1 From: Tim MacKenzie
Sent: Monday, December 9, 2024 12:40 AM
To: City Council; Abe-Koga, Margaret; Matichak, Lisa; Ramirez, Lucas; Showalter, Pat; Hicks, Alison; Kamei, Ellen; [email protected]
Subject: Public Comment on Item 6.1 Public Safety Advisory Board Review and Term of Service CAUTION: EXTERNAL EMAIL - Ensure you trust this email before clicking on any links or attachments.
Greetings Council,
This is Tim MacKenzie. I'll be out of town when you meet on Tuesday and will be discussing the dissolution of PSAB so cannot join in person. In light of that fact, I am writing to share some thoughts from one of the city citizens who has been most engaged with that board and public safety oversight more broadly since before its creation.
The too long, didn't read version is that I hope you will take this as an opportunity to take charge as Council rather than offloading decisions and shirking responsibility if you move forward with dissolution of PSAB. The important oversight and public engagement available through PSAB cannot be eliminated and must be taken up by Council if the body is dissolved.
It is worth recounting the history of PSAB and its creation. During 2020 when there was a nationwide reckoning of police abuses across the nation, Mountain View and its residents were active participants. There was a spontaneous uprising, with greater public participation in Council meetings than just about any topic before or since. At the same meeting Council passed a symbolic resolution condemning the murder of George Floyd, there was initially a plan to approve an increase to the police budget. Members of the public spoke at length, stretching to the early morning hours, pointing out the disconnect between stated city values and policy actions being taken by Council. That was one of the few times I've seen Council be swayed by public comments and make a change during the meeting when a few line items, including more deadly weapons for the police, were struck from the budget.
As 2020 continued on, there was sustained engagement from concerned citizens. Specifically, people had major worries about the presence of cops on campus (school resource officers [SROs]). Every commenter who spoke tended towards the same request: a time-bound, targeted commission whose sole responsibility would be researching and determining the future of SROs. Instead, Council decided to create PSAB with the argument that it would be a long term area for engagement on public safety oversight. Despite repeated and clear requests for a targeted task force instead of PSAB, Council created the body to give an opportunity for continued engagement on public safety oversight in a broader sense than simply on the topic of SROs. A cynical take (which is consistent with the plan to dissolve the body) is that Council wanted to create the appearance of having done something in response to the huge upswell of public energy while maintaining the status quo. It is impossible for me to forget that at the exact same time Council was trying to argue the Mountain View is different and MVPD did not have the same issues, police sicced an attack dog on an innocent person sleeping in their backyard in Mountain View. The cognitive dissonance to ignore that fact while lionizing the police is staggering. The staff report continues to elide that event, as well as other events that constitute a serious breach of community trust and are the subject of lawsuits. We can interpret events differently, but it is inaccurate to say there are no breaches of trust within the community - we must all agree on empirical reality.
In practice, PSAB has operated as a rubber stamp to maintain the status quo at best or expand police resources and the surveillance state at worst. Nearly every (if not every) commenter who engaged early on during the SRO research called for removal of SROs from school. The counterpoint raised by supporters of 2 cops on campus even in light of the active harm done to some students by their presence was that MVPD ran many programs that enriched some students and that taking those programs away would harm them. The question that repeatedly came up in response to that observation was never answered satisfactorily: why are police officers, whose explicit job responsibilities are to be the armed agents of the state to whom we have ceded a monopoly on violence to enforce laws, the ones running those programs? The assumption that MVPD should continue to have a massive share of the city budget contributes to mission creep because those resources aren't available to groups that would be more suited to fill those roles. In the end, despite overwhelming support to eliminate SROs from the public commenters, the program received its rubber stamp to continue. Some of the minor concessions granted to advocates to recognize the community's feelings have never been implemented or were rapidly abandoned. It is no surprise that engagement dropped off after people saw that taking their time and speaking in a unified voice had no impact on policy. The staff report fails to engage with that fact. Staff and PSAB also made clear there would be no movement in response to further public engagement on the issue of SROs, so it is unsurprising there have not been further comments. You get what you incentivize.
Another issue to recognize is the failure of PSAB to live up to Council's stated goals of taking a broader, more holistic view of public safety rather than the narrowly tailored SRO task force that citizens overwhelmingly requested. The most engaged citizens who attended and commented at nearly every PSAB meeting agreed with the spirit of that recommendation. They asked repeatedly for engagement with other aspects of public safety, including fire and hospital/public health and disaster readiness. Structurally, that dream was never realized. The only staff liaison was from MVPD and other aspects that should have been included if truly taking a broad, holistic view of public safety were never engaged despite repeated requests. This is just one more example of the disconnect between stated goals and values vs. actual policy decisions made. The staff report mischaracterizes the initial arguments for the creation of PSAB in calling the engagement from community members and Board Members as going beyond the scope of the body. In reality, the calls were aligned with arguments Council made in PSAB’s creation.
