San Jose City Council Meeting - March 10, 2026: Focus Areas, ALPRs, and Police Overtime

And today I get to run the meeting until the mayor gets here.

And I believe in starting on time.

So if Tony, can you take the role, or do we not have a quorum even yet?

No, we have quorum.

They're just not at their chairs.

Okay.

Campos.

Tordillos.

Cohen?

Ortiz?

Present.

Well, Kahi.

Here.

Ked Dulles?

Here.

Casey.

Fully?

Here, Mayhan, you have a quorum.

Great, thank you.

Now, if you're able, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

It stands one nation under God.

With liberty and justice for all today's invocation will be provided by the San Jose Taiko.

Council Member Tordillos, please tell us more.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Good afternoon, everyone.

For today's invocation, we are honored to be joined by one of District Three's longest serving and most decorated performance groups, San Jose Taiko.

Or ensemble drumming with Japanese drums.

Founded in nineteen seventy-three, San Jose Taiko was only the third Taiko group formed outside of Japan.

And in the years since, they have become a pioneer in contemporary taiko and have helped to grow the art form to an ecosystem that sports more than five hundred groups throughout North America.

In addition to their core mission of advancing Taiko as an art form, San Jose Taiko is also deeply invested in preserving and advancing the unique cultural heritage of San Jose's Japan town.

Last year, San Jose Taiko sponsored the successful application designating Japan Town as a California cultural district and providing additional resources to recognize and publicize Japan Towns history as a thriving community of artists and culture bearers with vibrant community events, extensive historic resources, and prevalent public art.

So without further public ador ado, uh please join me in welcoming San Jose Taiko.

Thank you.

Who doesn't love a good taiko drum beat?

Thank you.

Councilmember Ortiz, please join me at the podium as we recognize and proclaim the twenty-eighth annual Mashika New Year celebration.

Thank you so much, Vice Mayor, and I see Mirlao Peeley coming down to join us.

It's my honor today to present a proclamation recognizing the twenty-eighth annual Mexica New Year ceremony, hosted by Calpuli Tonaleke, one of the largest gatherings of indigenous people celebrating this tradition across our nation.

Each year, this ceremony brings together indigenous families, cultural practitioners, and community members to honor traditions carried forward for generations.

It is a time to reflect, reconnect, and celebrate the knowledge, culture, and ceremonies that continue to guide and strengthen indigenous communities to this day.

Tochli in our language is a rabbit.

It represents fertility, multiplicity, creativity, and abundance.

You get two rabbits together, and soon you have a lot of rabbits.

This year will be a new beginning of unity and abundance for everyone.

We invite you all to join us in ceremony and celebration this weekend at the beautiful city of San Jose M.

Aprush Park, where we'll be joined by our local Mowekma Lone tribe, neighboring Pomo and Miwok tribes, Apache, Totonaka Mishteco from Oaxaca, Totonaka from Veracruz, and over 500 Aztec dancers from throughout the nation in Mexico.

We appreciate you recognizing our native identity, our culture and traditions.

We look forward to celebrating with you all this weekend and continuing the spirit of collaboration, unity, and interculture exchange for a brighter tomorrow for our future generations.

Thank you.

Thank thank you so much.

As well as uh Councilmember Campos and Councilmember Dewan.

Councilmember Compos, you want to join us for the picture?

All right.

Thank you so much.

And now the Vice Mayor will present the proclamation.

Let's go over here and we'll take a picture.

Okay, moving on to orders of the day.

Does anyone on the council have any changes to the printed agenda?

Seeing no hands raised, I will move on to the closed session report.

Although we did not have a closed session today, but does our city attorney have anything to report?

There's not anything to report me here.

Great.

Thank you.

Before we begin uh the consent calendar, I'd like to let everybody know that we have a lot of people who would like to speak on various topics tonight.

So we are going to limit, as is our uh procedure, limit all public comment to one minute.

Next is the consent calendar.

Are there any items that the council wishes to pull from the consent calendar?

I do have a note that council member Condelis would like to pull 2.9.

Is there anyone else who'd like to pull anything?

If not, council member, are you pulling just for comment?

Uh correct.

Okay, then perhaps you could make a comment and then uh the consent.

How about that?

Uh that's thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um, um, so um looking through the staff memo, I do have uh a question for uh staff.

I think director Lush uh Losh would be the perfect person to answer this.

Um, you know uh curious as to uh some of the cost increases cost increases here, and you know, uh I I think the the we're essentially paying 492,000 dollars for this remodel for what you know from perception is a small bathroom project, you know, what's the additional contingency going to, and maybe you can shed a little insight uh as to this uh escalator.

So thank thank you, Councilmember Mattlesh, Director of Public Works.

So this project, like many projects when you do remodel, sometimes we find things that we don't anticipate.

When we have actually pretty small projects like this, that the project out awarded 170,000, 169,000.

The contingency ends up being fairly small, like 25,000.

So you run into any issues that come in construction, you could easily uh move through that money pretty quickly.

In this case, we ran into uh several significant issues, whether it was a crushed sewer line and there was some mold in the in the ceiling that we needed to abate, and so those two things and by themselves kind of pushed it over the top uh over the contingency to get to this additional amount.

So this additional amount gets us to resolve the sewer issue and the mold issue so we can open up these restrooms both to inside and outside the facility.

Uh thank you, Director.

This is this helps clarify.

Obviously, I've uh you know harped on the condition of our bathrooms, not just at Welch, but at Lake Cunningham and other places, and and you know how much I I care to make sure that we have uh facilities that our community can can enjoy and that don't look quite frankly that we've ignored them.

And so um, while I do have some questions on this helps clarify because you know this this uh Welch Park Neighborhood Center is fairly old, and so uh I appreciate the the the questions answered, and and with that I'll move approval of the consent calendar in its entirety.

Thank you.

Second.

Thank you.

Tony, do we have any public comment?

I have no cards for this item.

Okay, great.

Back to council.

I see no hands raised, so let's vote motion passes unanimously with Mayor Mahana absent.

Thank you.

Next item is item 3.1, report of the city manager.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I do not have a report today.

Okay, thank you.

Next item is item 3.4, City Council Focus Area Status Report for fiscal year 25-26.

And understand we have several people involved in the presentation.

Lee Wilcox, Assistant City Manager, Jenny Ruch Shambri, Deputy City Manager, Angel Reals, Deputy City Manager, Rosalind Huey, Deputy City Manager, and Eric Jensen, Deputy Director.

Yes.

We I'm gonna kick it off for us today.

Okay, as soon as staff is settled, which I think we're we're in good shape there.

Okay, good.

Um, so for item 3.4, our city council focus area status report for fiscal year 2025-26.

Um, today we're gonna present a comprehensive update on our five city council focus areas.

Over the past two years, the focus areas have been a valuable tool to manage priorities between the city council and the administration, align our budget decisions to these priorities, and drive the work of the organization in addressing some of the hardest problems that our community faces.

Last fall, as you will recall, we developed a revised model for managing the focus areas, which was approved by the city council on September 30th, 2025.

The new model focuses on learning from our efforts and identifying the most effective strategies to make progress.

And the key is that we're learning as we go along here.

We know that continuing to make progress on our toughest challenges requires partnership and open communications with the city council, especially as we navigate the budget process over the coming months.

I encourage you all to approach the conversation today with curiosity so that the lessons we have learned from implementation can inform the policy conversations of this council.

With that, I will turn it over to Eric Jensen, who will begin the presentation today.

Thank you, Eric, and thank you to the entire team.

Thank you.

I'm really excited to talk to you all today about our Q2 update on the city council focus areas.

So I'll just get right into it.

Um, today to set the stage, we will cover three parts.

First, we will cover a little bit of background framing on the focus areas and how the city uses them to manage our collective priorities.

Second, our executive sponsors will share a portfolio update on their focus area, including lessons learned through execution.

And finally, we will share our next steps that really set the stage through the budget process.

As a reminder, the focus areas create visibility on the problems that most impact our community, putting these issues at the top of this pyramid.

We have five focus areas today.

These continue to be our most complex initiatives requiring significant staff capacity and cross-departmental coordination to drive progress.

We manage these areas differently from the rest of the pyramid, where the bulk of our other core services and programs are delivered every day through departments.

Plenty of innovation happens in the bottom part of the pyramid every day where departments are empowered to drive efficiencies and make improvements.

But importantly, this level of change and navigating complexity is managed typically through operations.

One of the core values we center in this work involves cultivating an organizational mindset of learning with the goal of driving results for the community.

This includes a few principles, such as the idea that numbers are necessary, but don't tell the full story on their own.

Learning in public is scary, but builds trust and accountability.

Retrospectives support learning, and finally, progress requires humility, iteration, and commitment.

These are the types of conversations that we are excited to have through this focus area update today and beyond.

And with that, I will turn it over to Jennifer Shambri.

Good afternoon, Jennifer Shambri, Deputy City Manager, and I'm the executive sponsor of the increasing community safety focus area.

And I'm very happy to be here today to share the great work that's being done by the departments in this area.

So as a reminder, this is the general structure of the focus area, which includes a long-term goal for problem areas, and 15 near-term goals.

As a reminder, our long-term goal is San Jose residents live in a community with responsive emergency services and safe streets and roads.

And our four problem areas are emergency response, crisis response, crime reduction, and traffic safety.

Looking at our indicator of resident safety perception, we have some good news here.

So if you look at the chart on the right on this slide, our Q2 data shows that resident percept resident perception is up year over year.

2% more residents feel the city is safe, 2% more feel their neighborhood is safe, and 5% more feel downtown is safe.

And this is showing that we are holding on to the gains that we've experienced in this area in the last year.

Looking at our problem area of emergency response, also some good news here.

We look at police and fire priority one response compliance.

Police priority one response compliance has improved 3% year over year with a 4.5% increase in call volume, and fire priority one response compliance has approved 2% year over year with a 6% decrease in call volume.

And looking at our crime rate indicator, year over year we see a 13% decrease in crimes against persons, 5% decrease in crimes against property, and 3% increase in crimes against society.

Also good news.

So this slide here shows two different charts.

We have separated this information out.

We have the killed and severe injuries, KSIs due to traffic collisions, and then traffic fatalities by mode.

And looking at the traffic safety indicators, uh KSI was up 34% year over year based on most recent data from Q3 of last fiscal year.

Do you want to note there is a data lag for severe injuries while police and DOT review those reports?

And so you'll see there we only have updated to Q3 for fiscal year 25.

And then on traffic fatalities, they were up by four year over year.

We are looking at this data.

We don't believe that there is a significant uh trend here.

This is probably just a one-time irregularity looking at year over year and the lower numbers in Q3 of last year compared to this this Q3.

