COUNCIL ITEM REQUEST FORM
City of
Santa Clara
The Center of Whnt's Possible
RECEIVED
JUN 2 4 2022
City Clerk's Office
City of Santa Clara
The Council Item Request Form is for members of the City Council to submit written requests to the City Manager's Office for inclusion of an item on a future City Council meeting agenda. At the meeting where the initial written request is heard, discussion should be limited to whether the item should be added to an agenda and a date, not the merit of the item. A majority vote of the City Council is required for the item to be added to future Council meeting agenda foraction.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Requesting Member of City Council : Suds Jain
Contact E-mail_ [email protected]_
Contact Phone 408-499-2955 _______ _
Today's Date_G/24/2022
WRITTEN REQUEST
I, Suds Jain ______ , hereby request that the following item be placed on the City of Santa Clara Council and Authorities Concurrent meeting agenda:
Santa Clara is the ONLY city in the State of California with an elected Chief of Police. Also it seems that only about 28% of California cities have elected City Clerks which means 2.5 times as many cities have non-elected clerks than elected clerks.
State Law says that a person needs to be a resident of the City of Santa Clara in order to run for the office of Chief of Police. I imagine that when the provision was put in our Charter for an elected Chief of Police, most of the police officers lived in the City. Currently there are only 12 sworn officers (including the Chief) out of a force of 153 sworn who live in the City.
The ranks of officers currently living in the City are as follows:
Police Chief - 1
Police Captain - 1
Police Lieutenant - 2
Police Sergeant - 1
Police Officer - 7
This seems to me to be a very limited pool to draw from and, when considering management experience, the pool shrinks even further.
I believe that Santa Clara should be able to recruit from the best police forces in the Nation for our Police Chief just like all the other cities in California do.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff has had numerous serious complaints against her and yet she kept getting re-elected. Eventually , the County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously that they had lost confidence in her and she is finally retiring. This shows that the power of incumbency and that name recognition can keep someone in office who probably should not be