Belmont City Council Meeting: Police Chief's Quarterly Report – June 22, 2026

I'm going to read something here really quickly.

Officer Dela Cruz joined the Belmont Police Department in 2024 and quickly distinguished himself as a dedicated and hardworking officer.

Since joining the department, Austria de la Cruz has consistently demonstrated a strong work ethic, professionalism, and a willingness to take on any assignment.

I could personally speak to that.

He approaches his duties with a calm, compassionate demeanor that reflects positivity on both the Belmont Police Department and our community.

In 2025, Officer De La Cruz led the department in DYRS, earning recognition from the mothers against drunk driving Bayer Area chapter.

Through his proactive enforcement efforts, he has helped remove impaired drivers from Belmont streets, reducing the risk of preventable collisions, and helping to ensure the safety of our residents, businesses, and visitors.

His commitment to keeping the Belmont community safe, combined with his dedication, initiative, and professionalism exemplifies the highest standard of the Belmont Police Department.

For his outstanding performance and valuable contribution to the safety and well-being of the Belmont community, Officer Dalek Cruz deserves this congregation.

Congratulations.

Okay.

He left, but I wanted to just say congratulations to him again.

Thank you for your service.

He works nice.

It's okay.

Sorry.

All right.

Item for public comments and announcements.

We're going to limit this to 15 minutes with a maximum of three minutes per speaker, and is for items of interest not on the agenda.

If your subject is not on the agenda, we can recognize you at this time.

Do we have any public comment?

No, if you get public comments.

Approval of minutes.

I'm reporting.

I second.

Motion made motion seconded.

And approved.

Thank you.

Item six general business.

Uh, item A, police police chiefs quarterly report.

I want to welcome our new police team.

Welcome to this meeting.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

So a little bit about myself.

Um I have a connection to Belmont, which uh it was an honor to come back and uh work for the city that I grew up in.

Uh in the 70s, I uh was born in Belmont and lived on uh uh Lassen and Tahoe uh with my family.

My uh dad was uh in real estate in Belmont and uh all my siblings went to school here.

So the connection here is uh very strong with my family.

So I did uh very much appreciate coming back and working for the community that means so much to my family.

Um I went to Sarah High School and graduated uh many years ago.

Um I have a bachelor's art in history and major coursework in business administration from Santa Clara University, uh including finance and accounting and uh macro and micro accounting, all that stuff.

Uh worked for the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office for 26 years.

I retired as a captain.

Uh upon retirement, I was in charge of the uh coast uh contract, Halfham Bay and the unincorporated areas of that jurisdiction, as well as Woodside Portola Valley and Redwood City contracts.

I've been honored, as I said, to uh work for now assistant uh city manager Ken Stenquist uh as when he was police chief as a captain for the last four years.

It's been an honor and privilege to work at an agency that uh has a very high ethical standard and cares about the community in a very positive fashion.

So this is kind of the why.

This is the new thing.

I just uh went to a class for two weeks.

Um in 1986, Annette Thor on the left um hitchhiked in Ben Lohman, um, an area in Santa Clara County, and uh she wasn't seen again.

She was found a day later on Skyline, deceased, and this case was cold until 2012.

In 2012, myself and um detective Map Road had an opportunity to reopen this case, and um, we were able to do DNA and interviews, uh, identify this gentleman, uh John William Kelly, uh, as the person that killed her.

He also killed a number of other people in uh Humboldt County and Del North County.

Um, so it definitely a scourge to the community, and it affected both San Mateo County as well as the rest of the state.

Going into the next thing, this is Ilva Hagner, which is a little means a lot more to the Belmont community.

Ironically, uh Ilva worked in this building before it was the police department.

Um she actually worked in an office just over here that is currently the Belmont Police Department, which is uh uh a very small coincidence that uh we can't take lightly.

This case has been open since 1996.

We still have not found her, but as you can see, uh the two pictures on the right, there's a continuous and dedicated amount of work, um, especially with our investigations bureau to constantly be working towards uh finding Ilva and bringing closure to her family.

This is a very important thing, and this is why I can speak for most of law enforcement in this room, is why we do this job.

So here's how it kind of translates to technology.

As technology gets better, the most important thing about technology is just being ethical and transparent with the information.

Um, importantly, a case from the 80s similar to Annette Thor, would have benefited from this technology if used correctly.

Some people are using the technology incorrectly, but we have put up guardrails and we take it very seriously in providing uh that it's only used for a legitimate criminal investigation.

I can say for the automated license plate readers, we've had 60 cases that have been assisted in the arrests of serious offenders.

And those 60 cases are all profound.

To highlight one of them, um, there was a group of people making counterfeit currency and uh passing it in many businesses in the city of Belmont as well as other jurisdictions.

Through uh an investigation and the assistance of ALPL CRAMES, we were able to arrest them.

They were staying in a local motel, uh, arrest them, work with the federal agencies, Secret Service to do a counterfeiting investigation and provide closure to families because these people were using identity people's identities, which a lot of us have been the victim of, but hopefully no one in this room.

And these had multiple identities, we're making counterfeit currency and we're causing significant problems for the members of our community in the larger uh state.