So we have 15 goals for this year, and they are shown here on the slide with our color coding of uh complete, on track, needs attention, off-track.

And we have four that are complete, such as our first responder fee program, and completing the police report transcription pilot.

We have seven that are on track, four that need attention, and I'll go over that in our kind of our lessons learned slide, and we have one that is off-track.

So, some key lessons learned through our portfolio retrospectives.

Um is working from what needs a different approach.

Um, for instance, we did two pilot programs in our police department, the two-person car pilot and district-wide deployment.

Those have demonstrated improved response times, and we are now scaling both of those.

Um, and then on the other side of that, we did the AI transcription pilot that had some technology uh maturity challenges, um, and that led us to needing to look at a different approach.

But what helped us with that pilot is learning what we needed uh from the technology.

And so we are currently in the process of conducting an RFP for new technology for that.

We have some other initiatives that are collecting evidence of early impact with our SJYEA demonstration sites, first responder fee, which launched in January, and the red light running program.

Um, next, there will be some certain goals that will require strong interagency coordination for long-term success, specifically with our county partners.

For example, the 911 988 call transfer program, Mission Street Recovery Station, organized retail theft, all require alignment with the county for long-term success.

And we've experienced some challenges recently with that, given the major budget shortfalls that they are confronting.

This is impacting the city in terms of crisis response program consolidation, as you may recall with the elimination of PERT as an example, restricting mission street referrals to medical reimbursement services, among other challenges.

I do want to report some late breaking news.

We did have a meeting with the county yesterday on Mission Street Recovery Station.

So we have some progress in that area with another alternative to that.

Um, and then finally, there are some budget uncertainties on the city side as well, impacting some of these things.

And this is both true for the city itself, but also with the county and state budget uncertainties.

For example, Fire Station 32, which is one of our goals.

That single company was deferred due to the budget.

But recently have started the hiring process back up.

And we had it on hold related to budget, but we have decided to continue on with that program.

And so the hiring process has started back up with that.

And so with that, I will turn it over to Lee Wilcox.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Lee Wilcox Assistant City Manager.

And I am the current executive sponsor of reducing unsheltered homelessness focus area.

Next slide, whoever has a clicker.

Thank you.

San Jose has made unprecedented investments over the past several years to reduce unsheltered homelessness and its environmental impacts to our city.

We have expanded our shelter and safe parking capacity at record pace while maintaining environmental compliance of over 26 priority waterways throughout the city, helping prevent re-encampment and protect environmentally sensitive areas.

At the same time, several structural challenges remain in our work.

First, demand still exceeds available shelter capacity, even as new sites have come online this past year.

Second, our shelter system remains heavily dependent on general on general fund resources and long term long-term sustainability will require more stable funding sources for us from the state and federal government.

Third, as we maintain uh as we maintain clear waterways and other priority areas, we're often seeing displacement pressures in other parts of the city, which increases demand on outreach teams throughout the city.

Finally, data limitations still make it difficult to track inflow and outflow in real time, which is essential for us managing the system proactively, which is something the council has requested.

These realities are shaping the next phase of work, which you'll hear a little bit about in this report, but more importantly in the next quarter ahead.

The long-term goal for our focus area is moving towards functional zero.

That means building a shelter system that can quickly identify those experiencing homelessness, connect them to shelter, and move them into permanent supportive housing.

To measure progress towards that goal, we track several key indicators.

First is bringing new shelter units online with a goal of approximately 705 new units delivered by the end of the end of calendar year last year.

The second is maintaining no encampment zones in priority areas.

The third is reducing operational uh costs across the shelter system to stabilize contracts and operations.

And finally, building a more dynamic forecasting tool with data that allows us to proactively track inflow, outflow, and better understand how homelessness is changing over time in our city.

These indicators help shift our focus from individual program management to system management and system overhaul.

Next slide.

Thank you.

This side highlights the progress towards bringing 705 planned shelter units online by the end of last year and reflects what we've learned through executing multiple site activations in one year.

The infographic displays shelter capacity by quarter, arranged by volume within each quarter.

Last year, quarter two was the largest number of units coming online, totaling 314 and included Cherry Avenue, Rue Ferrari, and our first hotel expansion in years.

Quarter one followed with over 230 units, 231 units across five sites, including Taylor Street and a number of hotels.

And finally, uh quarter three reflected 162 units associated with Serone.

Important, Cherry Avenue ultimately added two additional units, what was forecasted, bringing the total to 707 units done.

And this reflects additional optimization and site evaluation that we were able to gain at Cherry Avenue.

It's also important to note and clarify that while Soroni appears in quarter three of 25-26 fiscal year, the majority of the construction and capital investments were complete by the end of 2025.

The opening was delayed so that we could finalize the security agreement with VTA and also mandated posting of that security agreement for a 30 day period, which was mandated by the board of directors of VTA.

Overall, this reflects all of this work reflects significant production progress and operational complexity of delivering large shelter capacity across multiple sites in a very compressed time frame.

So our scores for the year, obviously, blue, our first goal has been met in bringing uh 705 or 707 capacity to our shelter program in by the end of the year.

It's important to highlight in this slide that a lot is green, and we are making progress on a number of fronts.

One of the greens is uh goal 3.1, which is maintaining environmental environmental clearance of the 26 miles of waterways.

We're working hard as a team uh to understand our capacity that we currently have budgeted on that 26 miles of maintaining that clear, maintaining uh environmentally safe areas, but also as I highlighted, we see an outflow from other areas.

We see pressures on other cities.

So, really understanding our own outreach volume and qual's capacity is something that the team will continue to do.

Two highlights here our implementation of cow billing is currently red and off-track.

While we're planning and piloting, um, and that is definitely underway.

The CalAIM billing and implementation has proved a lot more complex than originally projected, given the multiple parties.

So staff will be doubling down in the coming quarter on that, as well as strengthening HMIS data exchange and reporting tools.

We're reporting that as a yellow.

So, as we continue to work with the county on using this for shelter inventory management, there are limitations uh to the county's software management tool that we will currently that we will continue to work through, but funding challenges on the county side will impact some of that work.

And last but not least, our lessons learned.

Uh, through the retrospectives conducted this year on all of this work, several important lessons have emerged on how the homelessness response system operates in our city.

The first is delivering shelter capacity is operationally complex.

Opening multiple sites requires not just coordination across departments and contractors, but sometimes and more importantly, regional partners and even small dependencies can affect timelines and exacerbate goals.

Second, as the system grows, standardizing operations across all of these sites will become increasingly important for us and our partners.

Aligning staffing models, budget, and contracts and provisions will take time, but it will improve consistency and help reduce long-term operating costs.

Third, we'll be working to build the infrastructure needed to leverage Cal Aim medical reimbursements that work.

That work is, you know, as I mentioned, continue to be more complex, but in the last few weeks, we've made some progress, and we do anticipate that that will be implemented by the end of this calendar year.

Fourth, maintaining clear priority areas such as waterways can shift people elsewhere in the city.

This requires ongoing coordination of planning work before clearing out uh happens and additional outreach above and beyond what we've currently budgeted to make sure we're offering shelter for everyone that will take it.

And finally, data sharing limitations across the systems mean that different teams sometimes need parallel tracking tools, creating inefficiencies.

Strengthening the data in integration will be a focus of ours and will be important on improving the system performance overall going forward.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Angel Rios.

All right, good afternoon.

Angel Rios, deputy city manager, and I'll be walking us through the clean up our neighborhoods focus area.

Um this slide, you see a summary of our cleaning up our neighborhoods focus area structure.

Our overall goal is that Soundsley residents can enjoy a city with clean public spaces and well-maintained private property.

We are addressing that goal through efforts on private property blight, graffiti, and illegal dumping.

Our quarterly community survey shows that resident perception of cleanliness continues to improve.

So our headline is that all indications that we're moving in the right direction here.

Most notably is the improvement in perception of cleanliness citywide in quarter one of fiscal year 23-24.

33% of residents rated the city as clean or very clean.

Whereas in quarter two of 25-26, 52% rate it as clean or very clean.

That's a 19 point jump.

Citywide cleanliness perception has improved for five straight quarters, and quarter two of 25-26 is the first quarter where it's over 50 percent in the time we've been measuring it.

We also measure perception of the respondents' own neighborhoods and of downtown.

In quarter two of 25-26, neighborhood perception sits at 73 percent and downtown at 34 percent, compared to 68 percent and 25 percent, respectively in quarters uh one of 2324.

On this slide here, these are our indicators for code enforcement in addressing blight on private property.

The first graph shows the percentage of code cases which are in each stage of the enforcement process.

In quarter two of 2526, 5 percent were in pre-investigation, 30 percent were in investigation, 55 percent were in enforcement, five percent were at the appeals hearing board, and four percent were in compliance.

Over time, as we complete our improvement projects and code enforcement, we would like to see the percentage of cases in enforcement or later stages increase.

We're also tracking the average duration for a code enforcement case.

In quarter two of 2526, it stands at 278 days.

As we implement our operational improvements, we would like to see that decrease significantly.

In regards to graffiti, we're tracking the overall amount of graffiti removed on the theory that if we succeed at our enforcement efforts and deter graffiti, we we should need to remove less graffiti over time.

In quarter two of 2526, we removed 616,521 square feet of graffiti compared to 571,214 in quarter two of the previous year.

Part of this year over year increase may be due to increased proactive removal of graffiti in quarter two in response to an uptick in gang incidents during that period.

On this next slide here, we collect data on the total volume of illegal dumping tonnage to gauge our prevention efforts in this area.

In quarter two of 2526, we picked up 1,336 tons compared with 1,161 the previous year.

In terms of our overall dashboard here, we have identified 11 goals for this year.

One is complete, seven are green, and three are yellow, as noted on this slide here.

Um in terms of some lessons learned.

First, our graffiti enforcement efforts have succeeded in making 24 total arrests in quarter one and quarter two.

One of our observations is that these arrests for graffiti also led to the seizure of a loaded firearm to homemade improvised explosive devices and narcotics, which suggests that in addition to a deterrence effect on graffiti, there may also be broader public safety benefits to graffiti enforcement.

Second, we've undertaken an effort to improve usage of our free junk pickup program in multifamily complexes.

We identified complexes that tend to be sources of illegal dumping and worked with our junk pickup haulers to conduct outreach to these complexes.

As of quarter two, we had worked through the through about 20 percent of the list of target complexes.

This effort is succeeding at improving usage.

The program collected 580 tons from multifamily complexes in quarter two of fiscal year 2025-26, compared with 485 tons in the same period in 24-25.

This continues the trend from quarter one of fiscal year 25-26 when 661 tons were collected from multifamily complexes compared with 464 in quarter one of 24-25.

