From: Ted Godshalk
To: Clerk
Subject: Public Comment for May 2, 2023 from Mr. Ted Godshalk Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 11:17:36 AM
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Public Comment for May 2, 2023 from Mr. Ted Godshalk
Mayor and Council,
I am offering public comment tonight about one piece of the Budget discussions. Please consider the evidence, report recommendations, and my summary at the end of this email.
The NC Police Department is requesting new funds to add one full time police officer to their ranks. Their request is purposefully vague so the leaders can use the officer to fill any need they see. The case for more officers has been made in the report called CPSM. You should be very specific about how the police department can better serve the community when any new hiring is done. The CPSM can be a guide for you to identify issues. I contend that the community has called, for a very long time, to have safer and slower streets. This budget cycle is the time to work on that.
The CPSM has recommendations for their Traffic Unit broken down into several topics for you to follow. While not all topics are specifically budget related, they are provided to you for your critical analysis.
The text -from pages 46 to 51 states (my highlights) :
STAFFINGNCPD has a dedicated Traffic Unit. The unit falls within the Patrol Operations Division and is staffed by a full-time motorcycle sergeant and two full-time motorcycle officers. Additional staffing includes a full-time administrative secretary. There is currently one vacant traffic officer position, CPSM recommends that position be filled when possible.
High-frequency traffic accident locations should be where the highest frequency of motor vehicle stops should occur. As mentioned in the Traffic section of this report, the focus of the Traffic Unit needs to change to a philosophy of stopping traffic accidents as opposed to piling up traffic stops to generate justification for receiving grants.
Making vehicle stops at the hot spots is a good start. Applying visible patrol and traffic enforcement at hot spots is essential. But that is only General Comment -
Ted Godshalk
part of the solution. If officers continue to check the areas and make the stops and the conditions persist, then the effort is somewhat wasted. CPSM recommends that the NCPD take a more strategic approach to these issues and enlist resources from the entire department to bring to bear on the problems.
Strong consideration should be given to developing a more robust intelligence function that would analyze both crime and traffic data to support patrol and investigative efforts. This function should be responsible for both crime prevention and traffic safety strategies by working closely with the community AND targeting the “hot spots” and “hot people” identified through a robust intelligence function.
SCHEDULEAll personnel in the Traffic Unit work a 4/10 schedule from 6:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The Traffic sergeant and one of the officers work Tuesday through Friday, while the other officer works Monday through Thursday. Neither officer is assigned a specific beat and has the freedom to go anywhere in the city.
As it stands with the schedule the unit is working, it can cover the busy morning traffic hours but not busy afternoon traffic hours. In order to cover a portion of both the busy morning traffic and the busy afternoon traffic times, CPSM recommends that the unit’s hours be modified to 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., which would enable the traffic officers to work traffic-related issues during the busiest traffic hours of the day. Optimally, a schedule would have one of the officers working day shift, and the other officer working an evening shift; however, it was learned that there is no department in the county that has motorcycle officers working after dark. There is an opportunity during the summer months when it stays light later for one of the officers to have a later shift.
My comment-
(Rush hour in the area of the ramps of I-5 and Cleveland Avenue, all the way to the Port District, Amazon, COSTCO Optical, BNSF, PASHA, and the US Navy base starts at 4:30 am and resumes in the afternoon at 2:00 pm. These times and locations need more traffic enforcement to slow the speeders coming off the freeway.)
SERGEANT’S WORKLOADThe Traffic sergeant has many additional responsibilities beyond supervising his subordinates in the unit. He writes, submits, manages, and administers the California Office of Traffic Safety grant that the city receives.
His responsibilities also include review and release of stored vehicles, review of contested parking violations, vehicle storage hearings, and review of parking citations. Although the city’s parking control is operated out of city hall, he still must be responsible for some of the managing of the unit. Anecdotally, the sergeant admitted that he spends much more time in the office working on those items than he does out supervising and issuing citations. It is recommended the sergeant delegate more of the administrative responsibilities he is now handling to the administrative secretary in the unit to free up his time.
TRAININGThe motor officers train quarterly to retain their riding proficiency rating.
Only one of the traffic officers assigned to traffic has been to any traffic accident-related training and that was the Basic Accident Investigation course; however, it was learned that he is slated to attend Advanced Accident Investigation and Accident
Reconstruction. Although these officers have no traffic-related advanced training, they are involved in investigations involving serious injury and death and which are sometimes criminal in nature.