So our policy and our transparency portal for both uh license plate readers and uh our drone program are both clearly defined.

They're on our website, and there's additional information on our transparency pro uh portals that provides uh usage, what it's for, and we're constantly evolving the information um that we're providing the community in a way to be the most transparent as we can.

Uh we've had an opportunity to hire some exceptional people recently, and I'd like to highlight the most recent one.

Uh Taya Gonzalez just started in March.

Um, she's a local person living in Mountain View and went to St.

Francis High School.

Very proud of her.

She just graduated from Grand Canyon University and had prior experience in college as a community service officer.

So everyone's really excited to have her on board and have that experience stepping stone uh to be a future police officer and having that experience of working as a CSO is is vital to her and our department.

Training, this is uh always an interesting one.

So the last time when uh Chief Stink was reported it, we had about 1200 hours of training hours in that in that time.

We've obviously had a significant increase uh in the amount of training and uh specificity where range master training, uh most officer, uh field sobriety tests.

These are all things that both help our officers be better as well as providing um legal updates and things that help law enforcement in general.

I had the honor just to finish the executive development course, which was a two-week course uh in beautiful Folsom.

And uh it was an opportunity to learn uh from other agencies and work collaboratively to address problems in the law enforcement community.

This is one that uh we're really proud of.

Uh on the left on the right, I'm sorry, is uh our um SRO uh Sacope.

Um in May, he did a great e-bike safety uh meeting for the schools and the community.

Um it was a great class, well received.

The the schools enjoyed it.

Um, it's something that we're gonna continue and even try to you know advance and make more prevalent uh in our community as e-bikes are becoming more problematic for uh both uh pedestrians and and uh people driving around the city of Belmont.

In the lower corner, those are three great uh information sources.

The bottom one, Go Safely California is the office of traffic safety, and it has a bunch of exceptional resources, information and uh things that people can do, quizzes to learn more about uh the problems with e-bikes.

And we have quite a bit of great stuff on the horizon in the very near future, just coming up really quickly.

Um we have been doing copy with the cop for a significant period of time, and um it's been a great experience.

We have a lot of communication and we're able to have one-on-one conversations with community members and kind of learn more about uh what their concerns are.

So that kind of one-on-one uh interaction is is very helpful to our agency.

So we're gonna be July 8th at Docks Bagels, and it's gonna start off around 7.30 to 9 and 9:30, and we will be putting out some social media.

We'd love to see you.

Have a bagel and a cup of coffee with us, and uh we're excited for that.

Community Academy is coming up on August 26th.

Um, we have a number of people uh registered, but we're always looking for more.

So if anyone is interested, please uh reach out uh to Lieutenant Hussey or our dispatch center, and we can direct you towards that if you'd like to be part of that.

We'd love to have additional community members.

There's a great experience at tour of the jail and other activities that you kind of learn the ins and outs of law enforcement and and have a kind of a different look in how we do business.

National Net Out is August 4th.

Currently, I understand we have about five sites.

Uh, years past we've had 11.

So it's still early.

Um, but if anyone would like to host the site, we would love to have it and have that interaction and a great experience that we've had for many years in the city.

And then the City of Belmont Centennial.

Very excited about that.

I think the drone show is going to be an exciting uh thing coming up in October.

Um, but a lot of information coming there for uh the community and the city of Belmont to interact and celebrate 100 years of the city.

And grants.

This is uh I left this for the last because uh as budgetary issues become concerning.

Um the police department and the city is has worked very hard to find grants that can help uh reduce the impact to the community and and the city's uh overall budget.

So we're we're proud of the first two.

We have uh continuation of the Office of Traffic Safety Grant, which is uh enforcement education and um providing bike rodeos and events, uh unique events that we've done in the past.

So we we got that grant for the next fiscal year is 37,000, and that'll help uh reduce uh the overall budget of the police department.

The second one we just got approved for is the California Highway Patrol Cannabis Tax Fund Grant.

Um, and this one is is very helpful because it provides a significant amount of equipment, um, stationary lights for um investigations and a new sign board.

Uh our sign boards are are very old, so that being able to give the community information on a modern uh sign board is very valuable and and will also reduce the impact to our our uh budget.

Then the one that we're most excited about, which uh we're gonna hear uh in a couple of days is uh the Board of State Community Corrections Public Health and Safety Grant.

Um they run the jails, so it's kind of weird that they're doing uh a law enforcement grant, but in terms of it's gonna be a million dollars over the course of five years, so about 200,000 to staff uh 47% of a detective corporal position, which will help um reduce our impact towards the overall budget.

So we're very excited to hear about that.

Everything looks good thus far.

So we're uh keeping our hopes up that 25th will be great news.

And thank you very much.

Um, happy to answer any questions that we have.

Um, so I guess we can you want to take some questions first and then we'll take public comments and then um I just have a question.

Um, thank you for your presentation and for your why, right?

So I think it's really important to understand high school or call to serve in law enforcement.

So that was pretty helpful.

Um, so I know we talked a little bit about um ADLP uh and the um how it's been helpful in solving 60 cases since we started it, which is great.