These substantial increases in usage show that as we continue to work through the list, we have opportunity to continue to expand usage of junk pickup and hopefully reduce illegal dumping as a consequence.

Finally, in quarter two, we completed our shopping cart pickup pilot.

The pilot ran in two geographic areas and picked up 734 carts over three months.

The pilot highlighted the significant number of carts that could be collected if a permanent program were established.

It also demonstrated that collecting data on which retailers' carts were collected could help reveal the sources of abandoned cards.

It's also important to note that in October of 2025, the governor signed a bill sponsored by the city that gives us the ability to run a cost recovery part pickup program.

And so with that, uh I'll turn it over to Deputy City Manager Rosalind Huey.

Thank you, Angel.

Rosalind Huey and I will cover the building more housing focus area.

So this slide shows the overall structure of our focus area, including our long-term goal to meet residents' housing needs across income levels by making San Jose a great place to build housing.

We've identified three problem areas to be addressed in order to make progress toward our long-term goal.

The first is land use policy and regulation.

Second, development services, and third, is linking land and capital.

Building enough housing to meet demand in San Jose is complex, and a number of external factors make development here quite expensive, as we know.

While many of these factors are actually outside of the city's control, we continue to focus on the levers that we can pull to help move housing projects forward.

To measure success, we track several long-term indicators, including housing entitlements, building permits issued, and certificates of occupancy, all disaggregated by affordable and market rate units.

One example of progress is the multifamily housing incentive program, which the city council first approved in December of last year.

Since then, the program has helped move 1,444 units of housing from entitlement to construction.

This progress is encouraging, but of course, still not enough to meet the scale of housing demand that our city has.

Second, as presented to the community and economic development committee in December, we are meeting building permit review timelines for multifamily affordable housing.

In fact, for the projects that we analyze, staff exceeded requirement timelines by an average of 35 days.

This helps ensure affordable housing developers meet their critical funding deadlines.

However, this prioritization can extend timelines for market rate housing projects, sometimes adding uh 25 days to the building permit process.

We continue to refine our analysis of development services data and are reviewing multifamily projects from the past several years to better understand where delays may occur.

Third, the evolving state laws related to housing continue to require reproductization of staff work, and as a result, our capacity to advance proactive policy initiatives is limited.

Next, I'm going to transition to the growing our economy focus area.

And this slide shows the overall structure of our focus area, including our long-term goal to cultivate an ecosystem for thriving businesses and resident prosperity.

The word ecosystem is a key concept here because growing our economy isn't just about one strategy.

It requires a multi-pronged approach that increases prosperity for everyone throughout our city.

We've identified four problem areas as key strategies that would help us make progress toward our long-term goal.

First is business development and workforce preparedness, infrastructure readiness, downtown and neighborhood business districts, and sports and entertainment district development.

As a major innovation hub, San Jose operates within a region defined by strong demand and global competitiveness.

External market conditions influence investment decisions, yet the city remains focused on advancing economic growth, expanding opportunity, and promoting our comparative comparative advantages.

To measure progress toward our long-term goal, we track five key indicators, which includes jobs, downtown vibrancy, income inequality, tax revenue, and small businesses.

A few highlights from this data on the slide are that since 2020, San Jose has added approximately 31,000 jobs.

However, total jobs has not yet returned to the city's pre-pandemic peak in 2017, which was over 450,000.

The downtown vibrancy community survey rating has increased 8% since poly began in fiscal year 23-24.

And in Q2, respondents reported improved perception of our downtown as a place for dining, visiting, and shopping.

Survey results also show that people who spend more time in our downtown or live closest to downtown tend to rate it more favorably.

Regarding our income equality measure, a lower income 20th percentile earner in San Jose would need to more than triple their income to enter the middle class or the 60th percentile of earners.

Our business development and workforce preparedness program area is focused on attracting key growth industry jobs and preparing our residents for high-wage high growth careers.

This focus area includes 23 goals for the fiscal year.

As you can see on this slide, five are actually complete, and 18 are on track.

Just a few highlights are our efforts around downtown placemaking.

We've actually implemented several projects already.

And then the activation of the entertainment zone at San Pedro Square during Super Bowl weekend, where 48,000 people were in attendance.

I'll close with a few key lessons learned around growing our economy.

First, our focus on data center and large load energy projects is strengthening the city's revenue base with an estimated $2.1 million in utility tax revenue projected for next fiscal year.

We are on track to exceed our goal for new business improvement districts, and the small business startup grant program has generated significant demand with over 250 applications to date.

SJ26 is accelerating downtown vibrancy, supporting placemaking, and growing events and businesses, including four new businesses in the downtown.

Initial reports indicated, as I mentioned previously, that the attendance at the San Pedro Super Bowl was uh approximately 48,000 people.

And the market reported that this was its busiest weekend to date, surpassing the previous single-day sales record by more than 30%.

I'll note now turn the presentation back over to Eric Jensen, who will close us out.

So, in closing, I wanted to highlight how the focus areas will be incorporated with the budget process.

Um, and so we started back in January where council had the conversation through a priority setting study session to really kick this off.

Um, looking next, staff will be listening carefully to the March budget message item next week for direction that informs focus area work plans for the next fiscal year.

Um we plan on publishing an MBA with a proposed focus area structure for council adoption in June.

And so, in closing, I just want to say thank you to the department staff and the teams kind of behind this work who really drive this progress that we get to share out today.

Um, and we are available for questions.

Great.

That was a lot of information, really helpful.

Thank you for all of the detail.

Tony, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this issue?

Yes, I have two cards for item 3.4 status report.

That's Leah Tennis Ketter and Lori.

Come on down.

Thank you.

And as a reminder, we're starting with one minute time for public comment.

Hi, council, my name is Lori Catcher.

I am a 23-year resident of San Jose, and I am also a member of showing up for racial justice, Santa Clara County.

I want to uh thank you for the report today and the work that the city is doing to continue to work towards building permanent affordable housing for our residents.

I just want to make note that in the report, it was stated that we do not have shelter capacity to meet the current need, and we do not have enough permanent affordable housing to meet the current need.

And so my ask today is to stop criminalizing people who are homeless, who have fallen into homelessness when there's not enough housing.

It's simply cruel.

It's simply cruel to send a police unit to people who are unhoused.

This is a systemic issue.

It is not personal failures.

So I'm asking you to please reconsider the neighborhood quality of life police unit.

And if you're going to send a unit, please send social workers, please send people who actually care about helping people out of homelessness that have been trained to do so.

So I ask you to consider that as we look towards the budget.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Okay, now we can move it over.

Good afternoon, Council.

Leah Tennis Skedder, president and CEO of our San Jose Chamber of Commerce.

I wanted to thank you, just in terms of economic development and the direction of the city and how we can grow the general fund, is really to focus on sports entertainment as an economy, the business improvement districts, all the work that you have shared that the staff is leading.

And second, it takes a lot of work to put these reports together mid-year.

So I want to thank staff not only for their work here, but for working with us, especially around sports entertainment and the business districts.

Look forward to continuing to work with you in the year to come.

Thank you.

Ted.

My name's Ted Scarlet, as some of you know, I was struck down by a drunk driver on my motorcycle Thanksgiving Eve.

Four days later, my landlord decided to throw me into the streets.

What has occurred is over 20 uh police calls to the house.

I've come here begging for help over and over and over again.

I'm still homeless.

I have a broken ankle, a broken hand, I have a severely bruised knee.

I'm living in my car.

If this can happen to me, it can happen to any of you.

I can tell you the system is completely broke.

Follow the money.

I want an audit.

Okay, this is not working.

And what was just said earlier is absolutely right.

Stop criminalizing people through no fault of their own.

We're in a different time now.

We this is not people who fell to drugs or alcohol.

Okay, it's now in a financial situation.

Okay.

And you guys don't know what it's like.

There's no resource.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Back to council.

Thank you.

Seeing no hands raised, I do have a few questions that were actually submitted to me by the mayor.

He that he uh wishes that he was here, able to ask about the focus areas.

As you know, this has been something that he's been driving and that we as council have all supported.

So first I want to recognize Jennifer McGuire, Lee Wilcox, Matt Lesh, and Eric Sullivan for all of your efforts in completing the remaining EIH sites and the motels.

That was a heavy lift.

Uh one of them was in my district on Cherry and Soroni was completed earlier this year.

It's a heavy lift, and I just want to show appreciation to all of you for that.

We're already projecting 15% lower operating costs for emergency interim housing.

This is specific to EIHs only and not all sites compared to last year's forecast with additional work underway to competitively rebid contracts and find new ways to reduce costs.

Lee, can you speak to additional work underway within the housing department with the county and housing authority and any advocacy priorities that can help with stabilizing funding as we move toward functional zero.

Sure.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

We'd say a few things.

I think you know, Jennifer's mandate of the service optimization.

This is something that uh Eric and his team, as well as me and the rest of the reducing unsheltered homelessness cabinet is very taking very serious as we've talked about in this room.

We've been able to kind of expand into new program, you know, areas and do that very aggressively and with a lot of money.

Now we actually get to take a little bit of a time to step back and make sure the whole system is efficient, effective, and optimized.

That will lead to hopefully additional savings, is what we feel.

Um second, you know, with our partnership with the county, um, you know, both of our intergovernmental relations teams as well as the Office of Supportive Housing at the County, and then Eric's department been very vocal and proactive within Sacramento around uh funding extensions for HAP dollars as well as any other one time, you know, uh dollars that we could see through the state budget, especially with kind of the shift in the state budget stand.

So that remains really critical, especially in that bridge year where we, you know, the next two years or our increased costs in that system.

Hopefully, some of those other uh funding mechanisms of the state will help.

And then Eric and his team continue to push the housing authority to really kind of push for voucher funding stabilization, especially as the federal government has taken the emergency housing voucher program away.

So we look at a uh looking at a few different models there where the voucher program could step in and have greater assistance.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Another question for you, Lee, regarding Cal AIM.

You had mentioned that there were delays in the collections.

Can you tell us?

Do you anticipate that we'll be able to get reimbursements on Cal AIM in the coming year or what are the major stumbling blocks and is there anything we can do to assist?

I don't think there's anything for the council to do at this time.

Uh it is it is uh honestly a very simple statement.

It is more complex than I think anyone thought us, the county or Path who we brought on to help with this.

We do believe um that we're looking at getting the infrastructure set up by the end of this calendar year.

Um and there are savings to be had through that work as well.

Great, thank you.

Uh I do see two of my council members have their hands raised, so I will go to them and then come back to if they haven't reached uh and asked the questions that I have before me, I will continue on.

Councilmember Duan.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I just want to say thank you to the staff of putting together the report.

We are heading in the right direction, even though it seems slow.

