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Araiza, Fatima From:Erik Varho <erikvarho@icloud.com> Sent:Monday, September 14, 2020 8:32 PM To:eComment Cc:Pulido, Miguel; Sarmiento, Vicente; Penaloza, David; Solorio, Jose; Bacerra, Phil; Mendoza, Nelida; Villegas, Juan Subject:Public Comment on 20B, 20C, 60B, & 60C Hello, my name is Erik Varho, and I am a resident of Ward 1. I would like to make public comment on a few items on the agenda for Tuesday. I have watched a few recent meetings live, and I am still unsure of how email comments are being considered at them. Can you please get back to me with how email comments are addressed? Thank you. The items I would like to comment on: Item 20B: I do not support this item. I understand that this is a federal grant, and we need to use this money or it will go away. But according to the overview on the website, the JAG program states that funds can be used to support: "a range of program areas including ... indigent defense ... education ... drug treatment ... mental health programs ... behavioral programs." ESPECIALLY if we are not spending our own City dollars, why wouldn't we use a gift like this to address root causes of crime in our community? Instead you want to throw more money at the most militarized wing of law enforcement, the SWAT team? We keep throwing more money in that direction, yet crime doesn't seem to be going down, people don't feel any safer. Item 20C: Similarly, I understand this is a grant, and not coming out of City pockets. I don't think we should accept it, because I don't think we should be increasing the size of our police department. Using federal money to hire more police will still mean higher financial costs for the city in the long term. But if you absolutely have to use that money in hiring more police, consider hiring people who can make the police department smarter and more effective, instead of simply putting more bodies with guns in the streets. Item 60B: Prohibiting Syringe Exchange programs in Santa Ana would be a HUGE mistake. It would do NOTHING to discourage or prevent drug use from happening. Drug addiction is a mental health issue, people will continue to use drugs but in an unsafe manner; meaning dangerous and deadly diseases will more easily spread throughout our community. You may think you are far removed from our brothers and sisters who struggle with drug problems, but in actuality you aren't. They are our neighbors, friends of friends, family. Allowing preventable diseases to propagate in these communities endangers all of us by proxy. Item 60C: Look I know it plays well with certain constituents of yours but it's 2020, it's time to stop the "Tough on Crime" one-upmanship. Lets instead be smart on crime. Reverting certain misdemeanor charges back to felonies essentially means putting more people in prison. And I get that that's the point, but there is so much research and literature out there that shows that prison is not a very successful deterrent in preventing crime. Changing certain property crimes into "wobblers", meaning they can either be determined a misdemeanor or felony leaves that discretion to a judge. That leaves too much room for bias to come into play - and you know full well that 1