Traffic investigations involving serious injury and death require a great deal of experience along with advanced training in order to conduct the investigations properly to ensure filings are obtained on accidents involving criminal intent. It is recommended that all officers assigned to traffic, at minimum, attend a POST-approved Basic and Advanced Accident Investigation class.
As well, patrol officers are assigned to handle all injury traffic accidents. Most patrol officers undoubtedly have had only the bare minimum accident investigation training that they received in the academy. If the department is going to continue to have patrol officers conduct injury accident investigations, it should be sending them to some additional advanced accident investigation training.
ACCCIDENT INVESTIGATIONSAs mentioned above, patrol officers handle traffic collision investigations, including those involving serious injury and death. In serious injury and fatal investigations the motor officers will assist patrol officers with doing the Total Station and the collection of evidence. A detective is also assigned to each investigation along with the motor officers to file the case. Thus, patrol officers must also respond to and take the accident investigations along with all of their other patrolrelated calls. While many of the investigations that patrol responds to are non-injury accidents, they still respond to ensure the drivers involved have exchanged information.
As was discussed earlier, it is apparent that patrol officers’ time is stressed due to workload. Since traffic officers do not respond to patrol-related calls to assist patrol, it is recommended that when they are working, the traffic officers be assigned to all traffic accident calls for service in lieu of patrol officers. At all other times, the accident calls for service would fall back onto the patrol officers to handle.
OTS GRANTEach year the department applies for, and receives, a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, which provides monies to be used for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) checkpoints, DUI saturation patrol, motorcycle safety, and bicycle safety. However, to receive the grant, the department must be able to show statistics that the city would reduce accidents if it received the grant. It appears that much of the Traffic Unit’s focus is writing tickets to show need to receive the grant.
ACCIDENT LOCATIONSIt is obvious by the data provided by NCPD that statistical data is available to the Traffic Unit on the high-frequency traffic accident locations in the city; however, in discussions with the traffic sergeant, we found there is no directed enforcement conducted to reduce traffic accidents at those high-frequency locations. NCPD should constantly review traffic accident data for locations where a large number of traffic accidents are occurring, and after identifying the primary collision factors involved in those accidents, engage in conducting directed enforcement to reduce the number of accidents at those locations.
The department must undergo a paradigm shift to begin operating to reduce the number of traffic accidents in the city.
My comment- More study of traffic patterns must be made to ascertain “new” hazardous locations. Talk with the public. It will tell you where the dangerous streets are, where accidents occur but go unreported, and where speeding is the common condition. Restarting the Neighborhood Councils would be one good way to open the dialogue. “THREE E’s”-
Every accident that can be prevented can save the community thousands of dollars in damages and liability. The department should embrace the mission of reducing accidents, reducing injuries, and saving lives through enforcement, education, and roadway improvement through engineering. Collectively, these are referred to as the “Three E’s” of traffic safety.
An opportunity exists to leverage the enforcement already being conducted in National City towards a more focused approach to traffic safety. CPSM recommends that traffic safety become an integral part of the strategic plan for all patrol officers, not only the traffic officers. The Traffic Unit, under the leadership of the sergeant, should coordinate the efforts in this area and leverage the efforts of the entire patrol function. Using personal injury accidents as the outcome measure, the NCPD should embrace a comprehensive approach focusing on the “Three E’s”: Enforcement, Education, and Engineering.
CPSM is not an advocate of one method over another. The point is that traffic accidents need to be looked at from a strategic perspective with goals and plans identified and communicated throughout the department.
TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENTDuring the period studied, NCPD engaged in more than 3,600 traffic stops. These stops accounted for approximately 15.3 percent of all CFS handled by the department and about 38 percent of all police- initiated activities. This is a large amount of activity in both raw numbers and in the context of total work; the activity signifies a robust approach to traffic enforcement. It is not clear, however, if this enforcement is contributing to any improvement in overall traffic safety in the community.
From an enforcement perspective NCPD appears to be doing an excellent job, with more than 3,600 traffic stops per year. Interestingly though, data from 2019 through 2021 show that the stops do not appear to have had an impact on the frequency and prevalence of traffic crashes. In 2020, the volume of traffic was reduced because of COVID-19 restrictions, therefore data from that year should be interpreted with caution. However, from 2019 to 2021 there were about the same number of accidents year-over-year, and almost no reduction from 2019 to 2021. It seems that enforcement alone will not improve traffic safety and a more focused approach could be taken in which at-risk drivers and at-risk locations are the targets.
