approached our patrol and professional staff and asked for their consideration in having the Police Department operate the Emergency Weather Shelter for the 2021 winter season. With resounding support from all members of our Department, we are still in the infancy of this program which is expected to supply approximately 600 bed nights over the course of the season in order to keep the most vulnerable out of the winter elements.
Transparency
Our Department has supported the belief that transparency in law enforcement enhances community and police relations. Under this belief, we were one of the first law enforcement agencies in Mendocino County to deploy body-worn cameras and all of our patrol staff continue to utilize body-worn cameras despite there being no mandate; State or otherwise to do so. Along the same lines, our Department began collecting data related to the Racial Identification Profiling Act (RIPA) nearly a year prior to the deadline mandated by State Assembly Bill 953. RIPA mandates that our Officers collect non-personal data for every individual they detain or arrest. The collection of this data is verified through internal and external safeguards prior to being forwarded to the State.
COVID-19
Covid-19 took its toll on the world in 2020 and our
Department was no different. Already faced with
staffing issues, our Department was now forced to
cover extra shifts for those who were quarantining
from positive exposures while in the line of duty,
and unfortunately for those who were diagnosed
with the illness. While most of the United States
shut down, our Department continued to run
uninterrupted continuing to provide the services
that our community expected. When the City
faced the unknown financial effects of COVID-19
on our tourist industry and the potential for a
devastating financial toll in the form of lost sales
taxes and transient occupancy taxes, our staff
stepped up and volunteered to surrender many of
their extra pay benefits.
On top of the stresses of staffing and financial
issues, our Officers worked 24 hours a day seven
days a week with a public drastically effected by
the new stresses of the world. This forced our Officers to work through increased rates of suicide, mental health issues, domestic violence, and child abuse; not to mention often being the face of enforcement for the controversial mandates that came with the pandemic.
Despite all the negativity COVID-19 brought with it, our Department continued to support the community with smiling faces and we even managed to sneak in a few birthday parades for those little ones who missed their 2020 birthdays.
Cleaning Out the Armory
When the current administration took over in 2020 we learned that our Department was maintaining outdated munitions, explosives, and firearms with some not having been used in the last twenty years. Our Department was no longer authorized to utilize many of the lethal and non-lethal devices and they additionally did not represent the culture of policing our Department supports. While it was not an easy task, Sergeant McLaughlin was able to identify a company out of Utah that had the capability to transport and destroy the explosives in an environmentally safe manner.
Firearms which are still in use at other agencies were sold and those funds redirected to many of the de-escalation tools previously identified.
Additionally, the Department purchased increased security upgrades for the aging armory to include a security system which keeps tracks of all users who access the armory.
Communication on the Coast and Beyond
Our entire Department’s radio operations run on a handful of radio towers which are used to transmit our signal to other law enforcement agencies both on the coast and inland, as well as our Dispatch Center at the Ukiah Police Department. Over the years, our radio towers have become aged and were not equipped to handle the frequent and extended power outages which affected the coast over the last few years. Coupled with these issues were the outdated portable radios our Officers were carrying. Recognizing this as both a Officer safety issue and a threat to public safety, our Department moved forward with a multipronged approach of upgrading our portable radios, installing generators and battery cells at our radio tower, and creating long-term replacement plans for both.
Not letting anything go to waste, our previous series of radios were repurposed and setup to be deployed to City Staff and volunteers during emergency events so that the City could continue to communicate should we lose telephonic capabilities.
Our Department is unique in that our Dispatch Center is operated from nearly sixty miles away at the Ukiah Police Department. We are lucky to have the dedicated Dispatch Team in Ukiah working with us. In order to ensure our Dispatch Team remains familiar with our local community all new hires complete an extensive ride along with our Officers with veteran Dispatchers being expected to complete one ride along annually.
Saving Lives
In July of 2021, our Department was recognized by Ambulance Service Supervisor Davey Beak from Adventist Health-Mendocino Coast for our role in the high percentage of cardiac arrest recoveries in the field. Davey Beak directly attributed the high rates of survival to our Officer’s for being on scene within minutes and sometimes seconds in order to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) while deploying an automated electronic defibrillator device (AED). Our Department recently adjusted procedures to begin deploying two AED’s on patrol at all times as well as each patrol vehicle being outfitted with a trauma kit and Narcan. Our Officers additionally have access to mass casualty trauma kits which can be rapidly deployed to the field often times minutes before emergency medical services response. During the last two years, we have averaged approximately ten NARCAN deployments and eight AED deployments each year.