But I believe that we are building more interim housing and sheltered than any other city around us, right?

Is that correct?

That is absolutely correct.

Yeah.

And so not only we building more housing, we are having both our partnership with the nonprofit organization, constantly outreach to our unshelter residents to get them out of the element and into the available shelter.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

And I move to accept the report.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay, council member committee seconds.

Uh council member Kamei, you're up.

Thank you so much, and and thank you so much for all of the work and all of the work that the staff has done to get here.

I think that um the way that the dashboard looks is very effective.

Um, when it was first presented, I thought it was a really good idea.

Uh so thank you for that.

The one thing that I think uh concerns me as we look at what some of the long-term goals are is on your slide 14 on reducing unsheltered homelessness focus area, that the long-term goal is to move towards functional uh zero in uh unsheltered homelessness.

And uh when we had the presentation done by our director of housing, uh it was clear that the uh the funding necessary to get to functional zero was a number that was very, very high, over 500 million dollars to be able to reach functional zero.

So I I think that as we start thinking about um how we get to um uh the rest of what the sentence says, which is proactively and effectively manage the shelter system.

Um I think we're gonna need to be a little bit more creative.

And and you've done a great job of being uh innovative in terms of looking at solutions, but similar to what one of the speakers said in terms of how you know they're living in their car and and all of that, that we may have to look at other avenues uh uh to help uh in terms of those who are homeless, because we you know, we would we would end up being bankrupt if we had to spend 500 million dollars a year.

I mean, that is just an enormous amount of of general fund money that would have to be spent.

And I don't see a lot of uh grants coming our way these days to to help in that.

And of course, you know, we have a totally different federal uh uh situation where um who knows what's gonna happen there.

So as we're thinking about our current circumstances, I also want to think of the long haul that uh functional zero.

I know is sort of like a aspirational kind of thing, but but I also think that we have to start thinking of how we will be able to do things a little bit differently.

And I know that the team has really come a long way from when we first started.

But I think I guess what I'm trying to say is really encourage you to continue looking at other ways of doing things because I'm happy that you know we're doing better with the county and we're getting you know have other partners, we're getting better at what we're doing, but um we have we have to continue to stretch.

And so that's just uh my own uh thought there.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

A couple of questions regarding for you, Rosalind, regarding growing our economy.

Uh it was mentioned that we've retained 3,753 jobs, and that's close to our goal of 5,000 for June 2026.

But as we're calculating retention weights, I understand that there were some actions taken with Valley Fair that resulted in retaining uh over 2,000 jobs.

Can you tell us what was more specifics about Valley Fair?

Were they in jeopardy of closing?

What's the situation over there?

Thank you so much, Ms.

Let's hope mayor.

No, absolutely not.

Valley Fair was not in jeopardy of closing um at all.

Um we worked with them specifically around uh their holiday time and the need to have additional employees and the fact that they needed better traffic circulation uh around the mall.

You know it can be quite congested, which is great.

We want people going and shopping, uh, but that work that's deaf led was around the holiday um jobs at the mall.

Oh and uh Blog A Zalalic is here from OEDCA if you have more detailed questions.

Okay, great.

I think that's helpful.

Okay.

Um could you uh move to uh making it easier for small businesses and streamlining the small business process.

The memo mentioned that you're conducting brainstorming sessions with Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs Planning Building Enforce Code Enforcement.

Can you share with us some of the specific processes that you're looking at that would streamline for these be streamlining for these small businesses and what kind of timeline might be available for implementation?

Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor.

So we um have been focusing specifically around permitting times for restaurants in our downtown, but obviously across the city.

So we've been working across departments to try to come up with a way by which we can streamline the process, get information into those applicants' hands earlier, and to really optimize and leverage our our two small business allies in the process.

Um, additionally, um, as a result of going through Spurs' recent report on downtown, uh, one of the things that they highlighted was the trouble that applicants were having going through the outdoor side sidewalk permitting process.

And so planning and public works team uh actually uh are working with uh the downtown association and coming up ways to definitely streamline that process.

We've we've heard some stories that um really significant delays, so we're really focused on streamlining that process in this fiscal year.

Okay, great, thank you.

I I think streamlining particularly for small businesses is really important.

Uh the it time is money for them, and they want to just open up their business and and get going moving forward.

We're all excited about what happened uh with the Super Bowl and how successful we were, and we look forward to the FIFA and NC well NCAAA this month and then FIFA coming down.

Can you share with us when we might learn more about the economic impact to the city of those uh of the event and lessons we've learned on that?

I know we had a little bit of a report at CED, but when will we get a bigger understanding of how this benefited the city and how future events might benefit us?

Right, so we're gonna continue to gather as much information uh that we can from local businesses, from team San Jose and hotel data, as well as anecdotal information that we've already shared with the committee and and with the council as well.

Uh, we're also looking to use that hotel data, place our AI data, and the new destination international software module to actually see how we can track the value of media impressions that have been generated by Team San Jose and by San Jose Foos, which is the premier event producer organizer to see uh what we can do to gather more of that data as well.

And then, of course, we can always do more um survey work among our businesses.

Uh and then lastly, I want to add that um our sports authority, John Poach, uh, you know, he's the man on it.

Um, you know, he is the man on it.

Um, whenever John puts in a bid for a major event, um, he produces, he hires someone to actually produce a formal economic impact report.

Uh, and so we expect uh to have that data available probably a couple of months, two to four months after FIFA World COP, and it'll compile all of the data from all three major uh events this year.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

That uh again, I want to thank you all for your presentations and and all of your teams and uh Jennifer.

Uh every I know every department was involved in all of these focus areas, so the work that they have done is is really important and in impactful.

With that, let's vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you.

Moving on to the next item, which is 4.1 automated license plate readers data usage protocol update.

Paul Joseph, Chief of Police will is here to present the Chief, welcome.

Thank you.

Uh Paul Joseph, Chief of Police, and I'm joined by Lieutenant Todd Jennings from our real-time information center.

I'd like to uh thank the council and the community for giving us an opportunity to talk about the state of our automated license plate reader camera and where we see ourselves going in the future.

In District One, for Councilmember Kamei, we responded to the murder of a 17-year-old boy in your district.

With the help of license plate reader cameras, we were able to identify and arrest both suspects.

Councilmember Campos, in your district, we responded to a report of a sexual assault of a female by a stranger.

With the help of license plate reader cameras, we were able to identify and arrest that suspect.

Councilmember Tordillos, in your district, we responded to the report of the kidnapping and sexual assault of a juvenile female.

With the help of license plate reader cameras, we arrested and identified that suspect.

Councilmember Cohn is not here, but in his district, we responded to the homicide of a homeless gentleman who was sleeping behind a strip mall.

With very little to go on, but help from license plate reader cameras, we identified and had that suspect in custody later that same day.

Councilmember Ortiz, you recently experienced a tragic shooting of a juvenile inside of a clothing store at Story and King, a story in White, rather, with the help of license plate reader cameras.

We identified and had that suspect in custody.

Councilmember Mulcahy at the Valley Fair Mall on Black Friday, a shooting between uh two individuals that also injured two bystanders was solved with a suspect in custody with the help of license plate reader cameras.

Councilmember DeWan, we solved a strong arm robbery at a grocery store in your council district with the help of license plate reader cameras.

Councilmember Kendellas uh is not seated there, but uh we responded to the Kim Hung jewelry robbery with multiple suspects, multiple masked suspects in the assault of an 88-year-old proprietor, largely with the help of license plate reader cameras.

We arrested many of the suspects in that case.

And Vice Mayor Foley, in your district, we responded to a uh attempted bank robbery, took that suspect into custody with the help of license plate reader cameras.

Finally, Councilmember Casey, we responded to the robbery of a 7-Eleven uh with a subject armed with an Air 15 rifle in your district and had him in custody again, largely with the help of license plate reader cameras.

The impact of these cameras on our public safety efforts is unquestioned.

But that is part of the equation only.

I also recognize the concern that many in our community have regarding the safety and reliability and trustworthiness of these cameras.

And I'm proud to say that we are succeeding in that score as well.

Go ahead and click.

We'd also like to talk about some plans we have going forward in the future to make this system even more secure.

While our audits have shown that our license plate reader data has not gone anywhere it isn't supposed to go, it is only going to law enforcement agencies for criminal investigations.

We've come up with several different tweaks to our license plate reader policy, which we think makes our system even more secure.

Currently, we retain the images that the license plate reader cameras capture for one year.

Our request to you is permission to reduce that retention period from one year to one month.

We believe that that satisfies many of the privacy concerns that people have while also keeping our detectives with the information they need to make this the investigative advances.

We also have several areas in which we're not going to be placing license plate reader cameras.

And currently they're not in these locations now, but they will not be placed there in the future.

One would be anything that's entering or exiting a reproductive health care facility.

The other would be exiting or entering any place with a look that's a location primarily used for religious observance.

Currently, none of our cameras are pointed at driveways or exits or entrances to private property.

They are placed at intersections, taking pictures of cars, license plates passing through intersections at streets.

There are currently several prohibited uses for these cameras, which will remain in effect.

We're not using them to monitor constitutionally protected activity.

We're not sharing this data with for immigration enforcement purposes with anyone.

There's no automated enforcement without manual review, and what that means is that the officer has to visually verify that the license plate he is seeing on the vehicle that he is attempting to stop matches the information he has gotten from the system from the license plate reader camera.

And then finally, we do not sell our ALPR data to anyone.

All that will remain in effect.

We've added additional requirements for any outside agency that wishes to get any of our data.

One is they have to name the type of crime they're investigating, they have to provide a case number, and they have to give us a justification.

Those are all required fields in a drop-down menu without entries of which they will not be able to access the data.

For our own department, any agency outside of the California portal that's getting information will now have to be uh approved by a command level officer.

So, in other words, a detective won't be able to make this decision, has to be somebody at the rank of lieutenant or higher.

We have also instituted multi-factor authentification for anybody to access our data here at San Jose PD.

We were uh increased the amount of audits we're doing on the data from yearly to quarterly.

Um we've we have never allowed federal sharing of our data, and now that possibility has been removed by the manufacturer, so no one can activate it.

We couldn't activate it if we wanted to.

That's been act that's been deactivated for every agency in the state of California.

Um then any the company flock has also activated various um blocks for certain words used for justification.

So, in other words, if words related to immigration enforcement or reproductive rights are given by someone who's making an inquiry as their reason, they will not be able to access the system.

Go ahead and click.

There are state law restrictions, all of which we are following currently.

Uh, we're only sharing with California law enforcement agencies into the portal.

We follow both uh California Values Act and SB 34 for any other sharing.

Um again, and I can't emphasize this enough.

I know this is a major concern.