Another example of PSAB simply maintaining the status quo and/or expanding police powers is with regards to the recent decision to expand the surveillance state by spending a large amount of money to place cameras all over our city, allowing for direct tracking of anyone's movements by car within the city limits. Everyone who spoke from the public at PSAB opposed the program. One of the most active board members expressed high degrees of concern with regards to the program. They ended up resigning soon after, partially in response to the resistance encountered in their sustained engagement as an active board member. When the program came to Council, the vast majority of speakers and many who wrote in were opposed to the program. Once again, Council pursued their own course of action without substantive engagement with public comments. Most egregious was the absolute lack of any metrics in what success for the program looks like and the attempt by Council to completely abdicate their responsibility for deciding whether to continue the program after one year.
It is not much of a pilot program when the underlying assumption is that it will continue without review by our elected representatives. Constant pushback from staff to limit the scope of PSAB and the inability of members to be empowered to choose their own direction is a potential reason underlying the resignation of Board Members (in addition to people moving away from the city). Again, you get what you incentivize. Putting up roadblocks to engaged Board Members indicates that putting forth much effort is not worth one's time.
PSAB has filled hugely important roles for citizen engagement, outreach, and oversight. It would be unacceptable to lose these functions. If the body is dissolved it is incumbent upon Council to take up those responsibilities. I know Council already has much on your plate, but there is no reasonable argument consistent with democratic control by citizens to forgo the spaces for citizen engagement and oversight enabled by PSAB.
As one example of the large value add provided by PSAB, the sustained engagement, outreach, and education with County mental health services such as the TRUST program cannot be overstated. The staff report covers that topic well. A major concern for citizens actively engaged with PSAB has been looking to reduce the scope of when armed officers respond to calls, especially mental health related calls. The opportunity for concerned citizens to explicate reasoning for diverting calls from armed police towards trained mental health professionals was invaluable. The close collaboration with the County as the program was being rolled out also allowed for citizen engagement to actively help shape the program in light of community needs and concerns. The 3 questions from concerned citizens helped TRUST and County employees build communication and outreach tools. That example is a model of how policy decisions could be made - active engagement from citizens from early on in the process in a manner that allows for the community's needs to impact the shape of the program.
A contrast is to have decisions be made largely behind closed doors without opportunity for public engagement until the last moment when the opportunity to make changes to the program or policy are slim to none. The inability for the public to comment on the purpose of PSAB at a meeting of the body is an example of the latter, even if it was caused by a lack of quorum from members resigning after moving away or for other reasons.
Another example of public engagement via PSAB that must be taken up by Council if the body is dissolved is in the military weapons reporting requirement. I am certain I need not remind you that there is a legal requirement for public meetings and citizen engagement every single year to actively approve the maintenance and expansion of any military grade weapons owned and operated by MVPD. Currently, PSAB meetings fill that required public meeting role. The staff suggestion of a single meeting outside of the regular cadence of public meetings after dissolving PSAB seems to be a recipe for limited engagement. Dissolution of the body would necessitate Council taking up that responsibility. I hope you are prepared to do so and have thoroughly thought through the implications of dissolving PSAB. Doing so would seem to be inconsistent with the arguments Council made in creating the body as opposed to a targeted SRO Task Force, but it is up to you all to decide how to act.
In practice, PSAB has essentially acted as a way for Council to offload their responsibilities. In principle I am not opposed to dissolving PSAB, but only under the conditions that Council takes up its role as our elected officials in oversight and policy making. I don't expect to see eye-to-eye on policy with everyone (our diversity of viewpoints is a major strength in testing out different approaches!). What I do expect is integrity and self- consistency in arguments on the same policy issues through time. Dissolving PSAB after the arguments made for its creation is an example of talking out of both sides of one's mouth, especially in light of the fact that there have been no stated changes in viewpoint or perspective from the Councilmembers who made those arguments at the time. The staff report mischaracterizes the reasons for creating PSAB, only mentioning the calls for a time-bound, targeted SRO task force in passing in the comments from PSAB members more than halfway through the report.
It is hard for me to avoid being cynical when seeing actions taken by Council compared to rhetoric used to justify them. But I have faith that you can live up to your potential and make logical, consistent arguments that engage with and recognize people's alternative viewpoints, even if we might disagree on the best course of action. That is why I continue to engage, even though it sometimes seems a Sisyphean task: I respect you as people and hope you can reciprocate and extend respect and engagement instead of condescension and gaslighting. A lack of internal consistency or principled stances is unbecoming of the honor you all hold in representing us.
Tim MacKenzie PhD | he/him/his