As can be seen in the following table, the city had three traffic fatalities in both 2019 and 2020; however, that total nearly tripled in 2021. Data analysis must be conducted to see if 2021 was an anomaly or if there is a significant reason for the dramatic increase in fatality accidents.
As evidenced when examining the number of citations issued by the Traffic Unit officers, they are issuing almost twice as many equipment violation citations than moving violation citations. A moving violation is oftentimes the primary factor in traffic accidents. The traffic team should embrace a paradigm shift regarding their issuance of citations to focus more on issuing moving violation citations as opposed to equipment violation citations.
The unit also issued an unusually high number of parking tickets, especially considering that the city has its own parking control unit. It was learned that, oftentimes, the traffic officers when working areas around schools will issue parking citations in lieu of a moving violation citation. However, it was also learned that when a call comes into the department regarding a parking issue, instead of transferring the call to the city’s parking control unit the traffic officers will respond and handle the call and issue a parking citation if appropriate.
Having traffic motorcycle officers responding to parking issues and issuing parking citations is not the best use of their time, especially since the city has a parking control unit. Consideration should be given to altering the Traffic Unit’s approach to responding to parking calls for service as well as the issuance of a parking citation in lieu of issuing a moving violation citation.(end of text)
I recognize that the CPSM report covers all aspects of the city’s Police and Fire Departments. I contend that the community has prioritized traffic safety and the budget is one method to address its concerns.
My summary1- In this budget and to make our streets safer and slower for motorists, pedestrians, and drivers, you should fill the current vacancy in the Traffic Unit, as well as add the new officer requested by the leadership to the Traffic Unit. 2-Direct the NCPD leadership to use patrol cars and officers to better assist the officers on motorcycles with busy times and locations.
3- Insist on more broad working hours program for the Traffic Unit, including even earlier hours than the CPSM calls for due to the new flexibility in shift work times, post- pandemic.
4- Restart the Neighborhood Councils and study traffic that our neighbors contend with every day.
5- Discuss all of the the recommendations in the CPSM report’s section on the Traffic Unit with NC Police Department leadership and implement changes that will bring down speeds, enforce stop signs, and protect lives.
Thank you,
Ted Godshalk
From: Joan Rincon
To: Clerk
Subject: May 2 Council Meeting, Item # 8.3 CUP for 127 E. 8th Street Date: Saturday, April 29, 2023 9:44:39 AM
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I strongly oppose this application:
1. Alcohol licensees are extremely overconcentrated in this immediate vicinity. Across the street is Big Ben liquor market, which is "grandfathered" by the City with no CUP and continues to sell airline-bottles of liquor, fortified malts and other nuisance products. They also own an adjoining Grill House with a type 41. McDinis with a type 47 is next door to the proposed licensee. Across the street at 801 B Street is scheduled to be tequilla-seller Tahoma Mercado. Half a block away at 41 E. 8th, the Market on 8th operation has devolved into nothing but a beer bar.
Within three blocks of applicant you ALSO have a bar at the Ramada Hotel, alcohol at Napoleone's Restaurant, and a type 41 licensee called Hero's.
2. The alcohol licensees in this area have created a huge traffic and pedestrian safety problem. The intersection of 8th and A Street has seen multiple crashes since Market on 8th/Novo Brazil opened in fall 2021. On Super Bowl night 2023, a driver ran over a pedestrian less than a block from this proposed CUP. Police records will reveal a strong increase in assaults and stabbings within the two-block radius. While a lack of parking is not itself a "safety" hazard, it creates one here because you have so many vehicles stopping in the street waiting for others to pull out, or in many cases back out, from parking spaces that other drivers try to pass, resulting in collisions. As City Director of Public Works Roberto Yano will attest, his short-staffed Engineering Dept has been trying since March 2022 to perform a traffic safety study of the intersection due to the problems, but has been unable to complete it. Patrons of the transit system, whose stops for two different routes are in this vicinity, are constantly being harrassed and bullied by drunks.
Real coffeehouses don't sell alcohol. Not Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, not Starbucks, not Peets, not Sufficient Grounds, not any of them. You are once again being promised a fascinating food, coffee and entertainment space that is actually just more grease-food and beer....and that we have all over town.
You are killing this neighborhood with alcohol.
It's no longer the Mile of Bars. Now it's just the Pile of Bars. -Joan Rincon
National City
Item 8.3 -
Joan Rincon