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<br />Orozco, Norma <br />From:Houston, Nicole <br />Sent:Thursday, June 18, 2020 4:40 PM <br />To:eComment_Forwarding <br />Subject:FW: Defund SAPD and invest in a strong community oversight <br /> <br /> <br />From: Lucy Dale \[mailto:lucitajd23@gmail.com\] <br />Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2020 3:17 PM <br />To: Pulido, Miguel <MPulido@santa-ana.org>; Sarmiento, Vicente <VSarmiento@santa-ana.org>; Penaloza, David <br /><DPenaloza@santa-ana.org>; Solorio, Jose <JSolorio@santa-ana.org>; Bacerra, Phil <pbacerra@santa-ana.org>; <br />Mendoza, Nelida <nmendoza@santa-ana.org> <br />Subject: Defund SAPD and invest in a strong community oversight <br /> <br />Dear Santa Ana City Council, <br /> <br />The last month of protests have reminded us all, Black and communities of color as a whole need more support, <br />not surveillance and suppression. We call on you to recognize the errors of the past and try out a new, more <br />effective strategy for community recovery - start defunding the SAPD now and use those funds to invest in what <br />our communities truly need - housing, economic and legal assistance, youth programming, and racial healing. <br /> <br />The city was drowning in deficits for a decade after the last recession because we couldn’t break our addiction <br />to expensive, unaccountable, and ineffective policing and incarceration hoping it would deliver community <br />safety. Measure X was an opportunity to fix this by generating revenues to rebalance our city priorities, <br />allowing us to invest in what really makes a community safe and prosperous. Yet, much of that was squandered <br />on more of the same -- more police officers getting bigger payouts and still incurring overtime and without any <br />clear metrics for success. <br /> <br />The City Council sold Measure X to voters as an opportunity to help Santa Ana finally invest in our <br />communities to make them truly safe, stable spaces that residents can thrive in. Regrettably, our elected <br />representatives squandered much of that opportunity long before this pandemic hit our city. <br /> <br />Taking a page out of an old, ineffective playbook, you handed out a lavish police contract that had little to do <br />with community safety -- leading us to the brink of yet another council-made deficit. Now we’re being asked to <br />bear the burden of “difficult choices” due to budget shortfalls while our police department skates by with a 7% <br />budget increase -- funded by our taxes. <br /> <br />The city was drowning in deficits for a decade after the last recession because we couldn’t break our addiction <br />to expensive, unaccountable, and ineffective policing and incarceration hoping it would deliver community <br />safety. Measure X was an opportunity to fix this by generating revenues to rebalance our city priorities, <br />allowing us to invest in what really makes a community safe and prosperous. Yet, much of that was squandered <br />on more of the same -- more police officers getting bigger payouts and still incurring overtime and without any <br />clear metrics for success. <br /> <br />After more than a decade of this failed approach that hasn’t made our communities safer all while burning <br />through our taxes, you’d think we’d learn our lesson. But it’s not too late, the lesson is this -- you can’t balance <br />the budget long term without defunding the police. Look at your projections, it simply can’t be balanced by <br />1 <br /> <br />