Big Cases with Big Results
In late 2020, long-time local business Holmes Lumber began to be plagued by a thief who repeatedly targeted the lumber yard’s high-value wood stocks. With the help of Holmes Lumber employee John Gould, and through repeated nights of electronic and in-person surveillance, Officers were able to identify the suspect in the theft as Ryan Ivey. Search warrants during the investigation would connect Ivey to multiple other property crimes including other commercial burglaries. Community Service Officer Beak (now Officer Beak), had a huge role in the success of this investigation with his role being one of the deciding factors to send him to the Police Academy.
On July 6th, 2021, career criminal Kevin Seltenrich decided to rob the Fort Bragg Rite Aid threatening employees that he had a gun. While Seltenrich was able to flee the store with cash, Officers were on scene within seconds locating Seltenrich concealed nearby counting his recently ill-gotten funds.
In early 2021, the south end of Fort Bragg experienced multiple commercial burglaries over a several week period. While most of the burglaries focused on commercial businesses, the thief additionally decided to target Three River’s Charter School, stealing children’s laptops in the process. Through aggressive case work, including the investigative skills of Community Service Officer Holaway, our Department was able to identify and arrest Justin Williamson for the crimes.
In March of 2021, Robert Fielden terrorized Fort Bragg setting multiple structure and wildland fires. Initially unable to identify the suspect, the community came together to submit surveillance video from multiple locations across town allowing Officers to narrow their search. As Officer McHugh and Officer Zavala closed in on the arsonist’s suspected camp off the Skunk Train tracks along Pudding Creek, Fielden fled from Officers setting at least one fire in an attempt to escape.
Fielden was quickly apprehended by Officer McHugh and Officer Zavala before he could cause any more damage, and he was eventually held to answer for his crimes.
Community Events and Services both Classic and New
Halloween Trunk or Treat
With COVID-19 impacting the community’s usual Halloween traditions, the City of Fort Bragg and the Fort Bragg Police Department teamed up with other local organizations to host a Trunk or Treat event at the CV Starr Center.
In 2021 the Police Department and City handed out 1000 bags of candy to local and visiting youth.
National Night Out
National Night Out 2020 was cancelled due to the original surge of COVID-19. With relaxed CDC guidelines related to outdoor events National Night 2021 was hosted at Harold O. Bainbridge Park. Approximately three hundred guests attended with approximately twenty organizations participating in the event.
DEA National Take Back Event
Our Department hosts twice annually the DEA National Take Back Event where community members can turn in expired or unused medication. During the 2021 take backs the Police Department accepted and destroyed over 200 pounds of medications keeping those medications from contaminating the environment and out of the hands of kids.
Police Activities League Bicycle Sale
Once annually, the Police Department teams up with the Coast Substation of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office to auction off all of the unclaimed bicycles which are found or turned in over the year. This Bicycle Sale raised over $2800 during the reporting period with 100% of those funds being returned to the Police Activities League.
PAL Bicycle Rodeo
The PAL Bicycle Rodeo represents cooperation from all coast law enforcement agencies and allows a day for kids to learn about bike safety, receive free lunches and helmets, and have their bikes fixed by local bike mechanics. While the 2020 event was cancelled, the 2021 event returned with nearly 200 attendees.
PAL Fishing Clinic
The PAL Fishing Clinic has been a Memorial Day Weekend tradition for many years and 2021 was no different. While Paul Bunyan Days was cancelled this year, the PAL Fishing Clinic hooked in many of the local youth again in 2021.
Child Safety Seat Inspector
In June of 2020 our Department sent Community Service Officer Antoinette Moore to a three day course for her to receive her National Child Passenger Safety accreditation. Once Community Service Officer Moore passed the course our Department began offering free child safety seat inspections and installations both at events and at the Department. Additionally, our Department now has a stock of infant seats, child seats, and booster seats to give away to our community.
Cleaning up the Community
Our Department understands that a community free of blight helps to reduce crime and increases quality of life. One of the common eyesores throughout Mendocino County is the presence of abandoned vehicles. Our Community Service Officer team is instrumental in operating the Department’s Abandoned Vehicle Abatement program which removes abandoned and destroyed vehicles, motor homes and trailers from our streets. During 2020 and 2021 to date our Department has removed 314 abandoned vehicles including 62 motorhomes, trailers and boats. Our AVA program is successful due primarily to the efforts of Community Service Officer Katelynn Holaway.