And I know there's the members of the public here who've been a part of that process the entire time and been incredibly helpful to us.

Um but I think there may be some members of the public who don't understand exactly what the guardrails we are that we have on.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

Like we don't just leave it open for people to pull the information.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

So one of the most important components is um the auditing component where we're constantly monitoring both our use and other agencies' use on our network.

Um, and the biggest tool that we've had is when there might be an issue uh with another agency, uh, you know, we have narrowed our uh number of agencies that we share with from a high of I think it was over 200.

We're we're now under 100, and we're gonna continue to assess everyone in there to narrow it to the smallest level that we can in terms of appropriate um collaboration with agencies.

Additionally, there's certain triggers that you're allowed to turn on.

We have an audit component, we have uh additional transparency that can be added through that that we've all added to uh make sure an automatic audit process that gives you audit examples every uh set period of time according to your policy.

Um and definitely when other agencies have come to pull the information from under need to be like a case number.

You talked a little bit about that.

Yes.

So our transparency page has a spreadsheet that uh the public can see, and the information on that uh is uh who is used utilizing it, uh the date and time, and uh case number and the reason for for the search.

Um, so both internally we're doing an internal audit of that information as well as uh if you know we assess it a problem with an outside agency, then um we revoke their uh usage of our data.

And our data is only being used uh kind of within our locality, we're not and not giving information nationally.

No, we absolutely do not share with the federal government and um the sharing outside of uh the state isn't uh something that we do, but we're actually narrowing it down to almost a 40-mile uh circle from from Belmont.

So we're on a daily basis reducing the number of agencies that we're sharing to get to that sweet spot.

One other question on that, just in internally, right?

Someone internal to the city of Belmont can't just access it, they actually have to have an active case number as well, correct?

Yeah, internally they have to have a case number um and a reason.

And um, so that would be something that when we do the audit, we look at the case number, we go into our computer system that has the report writing, and we confirm the reason was justified.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh do we have any public comment on this item?

Hi.

Congratulations.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you very much.

Um, just a question as I know we've had some conversations in this forum and outside before about the um mental health clinician, and um I know that it's potentially uncertain the future on terms of grants of continuing that.

And um I think it would be helpful to have some reporting on the future of that that program.

Thanks.

Thank you.

That's not on the agenda, but we'll take note of it.

Thank you.

Again, um, thank you actually very much for that.

Um we have an extension for uh at least six months.

Um they allocated some additional money from the county, and so we are going to be able to continue that for at least the next next six to seven months.

So we'll have that asset and then reassess from that point.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay, so you have any other comments?

There are no comments online, okay.

So there's anyone else in the room.

Anybody else in the room?

Okay.

Um, I just want to thank you for your presentation and, you know, the efforts that the police department makes or and not just this department, but all the departments in the city.

Um, you know, not everybody watches the budget presentation, but you know, we actually had to dip into our reserves for the first time going into next year because we're not getting our vehicle license fee funding back.

So uh it always it continues to impress me how resilient and how much you guys think out of the box that you're continuing to do more for our uh our community with less.

And you know, we're the fact that I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed about that million dollar that million dollar grant, but uh, you know, I just want at least for the benefit of the public that's here that you know our city works really hard to make sure we're giving the best services to our community and you know, law enforcement is you know one humongous component because safety is the biggest thing for all of us, right?

And I also applaud your efforts with uh just the interdepartmental workings because you know, e-bikes is you know, kind of the hot topic, and you're doing a fantastic job, but then you're working with the communications team to get it out on social media.

So all of these things, and I say it, it's gonna be like my new mantra.

Like we have a great city, and it doesn't happen by accident.

There's a lot of work that goes on in the background.

And so I just wanted to thank you so much for your presentation and for sharing that why because it is it is critical for those of us that are out in the public who are just kind of living our daily lives, that there are all these cases from many, many years ago where families are still suffering, but you guys are still working hard to try to get some closure for them.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Okay, um item seven committee updates, staff items.

Any of these.

Oh, um, or this is not the right time to do this, but I did um have a exactly a question.

I guess I could make it a comment about how much training our officers do.

You're talking about, you know, we're really trying to do well by our residents and try to keep everybody sane, but the people who are keeping our safe all our residents safe are also doing that in very well trained ethical ways.

So um I'm not gonna remember exactly how uh how much training was 1645.

That's what I saw on the slide.

Okay, just to pull that out and highlight it.

And that's well beyond the minimum that's required.

Absolutely.

And additionally, the education that we've highlighted, you know, we we we're able very appreciative we're able to hire people with uh educational background um and that willingness to learn constantly.

We have a number of people in this room um that have uh continued their education while working in Belmont, and that's vital.

Yeah, and thank you for for doing all of that and for that.

The the new members of uh the department as we we swore them in, I don't know when it was at like last meeting or the meeting before, but uh I just appreciate the way that you continue to um bring in people who say have the same values as us, right?

That you know that we are one big family here and we're all here working to support each other.

So thank you for that.

We'll take my cover.

Thank you.

Okay, there's nothing else.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well done.

Thank you.

I'm efficient.

Yeah.