The transmitter of life of automated license plate reader data for immigration enforcement is illegal, and we are not doing it, and we have not done it.

All of our department is has been trained on these restrictions, and we're continuing our internal audits that we've been doing, and as I mentioned, we will be ramping that up from yearly to quarterly.

Finally, um the login requires people to add all this information before they're capable of getting any uh any data whatsoever from the system.

We've had a transparency portal, which the public can see on our website since the uh implementation of this program.

Again, you know, I've been doing this for 34 years.

I have never seen a technology advance so impactful to our ability to keep the community safe as I have with these license plate reader cameras.

They do several things.

They support the real-time investigation of serious crimes, meaning when something occurs and the vehicle is fleeing, these cameras give us updates as to where the vehicle is in real time to allow us to make a stop.

It's assisting us in locating at miss-risking persons.

Uh, it enhances the coordination between our patrol force, our officers in the field, and our investigation and our helicopter, our air support unit, and it's also increased the solvability rate for our cases for our detectives.

And I just want to mention something because I know one of the concerns here is the impact on communities of color of the license plate reader cameras.

Let me talk about another disparity for communities of color in the city of San Jose, and that is the victims of crime.

For instance, African Americans account for 2.8% of the population in the city of San Jose.

However, they account for 6.7% of all crimes against persons.

They account for 8.3% of all homicide victims, 7.1% of all aggravated assault victims.

Similarly, but even more of a standout is uh Hispanic population is approximately 30% in the city of San Jose.

They account for 53% of our crimes against persons, they account for an astonishing 64% of homicide victims in this city, and 57% of aggravated assault victims in the city.

Removing these cameras or restricting them to the point that they're ineffective is hurting communities of color, not helping.

And with that, I will take questions.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you for that presentation.

Before we move to discussion, I'd like to ask our city attorney to clarify how the Levine Act applies to this item and the vote before us.

Susanna Alcala would could you please briefly expand on that guidance for everyone's awareness.

Certainly, Vice Mayor, and I know there was a lot of public uh comments that were submitted to the to the city regarding these.

The Living Act actually doesn't apply to this matter.

The Levine Act only applies if the matter in front of the council or to related to uh the uh license or conditional permit or some contract, which is not the case here, but the matter in front of the council today is uh simply approving a policy change that already exists, amendments to an existing policy, so it does not apply.

Thank you for that information.

Let's move to public comment.

Thank you.

I have uh almost a hundred cards, so I'm I'm announcing that so you can be patient that I will eventually get to your name.

When I call your name, please come on down.

I'm gonna call about five to seven names to start.

Um first person in the microphone, say your name, start speaking, the other people can line up behind them.

The security officer will let you know where to stand.

Um, as I call your name, please get in line.

We want to get through as many people as we can so everybody gets their full time, and we have one minute per person.

There's also interpretation available on the screen to the right.

Okay, starting with Terry, Rosalinda Aguilar, Hui Tran, Kim Wu, Musa Tariq, Stacey Malillo, and Elizabeth Molina, come on down.

And before you begin, uh, just to set the stage a little bit, please allow everyone an opportunity to speak and allow us to hear their comments.

So if you could, if you you need to show your acceptance or your interest in their support, please give Jazz hand because then we can move forward without breaking the convert the uh meeting and and delaying it.

A hundred people is a lot for us to get through, and we want to hear everyone and be thoughtful and respectful to everyone's comments.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Hi, I'm Terry with South San Jose District 2.

And um I deal with cameras.

I've installed a lot of cameras there, including license plate cameras.

Uh, to give you an idea, uh one to give you the density for 1,000 people.

My neighborhood has 10 cameras for San Jose with flop.

You have uh 0.5 cameras per 1,000 people.

Um we've been very successful because um we have very strict controls.

Um I want to show you the crime map for last week.

Each dot here is uh crime in the neighborhoods surrounding us.

And now I want to zoom in on the little corner here.

This green area is my neighborhood.

Only has one crime, and that's mainly because of license plates since I installed them from 2012.

So I know about license plates, and um I'm a bit concerned that if we give too many rules, thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Oh, I'm super nervous.

Um, I'm gonna read from my cards.

Um, good afternoon, council.

Um, my name is Rosalinda Aguilar.

I'm president of the Guadalupe Washington Neighborhood Association.

Um, our community has a high concentration of Latino undocumented residents.

Um I I do want to speak in favor of the recommended restrictions with the um current flock cameras or a camera system.

Um in speaking with our fellow board members and my residents over the last week.

More than 80 percent agreed that the recommendations are good and that the cameras should stay in place um for the reasons to protect our communities from crime, but also to protect our undocumented residents.

One such resident, Maria, a very good friend of mine, an undocumented resident.

Her husband was detained by ICE two years ago.

She said she wishes there had been a city camera in place to have recorded that.

Thank you.

That's your time.

I'd also like to call down Darcy Green and Marjorie Siegel.

Come on down.

Good morning.

I'm Kimbuli Wu and I serve as a community organizer of Siren.

When the federal government has billions to waste on tearing our families apart, we must refuse to give this authoritarian federal government any AI mass surveillance weapon that will and has already been used to hunt our neighbors.

But we appreciate the memos by SJPD and by council members, it does not go far enough.

We strongly recommend that San Jose implement all the community guardrails from this letter, such as permanently ending our flock contract and ceasing all AOPOs unless and until vendor can meet all of the guardrails, such as requiring a valid judicial warrant for all data searches and prohibiting direct and indirect sharing with immigration enforcement and through fusion centers, especially when we share with local California departments like El Cajone, who still share with external agencies.

To be clear, no perfect policy will protect us against the fundamental harms of AI mass surveillance and the federal government's lawless reign of terror owner communities.

We must prioritize community trust.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Also, Michael Bryant, come on down and Issa.

Good afternoon.

My name is Hui Tran.

I'm a D3 resident, but SIREN serves all families in the city of San Jose.

But we want to appreciate that there's active thoughts here about additional guardrails.

And Chief Joseph did mention some of the outcomes where the cameras have helped.

But I question I have to ask is how many people who have done nothing wrong at all have been captured on these cameras, have had their movements documented, their activities documented, and all of that now stored on servers within the city.

These people have done nothing wrong.

These cameras track the movements of people regardless of whether or not you're suspect suspected of a crime.

We have seen the federal government actively violate the laws that were already there to try to protect our privacy with the IRS, with Medicaid, and more.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Musa with Care of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Every day our staff travels across San Jose to provide legal assistance.

And community members travel to access those services, whether that's legal help, community support, or more.

Communities across San Jose rely on places of worship and immigration services every day.

These are spaces where people pray, seek guidance, and get help navigating some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

And all the amazing organizations and folks present here today provide those critical legal services.

But that work depends on people feeling safe enough to come forward and seek help.

People need to know that when they drive to a legal clinic clinic, when they attend a know your rights workshop, or when they meet with an attorney, that they are not placing themselves under the risk of surveillance, or worse, being kidnapped or murdered by ICE.

And so we strongly urge you to end your contract with Flock and adopt the recommended guardrails to protect or protect San Jose residents.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Fred Landis, come on down and Dennis Watson.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Stacey Malolo.

My family and I have lived in District 9 for the past 14 years.

We love our neighborhood and the broader San Jose community.

My background is in design technology.

Because of that, I pay close attention to emerging technologies that shape our daily lives.

That's why I'm concerned about block safety cameras and what they mean for privacy, safety, and trust in our city.

These cameras are often described as simple license plate readers, but they're much more advanced.

They use machine learning to analyze vehicles, not just plates, but make model color roof racks, bumper stickers, and other unique details, all stored in a searchable database on Flock's private servers.

There's a flock camera near my home, and I pass several more taking my kids to school.

These systems record when we leave which route we take and where we go.

People shouldn't have to feel like their daily lives are being quietly mapped just to live in their own neighborhood.

San Jose is the capital of Silicon Valley.

We should be leading with technology that protects people and civil liberties, not building systems that undermine privacy and trust.

I urge the city to reconsider flock in San Jose.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

My name is Merjorie Siegel, and I live in District 8 in the villages.

I'm appalled to know that I'm being surveilled by flock cameras virtually anywhere I go in San Jose.

And I'm offended by Mayor Mayon's gaslighting assurance that our safety is a top concern of his.

I feel less safe than ever knowing flock cameras are tracking me.

As a legal observer accompanying neighbors to their immigration check-ins, or as a peaceful protester.

I can be followed and intimidated or worse by ICE agents.

At the very least, adopt the most stringent guardrails.

I urge the mayor to recuse himself from voting on this matter since he has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from Flock and Thank you.

That's your time.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Max Ramsey, come on down.

And Kendra Lupe.

Hello, Mayor and Council members.

My name's Issa Ajloni, President of Safe for San Jose.

We try to keep San Jose safe.

We use a lot of cameras ourselves in our neighborhood.

We work with SJPD and have gotten uh we've been able to get a lot of criminals off the street.

But I'm not going to take a lot of time on this.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater means accidentally discarding something valuable or essential while trying to eliminate something unwanted or unnecessary.

It was a warning against making impulsive, overzealous or or reckless changes that destroy good elements along with the bad.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Michael Bryant.

I am a resident of South San Jose and been there 34 years in District 10.

We talked about this recently.

I'm a member of the uh Santa Teresa Neighborhood Association Board of Directors.

We talked about this recently amongst our group.

And uh we're all pretty much in agreement that these flock cameras are a very important part of our neighborhood and a very important tool for our police.

Uh this boogeyman about ice that's being pushed.

This gentleman over here made it very clear.

He's not going to uh work with the federal government.

He's going to work with San Jose and with his department to use this technology to the highest degree to protect us and our all our neighbors.

Your job as a governing board is to do the most amount of good for the most amount of people.

This system does the most amount of good for the most amount of people.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, Council, Mr.

Mayor.

Thanks for having us.

So I just have a few points to make on this.

Uh first of all, uh with a respect to everyone else, uh, this really should not be an immigration issue.

And don't let them make it so.

This is a public safety issue.

That's the original purpose.

Uh furthermore, uh, these limited dates, reducing it to just 30 days, removes the ability to track repeat offenders.

I don't think that's good.

I think the chief might agree with that one.

Uh and frankly, the other issue of uh blocking them from abortion clinics also releases the impact of those might might be coming in to create violence at an abortion clinic.

You will never catch those numbers.

Not good.

Uh also we're just reducing the ROI, reducing the effectiveness.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

I'd also like to call Sandra Bryant and Robbie Easett down.

My name's Dennis Watson.

I live in District 10 with George Casey, our wonderful councilman.

Uh I've lived in the South Central Santa Cruz area for 47 years.

I was born and raised in San Jose.