Besides keeping the streets clean, our Department has actively addressed the presence of graffiti in our community. Headed by Transport Officer and part-time Community Service Officer, George Leinen, our graffiti abatement program is intended to encourage businesses and community members to remove graffiti as it appears in order to deter violators. During the past two years, Transport Officer Leinen has conducted regular patrols to identify graffiti and notify property owners of its presence. These notifications include providing the property owner with reimbursement forms allowing them to be reimbursed by the City of Fort Bragg for the costs of cleanup.
Nuisance properties, whether they be businesses or residences contribute to crime in the community, create blight, and lower the quality of life for both neighboring properties and the community as a whole. Recognizing this difficult issue, our Department has increased its cooperation with City Hall’s Code Enforcement Officer, Valerie Stump. This has allowed our Department to quickly address nuisance properties and nuisance conditions at businesses.
Looking to the future, our Department sent Sergeant McLaughlin to an 80-hour Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design course which focuses on reducing crime by changing the environment that we live and work in. This training allows Sergeant McLaughlin to provide input to community members and business owners on how they can make small changes to lighting, landscape, and other design features to make their property safer.
Trimming up the Department
This last year Captain O’Neal worked with City Manager Tabatha Miller, Chief Naulty, and wellknown local Personal Fitness Trainer Bethany Brewer to create a Department sponsored physical fitness program led by Bethany. All Department staff are offered two one-hour workout sessions a week with Bethany with the sessions being open to the staff member’s significant others and spouses. In the first three months of the program staff participated in over 150 hours of workouts focused on flexibility, core strength and tailored to those health issues which are prevalent in the law enforcement industry. The program is currently funded through Asset Forfeiture funds with the hopes of the funding eventually becoming a line-budget item.
Making the Streets Safer
In the last two years our Department has added three radar trained Officers and one Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) trained Officer. Additionally, our Department replaced our antiquated radar trailer with a modern trailer which not only shows motorists their current speed, but also tracks overall speed trends providing reports to both the public and our Department. Our Department additionally created a calendar allowing the public to make requests for the radar trailer to be placed in their neighborhood.
Our new radar trailer found multiple uses during the challenges of the last two years to include passing the message of “Mask Up Mendocino” and notifying the public and tourists alike of the water crisis of 2021.
Our Traffic Enforcement Team is headed by Sergeant Shaw and consists of four Officers; including Officer Zavala, Officer Smith, and Officer Frank. Since the team’s rough formation in 2020, Sergeant Shaw and his team have taken on several proactive traffic enforcement operations including directed driving under the influence enforcement, a decoy crosswalk enforcement operation, and a
month of illegally modified muffler and exhaust
enforcement.
Year 2018 2019 2020 2021
Speeding Citations 44 19 55 41
All Other Citations 477 215 194 389
Traffic Collisions 160 142 141 152
Statistics
Crime in all categories and calls for service have been consistently falling since the last reporting period. This is reflected in both our internal statistics and from the Federal Bureau of Investigations Uniform Crime Report data. Our Department attributes a portion of the decline to our proactive approach to policing and our practice of both “flooding” the streets with Officers following gang related issues and the use of non-sworn staff on patrol acting as extra eyes on the street.
Additionally, we have greatly expanded our use and experience with search warrants allowing us to more aggressively investigate felonies. 2018 2019 2020 2021
Calls for Service 20906 19217 18290 15448
Crime Reports
Taken
1489 1218 1268 991
Arrests 760 540 521 432
Gang Related Calls 50 17 10 5
Burglary 37 39 42 39
Theft 292 267 225 169
Vehicle Theft 17 18 16 17
Vandalism 136 137 126 99
Homicide 0 0 0 0
Rape 9 8 5 9
Robbery 6 7 4 3
Assaults 136 126 123 108
DUI 47 43 24 52
Reducing Costs
Over the last two years our Department has moved forward to reduce costs not only for the City and the taxpayer, but also to ensure the funds we are allocated are spent on the most critical aspects of public safety. Some of the measures we took during the report period included:
- Returning two Ford Crown Victoria patrol vehicles into primary service in order to minimize miles on our newer series of Ford Explorers. - Auctioning off or transferring under-used pieces of equipment including the previously purchased electric motorcycles, and one all-terrain vehicle. - Reducing the Department’s storage of antiquated equipment and creating an equipment inventory in order to reduce long-term costs related to equipment replacement. The reduction in storage allowed our Department to end its lease on two private storage units that we had maintained for more than a decade.
