Imperial Beach is re-evaluating how much money it spends on public safety and whether the current policing model is working.
A committee tasked with analyzing current spending levels, evaluating police practices, and exploring alternatives presented its findings to the City Council last week. One thing was clear: this is the beginning of a long conversation.
Council Ed Spriggs and Paloma Aguirre — the committee’s two — spent 90 days reaching out to the community, experts, and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department to compile their report. While this is a good start, they said, the city needs to invest more time and research in order to make substantive changes regarding policing in Imperial Beach.
“What I hope is that one of the side effects of this discussion is that everybody has a little bit better understanding of each other’s perspectives,” said Spriggs, who is currently the only Black man on a City Council in San Diego County.
Imperial Beach spends roughly 36 percent of its general fund tax dollars on its contract with the Sheriff’s Department. And that share of the pie is growing.
Cost of public safety is outpacing the amount of money Imperial Beach has. Over the last couple years, the city has had to make cuts to the Fire Department in order to afford its contract with the Sheriff’s Department.
The city began to formally re-evaluate how much it spends on policing this summer, in the wake of nationwide protests over police brutalitye prompted by the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a White police officer.
Authors of the report recognized and praised the Sheriff’s Department’s role in reducing crime rates to historic lows.
“While the accomplishment of, and the level of community for, the Sheriff’s Department in Imperial Beach are undeniable, there remains room for improvement,” the report states.
But they noted the department has improvements to make. Specifically, the authors stated, “there are people in the community that have had poor experiences with the Sheriff’s Department and some people of color in the city continue to have a general mistrust of law enforcement.”
The committee found that the “unsustainable” growth of public safety costs impacts the city’s ability to provide “an acceptable level of community services.”
Additionally, the report called the Sheriff’s Department data “unacceptable,” because it does not collect city-specific information. Because of this, the committee had access to county-wide police data. The one-size-fits-all model doesn’t allow individual cities to implement policing strategies that might be more appropriate, the report stated.
The report recommends keeping the committee going to continue to gather data from the Sheriff’s Department, evaluate different policing models, and serve as a public forum where of the community can talk about public safety issues.
The committee’s presentation of the report was an “accept and file” item, meaning the City Council simply absorbed and discussed the report. There was no vote on any of its findings or recommendations.
In future meetings, the council can choose to take action based on the report’s findings.
Council agreed that this is the beginning of a much larger conversation. One of their key takeaways was that it helped start the conversation of how to spend less on sheriff’s deputies without jeopardizing public safety.
This can be achieved through better management of existing resources like responding to non-emergency calls with community service officers that cost less than sheriff’s deputies.
Councilman Mark West noted that deputies are being asked to do too much by responding to mental health emergencies, homeless issues and drug and alcohol abuse calls. He noted that the majority of 911 calls in Imperial Beach are for non-violent issues.
“Non-emergency calls should result in non-emergency responses,” he said.
During the presentation, several public speakers ed the committee’s work. However, some criticized it as being anti-police.
Spriggs disagreed.
“It’s not,” he said. “We it throughout the report that we appreciate the services of the sheriff, we appreciate the fact that Imperial Beach has one of the lowest crime rates of any city, we appreciate the fact that we don’t want any reduction to boots on the ground or in our ability to keep our citizens safe. We it that public safety is our number one priority.”