I won't tell you what how long ago, but a long time ago.

Uh for 44 years in our area, we had almost zero crime.

Uh in the last three years, we've seen auto thefts, house break-ins, you name it, we've seen it almost almost weekly auto thefts.

And some of the auto thefts are trucks, work trucks that want people who work for a living, they've lost their trucks, they've lost their tools, and they're they're they've impacted their jobs.

So I just ask this is a great tool for our policeman to help reduce the amount of crime in our area.

I just ask that you keep the program, and I also support our Sound Joseph PD.

They're they're awesome.

They do they're very responsive.

They they as soon as you make a call, they're there to help you.

Uh the one for part of our neighborhood.

So but I ask you to keep this program as a way to reduce thank you.

That's your time.

Hi.

Uh my name's Max Ramsey.

I've been Soundsia all my life, born and raised 44 years.

Um job is to keep your citizens safe.

That's the number one job above all.

And don't let the outside media and hype, you know, blow into that.

This is a great tool that protect that your chief is asking for, and I have a and uh the flock program in my home, license plate readers, whatnot, and it's helped solve crimes in my neighborhood.

And uh obviously you guys know about the huge budget deficit going on with you guys right now for the city, uh, about 56 million, which really means probably 65 million or so, and with the shorter staff, shorter budgets cuts and less help to solve crimes.

Uh the the Sound APD needs all that resources they can get, so to take things away from them.

You can't say you care about the you know uh the city when you're gonna do that.

So basically, I I care about the safety of our our citizens and our neighbors, and I've seen crime rise throughout South San Jose, my area, and I want to do all we can to help um you know keep everyone safe in this area.

So please don't take more resources away from them, give them more, give them what they need.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Elaine Mowadd, come on down and Lori Landis.

Hello, I'm Kendra Lukey.

I'm in George Casey's area, and it was worth driving here to hear the police chief's report.

I've seen how other cities are opting out of using block, lock, flock, and I think that they're making a mistake.

It's a cost-effective method that's gonna help all of us.

We are a big city and a ver diversified city, and we need this tool to help our police.

Um for those who are concerned about its misuse.

I think it can be managed, especially after hearing the report.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello, my name is Alan Lobbs, uh, father, husband, uh businessman headquartered in District Five.

Um as an individual, I've had a vehicle stolen.

I've had two restaurants broken into not lightly.

Um they got into our office, tried to break into the safe, and uh I'm all for cameras.

Uh in fact, I'd like more of them.

And uh the fact that the presentation noted there was a hundred and forty-two thousand dollar savings, uh is something that I ask you guys to consider.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, I'm Robbie Islet.

I've been a member of this community for over 50 years.

I worked very closely with Safer San Jose and in our neighborhood in South San Jose.

Those cameras have done tremendous amount to help reduce criminal activity in the area, and I strongly suggest that we do everything to encourage flock and reduce the criminal activity in our neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Also, Brian Coker, come on down and Joanna Bacera.

Uh good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

I'm Sandra Bryant.

I'm from District 10.

I'm here today to speak in support of keeping the existing flock safety cameras in our community.

The cameras have been have already become a valuable tool for law enforcement.

They help identify stolen vehicles, locate suspects involved in serious crimes, and provide time-sensitive information that can make the difference between solving a crime and losing critical leads.

The important thing to remember is that these cameras are focused on vehicles and license plates, not on tracking people going on their daily lives.

Their purpose is simple to help police respond quickly and effectively when crimes occur.

We all want safe neighborhoods where families feel secure and law enforcement has tools.

They need to protect the public.

For those reasons, I strongly support continuing the use of these cameras in our community.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, council members and mayor.

My name is Lori, and I've lived in South San Jose District 10, Georgia's district, for 30 years.

And I'm here to say that we want the flock cameras to remain as is.

They make us, our families, and our neighborhoods safer.

Um I guess this doesn't matter, but the city spent a lot of money and worked hard to implement them, and it does reduce crime and it keeps us safer, and we thank you for that.

I want the criminals found, and this makes it better for our understaffed police department.

Please don't punish us by taking them away or further restricting access.

Please do the right thing.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Jeremy Baroose, come on down in Ms.

Rain Mendoza.

Go ahead.

Hello, Council.

My name is Alan Moad.

I'm the president of the VP Community Association representing the beautiful neighborhoods of Parkview, Vista Park, and Carson in District 2, Councilmember Campos's district.

I'm here to express our community's full support for the city's use of automated license plate readers to help improve public safety and assist law enforcement in preventing and solving crime.

Like many many neighborhoods in San Jose, our residents are increasingly concerned about vehicle theft and other property crimes.

These incidents happen quickly, and those responsible often move between neighborhoods and cities before they can be identified.

Modern problems require modern solutions.

As Chief Joseph indicated, we've already seen success with several criminal apprehensions thanks to these systems.

Please retain these systems.

They are valuable for our city and for our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

And uh just listening to the uh police chief uh uh wonderful results using the cameras.

I'm definitely in full support of that.

Not to mention that as a D2 residence in South San Jose.

Um I'm uh very sad to to say in spite of all the hopeful uh statistics shown by the city previously, we are in big trouble in South San Jose.

There is a lot of housebreakings, there's a lot of car breakings.

Our cameras that we've been installed with uh, you know, from the city, they're capturing these people roaming around at night time, trying to break into vehicles.

So that's the reality.

Now for that reason, I'm again in fully support of the cameras and also trying to separate the immigration issue uh concerns, you know, from the actual use of the cameras.

There are many ways to uh provide proper safeguards to make sure that the cameras are used for the next speaker.

I'd also like to call down Samantha Rojas, Akimi Flynn, and Danny Garza.

Buenas tardes, my name is Joana Becerray soy member of the community in San Jose.

Buenas tards.

Soy miembro de la Comunidad Acqui and San Jose.

Rolands with immigrant families.

I'm here because I am concerned about the use of cameras in our neighborhoods.

California passed the Sanctuary Act precisely to limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

And flock safety violates those sanctuary city values in California.

I understand that the city wants to improve security, but we also have to think about the consequences for our communities.

Many families in my community already live in fear.

Fear of deportations, fear of being watched, fear that our information will be used against us.

When attempts are made to install mass surveillance systems, that fear grows.

True security doesn't come from cameras alone.

Security comes from strong communities.

Trust and support for families.

For many people, that feels like constant surveillance.

We urge the city of San Jose to permanently end their contracts with Flock, following the leadership of the cities of Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, and Santa Cruz.

While we appreciate the first steps with the memos submitted, we strongly request that you pass additional guardrails from the letter endorsed by community partners, such as requiring valid judicial warrants for all data collected.

The Flock Company violates SB 54 by directly sharing with ICE or indirectly sharing with immigration authorities through fusion centers, weaponing weaponizing our data to deport our neighbors.

And while we uh we appreciate the big memo that's signed by five and council members around adding uh the Mexican consulate as one of the sensitive locations.

We also would like to add, you know, courthouses as additional sensitive location.

Thank you, that's your time.

Next speaker.

Victor Sin, come on down in Odnon Rashid.

Hello, Ms.

Raymond Mendoza, with amigos of Guadalupe and IPenn.

Um I just want to say that uh we live in America, right?

We don't live in uh in a country that is like watching us over hacks like that there, so this is not safety.

This doesn't feel safety, especially being an immigrant doesn't feel safe.

Now, you gotta think flock is not a good company, okay?

Anybody that is a little intelligent, they can uh hack those computers and then they can get all the information.

That's not safe.

What will you do with a company that is working with the city that say a sweepers that they don't sweep the streets?

You get rid of them, right?

So this company doesn't work, so you need to get rid of flock.

That's what's happening.

And then also surveillance are First Amendment right to protest, okay?

And that I don't like because I'm an activist, I'm an organizer, and I don't like to be watched, okay?

Because that's a First Amendment right, and they're breaking a civil rights.

And that's what they do.

So get rid of FLAC out of San Jose.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I'll be brief.

Uh good afternoon.

Honorable mayor, vice mayor, uh, city council, city manager, and city attorney.

My name is Danny Garza.

I represent the Plata Royal Neighborhood Association, the strongest neighborhood association in the East Valley.

Our neighborhood association had the pleasure and honor of receiving the first flock camera.

It's our position that with the minimal police force here in San Jose, we need to find a way to keep this technology and protect our community from investigative abuse.

Uh we need to stay, we need to have a safer East Valley.

If this tool is effective in fighting crime, don't break the tool.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Samantha, and I'm speaking on behalf of Latinas contra Cancer, the patient organizing committee and CSO San Jose.

Flock cameras do not only create public safety, they create fear.

Surveillance systems like flock have no place in health care.

Too often the conversation around flock cameras is framed around catching so-called criminals.

But what is missing from this conversation is prevention.

There is very little discussion about investing what actually keeps communities safe.

Stable housing, accessible health care, mental health support, youth progress, economic opportunity, and the culturally responsive services.

Healthcare access is a human right.

Patients should never be monitored, tracked, or placed under suspicion simply for seeking care.

The use of flock cameras threatens patient privacy and undermines trust in healthcare system.

No one should be surveilled in and near their home when requesting in-home long-term care.

This kind of surveillance is appropriately harms immigrant communities.

Many of our community members already live in constant fear, fear of going to the grocery store, picking up their children from school, going to urgent care, or even picking up a family member from work.

When people are forced to hesitate before doing basic everything, thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker, also Anthony Damien, come on down.

Zach Kirk and Lupi Maya Ortega.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon.

Uh Kemi Flynn with IPEN, the immigrant protection and empowerment network, a cross-sector countywide collaborative.

And we agree with the chief and the council and all community members that we have the shared goal for public safety, for safety for every member of our community.

And that also includes protecting our constitutional rights and not letting them slip.

So we are very concerned in this context.

We're not just talking about a new technology.

We're talking about an environment with massive federal overreach.

Accessing IRS, HUD, Medicare data, they are looking for those who they seek to target, and the target list grows and grows by day and by week.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

I'm Victor Sin, a resident of district four.

Automated license place read is a surveillance technology that makes it less safe for us, particularly immigrants, black and brown people, and protesters exercising their First Amendment's rights.

The vast majority of data is collected on people going law abiding people going about their everyday business.

Since this federal administration is looking for ways to exploit local surveillance systems in order to target immigrants and activists, there's really no secure database once the data are collected.

Database can be hacked, just like traffic cameras in Iran before the military operations by US and Israel.

So the only type of secure data is no data.

That is do not gather the data to begin with.

I urge you to terminate the flock contract and end the use of ALPR immediately.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Adna Rashid.

I am from East San Asi.

I moved in about in 19 2008.

And it was the most peaceful place in San Jose.

