New police station, body cameras are among SLOPD’s top priorities

From large projects such as building a new police station and outfitting all officers with body cameras to smaller initiatives such as creating a youth Explorer program, the San Luis Obispo Police Department intends to make significant changes over the next five years.

In a presentation to the City Council last week, police Chief Deanna Cantrell unveiled the Police Department’s five-year strategic plan — the first such plan in the department’s 105-year history.

In the works since 2013, the plan focuses on five broad strategic directions: cutting crime, increasing efficiency, enhancing relationships inside and outside the department, advancing technology, and improving infrastructure.

In her first presentation to the City Council since being hired in January, Cantrell said the plan is designed to be a living document that can be adjusted as circumstances change, and progress will be tracked and evaluated monthly by staff and management.

“(This plan) is owned by all the members of the Police Department,” Cantrell said.

Developing the plan

The department of 86.5 full-time positions — 60 sworn officers and 26.5 civilian staff — operates on a $15.1 million budget and serves a population of about 46,000 people.

The strategic plan initiative began under former chief Steve Gesell, who left the department after being placed on administrative leave in May, 2015. The plan was developed by a steering committee of 10 police officers and five managers of various city departments in consultation with San Luis Obispo-based Sostrin Consulting, meeting several times between June and October 2014.

Using information from a Police Officers Standards and Training assessment, community input, and employee surveys, the committee found that the department has developed a solid reputation and strong partnerships with residents, but could “do better in addressing the transient population engaged in adverse or illegal behaviors that negatively impact our community,” the strategic plan states.

Of the six strategies listed to strengthen community relations, none include homeless issues. Under crime prevention, however, the department lists enhancing the Directed Giving campaign that collects donations for homeless services, beyond the end of the pilot program in April 2016.

Involving the public

A large part of the plan focuses on youth programs and community participation in public safety. The department seeks to create an Explorer post for teenagers interested in careers in law enforcement by 2017 and a drug awareness educational program for grader-schoolers by 2018.

“Right now, we don’t have any youth programs,” Cantrell said Thursday. “Often, they’ll develop their opinion of law enforcement through social media, so it really is important for us to get out there with the youth.”

The department also seeks to get adults involved through expansion of its Volunteer Program this year and the creation of a Citizen’s Academy in 2017. The program would be open to the public for eight- to 10-week sessions where participants learn about investigations, civil rights, and public safety issues affecting the city.

“They’ll learn everything,” Cantrell said. “It’s about educating folks about what their police department does.”

A K-9 unit, which the department plans to research and draft a proposal for in 2017, will serve both enforcement and community outreach functions, Cantrell said.

“We’re the biggest city in the county, yet we borrow K-9s from other agencies,” Cantrell said. “Next year we’ll be tracking how often do we ask for them, where we use them and what we’re using them for, and see if a program would fit our needs.”

Internal changes

Internally, the department plans to assess the management structure in its Investigations Bureau, which currently operates without a supervising sergeant. The entire department’s structure can be reorganized, Cantrell said, to strengthen oversight. Also listed are studying workloads and staffing needs in each of its three divisions and creating an annual review process for officer use of force incidents.

The latter initiative includes purchasing a new software program that tracks specifics of those incidents as well as citizen complaints, so that an early-warning system alerts appropriate staff of a possible need for an internal review of an officer, Cantrell said.

The plan emphasizes the need to modernize and expand the department’s technological capabilities, such as surveillance video, improving the dispatch center’s audio recording equipment, implementing mobile fingerprint scanning and facial recognition technology (pending grant funding), and putting to use electronic citation and report writing.

As the department’s body-worn camera pilot program, in which cameras have been worn by 10 officers since last year, wraps up in August, Cantrell said she expects all officers to be fitted with the cameras and have equipment to store and review footage by the end of 2017.

New police station

At the Tuesday council meeting, the biggest topic of discussion was evaluating the condition of the police station building on Walnut Street. The building has long been recognized as inadequate for the department’s needs; site assessments in both 1998 and 2003 found aging infrastructure and extremely limited space and electronic capabilities.

Cantrell said the department’s preferred action is to remodel and expand the existing facility, possibly constructing an additional building and parking structure. The project is in the very early stages, and the department would use money set aside from capital improvement project funds to hire a consultant to develop a design plan.

Cantrell said staff met with engineers a few weeks ago, and the department is hoping to get council approval to put out a request for proposals by the end of this year.

During public comment at Tuesday’s meeting, resident Steve Delmartini, a member of the Chief’s Roundtable, expressed support for a new or at least upgraded police station.

“It’s kind of depressing in there,” Delmartini said. “They’ve been working in some really regulated places. ... It’s the police’s turn for somebody to look at this.”

On Friday, Aaron Schafer, president of the San Luis Obispo Police Officer’s Association, said the union was heavily involved throughout the planning process. Members are particularly enthused about the K-9 unit and the prospect of a new building, Schafer said, as well as the possibility of adding more officers and increasing minimum staffing levels, which he said hasn’t changed since the 1980s.

This story was originally published March 19, 2016 at 3:47 PM with the headline "New police station, body cameras are among SLOPD’s top priorities."