- Transferring non-law enforcement related duties to other staff including Community Service Officers, Transport Officers and volunteers. This included reorganizing how we approached staffing for annual special events including the Fireworks Display, Lighted Truck Parade, and Wall Street Halloween.
These staffing changes allowed us to reduce overtime and staff hours related to these events by approximately 35% without sacrificing public safety. - During the last two years our Department has reimagined how we approach staffing our regular patrol shifts. This included the use of Relief Shifts, and using the newly formed Captain’s position to cover mandatory patrol shifts. These changes caused a reduction in overall overtime by approximately 25% compared to the last reporting period, and over 30% from the reporting period prior to that.
Year 2017/2018 2018/2019 2019/2020 2020/2021 2021/2022
Personnel Services $2,887,322 $2,977,206 $3,306,826 $2,936,239 $3,231,894** Non-Personnel Services $818,753 $788,049 $548,007 $586,674 $548,302 **Adopted Budget for staffing. Overtime is currently down and this number includes your Academy trainees.
Goals for 2022 and Beyond
As we move forward into 2022 our Department continues to strive towards meeting the community demands of our small town Police Department. Below are just a few of those goals:
Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) and Police Cadets
In early 2022 our Department expects to announce the reopening of the Police Cadet Program for individuals 14 years of age to 21 years of age. Unfortunately, restrictions related to COVID-19 and staffing have delayed this project during the time of this report. The goal of the Police Cadet program is to introduce our local youth to law enforcement and hopefully encourage community members to become law enforcement professionals. Our previous Police Cadet program was an extreme success with three local youth who participated in the program already inquiring about employment with our Department following their return from their military contracts.
Also in early 2022, our Department hopes to announce the start of a Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) program. The VIPS program is expected be open to individuals 21 and above and allows community members to take an active role in working alongside law enforcement and protecting their community.
VIPS help with a variety of services including vacation checks, business checks, proactive patrols, special events, and traffic control amongst many other possibilities. Community Service Officer George Leinen and Chaplain Smith both started as unofficial VIPS, with Community Service Officer Leinen eventually moving to a part-time paid position.
Mental Health Partnerships
Diverting those with mental health issues from the criminal justice system continues to be one of our top goals as we move into a new year. With the addition of the Coast Respite Center, and a continued strong partnership with Redwood Crisis Services, our Department hopes to see an organized deployment of mental health professionals alongside law enforcement to all calls involving individuals with mental health illnesses. In December of 2021, our Department in partnership with City Grant Manager Nancy Bond applied for a grant which would allow the Department to fund and hire two mental health case workers to assist with mental health calls for service and to assist community members with navigating mental health resources.
Neighborhood Watch
In 2022, we plan to rebuild the Neighborhood Watch Program with a focus on assigning Neighborhood Captains to individual districts within the City. These Neighborhood Captains will be given direct access to Chief Naulty and Captain O’Neal in order to ensure that the issues within their neighborhoods are addressed in a timely manner.
Community Surveillance Video Program
Create a model surveillance video program which encourages community members and businesses to submit updated information on an annual basis related to their surveillance video systems. We hope to be able to offer some form of financial incentive for participating in the program so as to enhance our staff’s ability to quickly access surveillance video from multiple areas in the City following major crimes.
The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement (CALEA) Our Department expects to begin the accreditation process for the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement (CALEA) during the next reporting period.
CALEA is recognized at the international level as being the “gold standard” for law enforcement accreditation. The accreditation process for CALEA is a 36-month process which includes minimizing Department liability, building relationships with community stakeholders, and additional training mandates for staff.
School Safety
In 2022, we have already begun plans to create a more organized school safety program to include creating a plan for structured responses by all first responder agencies on the coast. This goal would include hosting an annual training event in coordination with school staff for emergency response to each of the school sites within the Department’s jurisdiction. We also expect to work towards staffing a full-time School Resource Officer at the School District with one of that Officer’s primary responsibilities being supervising pedestrian safety for students walking to and from school.