We were at the end of even uh by uh Evergreen area.

And now it's all the way down uh by the villages and all that area.

And the problem is there is so many uh problems there uh breaking in, uh people having problem with the uh uh stealing cars and all that.

And now what we have for each district.

We have four officers.

Now, what's gonna happen if the next district have a problem, the other two officers they're gonna go help out the other officers.

Then we only have two officers in each district.

So that's gonna be a problem for everybody.

Thank you that your time.

Maria Inez Ortega, come on down and Dina.

And also Kristen Link, come on down.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Anthony Damien, the vice president of the Cadillac Winchester Neighborhood Association.

And I have lived around the district one area for nearly my entire life, and as of recently, it has become much worse of a hot spot of crimes.

So as you may recall on February 1st, there was that incident with the 17-year-old boy that was killed, and it happened to be around my street.

And thanks to uh SJPD, they were able to catch the suspects with those cameras.

So I just want to say that the our community is in favor of keeping these cameras to protect our like community and to make us feel safe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, council member.

My name is Lupe Mayertega.

Um I live in District 1 since I was born to when I'm 18 already.

I would like to ask for you to be in favor of having the cameras because of how useful it has been in the past years in our neighborhood.

It has helped reduce the crime rate and has someone who worked with kids.

I fear for their lives and with the recent incident of the shooting that happened.

Taking the life of a teen from a gang member, we need these cameras in our area.

We're becoming afraid to walk outside.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon to the council.

I'm Zach Kirk, an organizer with Silicon Valley Debug.

We are here in a slight break with other community organizations to say that ALPRs do not need to be in this city.

But there is no reasonableness when this is an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.

Normal people are being tracked every day going from home, going from anywhere, just because there is some type of population that the police want to look at.

It wouldn't be permissible if we had drones flying above each and every person in the city, and that's pretty much how ALPRs work and have been working in this city.

Just because they've been here doesn't mean that they should stay.

And finally, if anyone looks at the uh map of the ALPRs, you can easily see, which is available online, that it's based in the downtown areas and in the east side, where black and brown communities live.

At Silicon Valley Debug, we are against ALPRs in any measure.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call Jonathan Carf.

Good afternoon, um Mayor and all um council members.

My name is Maria, I'm the president for the Cadillac Winchester Never Association.

Only the West uh San Jose, District One, I'm living for almost 27 years.

So that we're living, uh, I mean, the families are scared with the gay members' activity, and many more criminal.

Our family residents are free to all outside with their children.

So all residents for CWA agreed to keep the cameras and everybody.

We ignore the PD San Jose does great job.

Do you know the PD does no contribution or share any information with ICE?

You know the many cases resolved for the cameras.

Please consider it approved because leave for more than that month.

I can listen to run the cars, broken the windows.

That's not that's no safety.

It's worth money for my neighbors.

So please consider this proposed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd like to call Azazel, um, Homequist Catherine Hedges and Drew Siegler down as well.

Go ahead.

My name is Kristen Link.

I'm a resident of San Jose District 6, a member of the First Congregational Church of San Jose, and a leader with Silicon Valley Allied for the Common Good.

My faith demands that I love my neighbor as myself.

Who is my neighbor?

I believe that they are the immigrant, the unhoused, the LGDPQ, and their allies.

They are anyone that society deems as somehow less than those with money and power.

Technology can be used by an abusive federal power, and it will be abused.

It must be blocked from accessing our personal data.

Flock and similar companies cannot be trusted to turn aside from potentially profitable deals with unscrupulous federal officials.

Flock does not make us safer.

I urge you to vote to protect our neighbors by blocking FLOC at every opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

I'm Dina.

I live in District 6.

As a Palestinian American, I know too well how mass surveillance and AI are used to control, oppress, dehumanize, humiliate, and completely destroy an entire population.

I urge each of you to oppose surveillance of our community and remove FLOC.

ALPR systems.

Marginalized communities in San Jose are the most impacted by these surveillance systems.

San Jose must protect its residents, not use systems who can easily be used to directly target them.

Let's learn from the destruction caused from Israel's mass 24-7 surveillance of Palestinians in the name of security, and let's not repeat history.

You all have received invitations to a talk on digital surveillance this Saturday at the Santa Clara County Democratic Party headquarters.

I urge you to attend to understand the impact that this will have on our communities.

Protect our immigrants and stop surveillance.

Leave.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Jonathan Carf, 24-year resident of Navy Park in District 3.

I very much appreciate the guardrail set up by the police chief.

I trust the police chief, I trust SJPD, I trust the city.

But given that the data that Flock collects is on their own servers, I do not trust FLOC.

Furthermore, because Mayor Mayor has received over a million dollars of donations from Flock investors, and because the five firms that have contributed 94.5 million towards uh Flock have also contributed to its independent expenditure committees.

I would ask that the mayor recuse himself from any and all votes on Flock, and I hope that the city council includes that.

Flock collects retains and analyzes all location data of everybody in the city.

This violates fourth pretentious amendment protections of expectation for privacy.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, City Council.

My name is Azizel Homequist.

I live in District 6, and I represent Serge Santa Clara County.

I would also like to urge the city of San Jose to permanently end their contracts with Flock, following the leadership of cities of Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, and Santa Cruz.

We strongly request that you pass the additional guard rules from the letter endorsed by the community partners.

I would like to also add that we need to protect our immigrants from places like SECOT.

Our ICE is deporting people to unethical situations, places that are so much worse than what we're experiencing here.

There's multiple ways to bring criminals to justice.

This does not have to be one of them.

I would like also to add that expecting city council to have enough knowledge to properly address homelessness is like our government controlling women's reproductive rights.

Thank you, that's your time.

Deb St.

Julian, come on down.

Uh good afternoon.

I'm Catherine Hedges with Surge Santa Clara County and Surge Santa Cruz.

And where the city is considering the risks of using Flock LPR systems.

I urge the mayor to recuse himself because of his financial ties to Flock and Pellantier.

These ALPR technologies inherently violate our Fourth Amendment rights protecting from searches and surveillance without a judicial warrant based on probable cause.

Instead of spying innocent people, a catchy Haitian crime suspect, we need to focus on interrupting the cycle of violence in our underserved communities.

Catching a perp doesn't bring the victim back to life or race or trauma.

Treating all of us like potential suspects doesn't either.

If we can't just say no to flock entirely, I support the stronger safeguards in the coalition letter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Respected mayor, council members, my name is Jazz Holhal, a member of this community for nearly 50 years.

I understand that a lot of our residents have uh concerns about surveillance, but unfortunately, a lot of those are unfounded.

Um at this day and age in Silicon Valley, we need technology that helps solve crime.

And uh exactly what this flock license plate system does as the chief has outlined.

Um it helps locate suspects quickly.

It's time sensitive.

You know, when you have a serious crime, time matters.

And I believe, Chief Outline for each one of your districts uh crimes that were solved.

Uh, you know these cameras kept uh vehicles, not people.

Um so I support the proposal from uh chief that I'll line.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Okay.

Drew Sigler, Surge, District 3 resident, obnoxiously contrarian white white man.

I hear people saying ALPRs are invasive.

Allow me to play devil's advocate and suggest they are not invasive enough.

As we know, crime is out of control here in the safest large city in America.

We have nearly 500 ALPRs, but what if we doubled down and triple or tripled that?

Sure, hundreds of thousands of innocent residents and visitors will continue to be tracked in the dragnet, but that's just the cost of freedom.

I'm a fan of common sense data-driven solutions, and getting more data is common sense.

So I recommend mandatory fingerprinting, optical scans, and blood samples.

I also recommend surgically implanting air tags in every adult and child entering within city limits.

Spare not one iota of personal privacy for the for the veneer of security.

I yield my time.

Thank you, next speaker.

My name is Kim Gaptella, I'm from D6, and I'm a member of showing up for racial justice.

I want to say that immigrants are terrified.

And I ask all of our white council members to imagine that feeling of being terrified for just 10 seconds.

Oh wait thank you.

Now, I'd like you to uh I the people of color in the um uh on the deaths uh got it passed because it's likely they all know terror.

And just as it's unlikely that white people do.

Now, multiply that 10 seconds by 8,640.

That's just one day of terror.

Pause and imagine that I can even have cameras and technology that has been quite nice.

Thank thank you.

That's your time.

Peggy Elwell, come on down and Rebecca Armendez.

Go ahead.

Hello, my name is Lori.

I'm a 23-year resident of District 6 and a member of Surge.

I'm asking you to end the city's contract with Flock.

I appreciate the memos that were submitted to uh improve the guardrails, but I ask you to go even further and pass the additional guardrails from the letter endorsed by many community partners, including Surge and led by Cyrin, such as requiring valid judicial warrants for all data searches.

In a time when our black and brown loved ones are pulled over for the way they look, stopped on the streets for the way they talk, and targeted for what's mistaken in their hands.

We must refuse any further tool that will endanger the human lives and mental well-being of our black and brown communities.

This is important to me because I want my tax dollars being used for what we truly know make safe communities, affordable housing, access to public education, youth support, access to the time.

Deb St.

Julian, 41 year resident of D2 and member of Surge.

We need to look at the big picture.

Cameras keep who safe.

We need to address the deeply entrenched systemic racism in our justice system.

The daily jail report isn't available today, so this might be a little off.

The black population in Santa Clara County is 2.9%, but they make up 12% of the jail population.

The Latinx population of Santa Clara County is 30% by your statistic.

But they make up 48% of the jail population.

This is not because black and Latinx people are more criminal like or worse than black than white people.

We need to honestly look at the racism that permeate permeates our justice system and all the systems in our communities before we do mass surveilling.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, good afternoon.

My name is Jose Reyes.

When I was 18, that was 2012.

Um I used to live like at 1135 East Adam Tonner Street.

I was um encountered by a private investigator.

Um he told me to actually go up against the cartels and actually went um put my life in the risk.

So I actually did.

I went against the fucking Channel Day um cartels, I went against the Juarez Carteles, I went against like Cartel Noreste.

So at this point, like I'm on like I had the whole evidence to actually get them locked up and they're involved with the CIA.

They they um they they um they they put a virus on my laptop on my um my phone, and they it got everything wiped out, and the same thing could happen to those cameras.

So just in a in an instant, they could manipulate you everything with AI.

They could make you seem like something that you're not.

But there's people that are inside this room that are they got proof of it, and they don't.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Elizabeth Agramont, come on down and Jack.

Good afternoon, Rebecca Armandares with Working Partnerships USA.

Thomas Jefferson warned us when you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both, and you deserve neither.

It's no secret that tech companies serve their shareholders, not the public good, and few companies make it more apparent than this one.

