From: Flores, Valerie
To: Daza, Laarni
Subject: FW: Written Correspondence for Agenda Item No. 1 Feb. 23, 2022 PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE SPECIAL
MEETING
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2022 4:17:23 PM
Please post.
From: Juan Pablo Alban
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2022 3:40 PM
To: Flores, Valerie <[email protected]>
Subject: Written Correspondence for Agenda Item No. 1 Feb. 23, 2022 PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE
SPECIAL MEETING
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Written Correspondence For Agenda Item No. 1 (CITY PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES
ADDRESSING CRIME AND VIOLENCE PREVENTION, INTERVENTION AND
ENFORCEMENT)
Based on the public record of Pasadena’s budget, for Fiscal Year 2022, the total operating budget for the city is about $898.5 million. The total budget allocated to the police is $92.8 million.
For Fiscal Year 2012, the total operating budget for the city was about $867.5 million, while the total budget allocated to the police that year was about $64.0 million. So while the city’s total budget increased by 4% between 2012 and 2022, the police budget increased by a stunning 45% during the same period.
Meanwhile, the city is suffering from a debilitating increase in violent crime. Some of the most heinous crimes, including the murder of children, seem to occur with impunity.
The
police so far seem helpless to hold most violent criminals accountable despite the city's tremendous dedication to an ever-increasing budget for the PPD. Please consider this possibility: driven in important part by horrific instances of excessive and costly police force, such as the killing of Pasadena native Anthony McClain with two gunshots to his back, devastating the lives of his family and costing the city’s taxpayers millions in settlement money, the police do not have the trust and confidence of the city's residents who could perhaps most help hold accountable the people committing the crimes.
All of us want a less
violent city. Nobody wants to see children murdered in cold blood. Yet whoever has the information may simply not trust the police, at least not enough to help them catch the perpetrators.
Perhaps this Committee and the City Council in general would be wise to remember Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity, and stop trying the same things that haven’t worked over and over again. Budgets are public policy in numbers. While I applaud the dedication of this meeting to alternatives to police as a means of reducing violent crime, the estimated budget for the combined proposals — about $8.2 million, or just 8.8% of the 2022 police budget - is perhaps the bigger elephant in the room.
It is long past time for the city’s leaders to think
bigger than this; to get input and to actually implement bigger non-police proposals and make real reallocations of the budget to ideas around community policing, listening primarily to the communities most affected by the violent crime.
Thank you for your consideration.
Juan Pablo Albán, CFA, Esq.
Stuart Alban Law PC
Pasadena, CA 91103
www.stuartalbanlaw.com
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