It is the city's responsibility, especially in these times, to protect our residents from the resulting greed-driven tactics and put strong safeguards in place as those requested in the letter from our community coalition.

Although the technology has already been installed and you may feel like it's too late, the price our community will pay greatly outweighs any monetary costs the city may incur, including the infringement upon our constitutionally protected right not to be surveilled, the increased risk of tens of thousands of vulnerable community members from possible data sharing, whether intentional or leaked, or hacked, the loss of trust between community members and government that will continue to expand beyond federal distrust, beyond distrust of the federal government, beyond distrust of ICE agents, and extending the time.

Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Peggy Elwell.

I live in District 4, and I'm on the steering committee of the South Bay Progressive Alliance.

It is mind-boggling to the extent to which the federal fascist forces in power are willing to go to identify hardworking immigrants, women seeking reproductive care, those seeking public services, the transgender community, and anyone exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.

Neither flock nor any camera system can guarantee the privacy of those whose images have been captured.

This is not public safety.

They cannot be trusted.

True public safety means supporting the well-being of our families and communities through a safe, affordable place to live, well-paying jobs, comprehensive health care, accessible child care, and adequately funded schools.

It also means being able to trust those who wear a uniform and a badge.

We need to put our efforts towards achieving these goals.

Thank you, next speaker.

Jonathan, that's a duplicate.

Alyssa Mama Day, come on down, and Maria Genzel.

All right, hello, my name is Manny.

I'm here to talk about the vulnerabilities of Flock.

So White Hat hackers have been able to hack into these flock cameras in less than 30 seconds simply by pressing the button on the back in a specific pattern.

These cameras operate on a software called Android Oreo.

This operating system has 51 vulnerabilities, which have been documented and published on the internet for anyone to copy paste and utilize.

One of these exploited cameras is live streaming to the internet, unencrypted, a children's playground in the Bay Area, meaning any children near this playground are put at risk of falling victim to human trafficking.

And because I know city councils love to hear individual stories, here's one I want to highlight.

In Chicago, a teacher named Marimar Martinez was shot five times by border patrol.

Discovery process in court has revealed that the agents who shot her not only texted each other saying, I fired five shots and she had seven holes, put that in your book, boys, but that they also tracked or using license plate reader technology.

Please cancel Flock and reject all ALPR vendors.

Stop sharing with DHS funded fusion centers and Mayor Mayhem.

Recuse yourselves from this vote because Flock investors are your donors.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, I'm Tim McKenzie with the Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America.

I urge you to cancel the Flock contract and not pursue other ALPR vendors in the name of public safety.

If you choose to maintain operation of ALPRs, you must implement independent external audits of the system.

In Mountain View, MVPD regularly performed internal audits of the ALPR usage to ensure compliance with strict data and integrity safeguards.

Despite that, MVPD missed the fact that numerous external agencies gained unauthorized illegal access to our personal data.

From August 2024 to December 2025, MVPD performed just under 25,000 ALPR searches, while unauthorized external agencies performed over three million.

In other words, 99.2% of searches were from external agencies and had nothing to do with stopping crime locally.

This occurred despite regular internal audits by MVPD, indicating the need for external audits by an independent authority.

Thank you, that's your time.

Next speaker.

My name is Lonnie Ballard.

I'm a resident of uh district two and a member of SERG.

Growing up, I knew that countries like China and Russia use surveillance on their populations to keep control of the people.

Uh but I knew that my country was different, that my country was free, and my country valued privacy.

And so I'm thinking that we do not need surveillance cameras in San Jose.

We have a vulnerable population here that needs to be protected, and there is no guarantee that data will not be shared with ICE or other government entities.

Flock cameras should not be used here.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call Alexander Wood Woodner to come on down and Batman.

Hi, I'm Jack with San Jose Against War.

Cameras don't stop crime.

Instead, they make everyone a suspect.

They let you avoid responsibility for doing things that actually reduce crime.

How do you start with reducing poverty, invest in community and secure jobs?

People controlled by fear will invite mass surveillance into their lives to feel safe.

But what happens when everyone is criminalized?

State repression is increasing, not decreasing.

The DHS already has watch lists of American citizens.

Health care, housing, and education make us safer.

Mass surveillance does not.

Additionally, Mayor Matt Mahan must recuse himself from this issue as his campaign has received millions of dollars.

Why are you shaking your head?

Millions of dollars from Flock investors, creating a significant conflict of interest.

Flock out of San Jose.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth, and I've lived in D3 for the last 12 years.

If you don't, uh, you're just working with a Trump authoritarian regime, ICE out or we'll vote you out, flock out or we'll vote you out.

Sure, the cameras assist in arresting people, but that doesn't prevent crimes or keep people safe or stop the cycle of violence.

Any perceived benefit of Flock is about vastly outweighed by the great Fourth Amendment violations.

Sigren in Care California with ACLU Foundation of Northern California and Electronic Frontier are suing San Jose because of these cameras, um, ability to retain our data for extended periods of time, stalking our residents, every movement to the minute, and failing to require a valid judicial warrant before sharing our private information.

Flock no, thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call Twee Nan and then Deborah O.

Hi, my name is Elisa Mama Clyde and I live in District 3.

Um, I'm a community organizer with South Bay Youth Changemakers, and we organize Asian American youth leaders who are committed to building a South Bay that puts people over profit.

We urge the city of San Jose to permanently end our contracts with Flock, and we strongly request that you pass the additional guardlet guardrails from the letter endorsed by community partners, such as requiring valid judicial warrants for all data searches.

In my work, I see how often young people's data is already extracted, tracked, and monetized from social media platforms to school technologies.

The last thing our communities need is another system that collects and stores information where we go and how we move through our city.

Young people deserve to grow up in a city where they're there and their families' movements aren't constantly tracked and stored in AI-powered surveillance systems.

As a youth organizer, I urge you to protect our privacy, reject mass data extraction, and get Flock out of San Jose.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker, hello, uh, my name is Maria Genzo.

I lived here for 20 years, but I grew up in the Soviet Union, and I know that under mass surveillance, crime still happens, actually a lot of it.

But what it does, though, do it enables authoritarian persecution and corrupt harassment.

We cannot sacrifice our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights to privacy for every resident, visitor, and driver on our road for this dangerous illusion of security.

We refute any argument regarding the effectiveness of Flock.

San Jose Pedid states that only 73 arrests were made attributed to ALPR, but out of how many millions of searches and millions of data points on our residence were conducted for only a fraction of a percent of those searches that led to arrests.

We were able to solve crimes before Flock existed, and triumph was already trending down.

Montaneo CD staff said other investigative methods may have ultimately produced results in some cases.

At what cost are we getting the security at the cost of to our civil liberties?

Mass surveillance is not public safety.

We do not get safety from violating our freedom.

It's a full thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

I'd also like to call Kayla C and Marjorie.

Let's be honest here, this issue is pretty goddamn cut and dry.

This system, Flock.

The company is a private company that will do what a private company does, which is support profits.

It doesn't matter if SJPD does every single thing right.

And from what you've said, I want to believe that you're gonna do everything right.

But the fact of the matter is, is it does it matter if this city does every single thing right because the company that controls the data will do as they please.

The federal government will use this data to hurt our neighbors, to hunt our neighbors.

Get this fucking ridiculous contract out of our city and stop pretending that nothing bad is gonna happen.

And you need to not vote.

I'm fucking sick of you.

Okay.

Look, I need to cannot continue to do this.

Get Flock out of here, please.

Next speaker.

I'd like also like to call Cindy Bautista.

It looks like Bautista, I'm not quite sure.

And then Shireen Monolani.

Come on down.

Go ahead.

Hello, counselors.

My name is Alexander, and I'm a lifelong resident of District 9.

Uh I just wanted to join the others in urging the city to permanently end its contracts with the law with Flock, following the leadership of the cities of Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, and Santa Cruz.

While we appreciate the first steps by SJPD, the memo by council members Candilas, Campos, Wolkehi, Cohen, Casey, and the memo by Councilmember Ortiz.

We strongly request that you pass the additional guardrails from the letter endorsed by community partners, such as requiring of additional valid judicial warrants for all data searches.

We further call on for Mayor Mahan to recuse himself from the vote as his gubernational campaign is getting over a million dollars in direct campaign contributions.

2.7 million in independent expenditures from Flock investors.

Yeah.

Mass surveillance, it doesn't breed trust in the community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello.

I think based on what we've heard today, both things can exist.

Many good can be done, and also a lot of terrible things can be done.

Um ALPR has done a lot of good, as we've heard from the police chief as well.

But companies like Flock are causing us to lose our autonomy.

These companies do not care about people, they care about profit, and you've seen that autonomy get lost at places like Mountain View.

If you are going to continue exploring LLPR technology, please consider the guardrails that have been demanded in the letter brought to you by our community partners today.

We know why Matt Mahan gains from this contract, and as the rest of you look to your future in terms of your congressional campaign or your next term.

Please consider the future of the residents you took an oath to protect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

My name is Debbie.

I live in District 7.

Um, I do not trust the Flock camera system.

I feel that it is an invasion of my personal prop privacy.

Mass surveillance is a slippery slope.

We may think we can give up our right to privacy for an illusion of safety now, but we may find that the government will know where we go and who we visit.

Flock is not a trustworthy company.

They have proven that no system is hackproof.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Also, Robert Mekinen, Sandra Mekinen, and Sorin.

Come on down.

Hello, good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Kayla from District 3, and I'm also a member of Surge.

I wish to voice my concern about the city having ties with Flock.

Please follow the lead of nearby cities and end contracts with Flock.

I support the three memos.

However, I do ask for more parameters as Cyrin and other partner organizations letter have suggested.

Um this includes judicial warrants for all data searches.

Mouse surveillance does not make me feel safe.

There is not enough protections for our rights and privacy.

Technology like this can lead, can and has been used as a tool for racial profiling and harm to immigrants.

Flock has shared data and cannot be trusted to be a tool that actually looks out for folks in our community.

So I ask you, please end the contract with Flock and end ALPRs.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello.

As a victim of complex crimes, it does sound appealing to have something that would help catch criminals.

And I'll be honest, criminals will get around this.

And the intentions of everyone stated here today may be very genuine, but this system will be inherited by people tomorrow, and we don't know what their intentions will be until tomorrow.

What we do know is that I'm not only an educational administrator and a small business owner, worked in nonprofit sector advocate, but I was born and raised here.

And so I understand technology, understand we live in Silicon Valley.

Are we listening to the tech sector?

Because the tech sector will absolutely absolutely say we're not ready for this.

There are risk to national security.

We will be hacked by enemies of this country, and we will be hacked by corporations that do not wish good for the people.

Thank you, next speaker.

Um Mike Krauss and Tom Wilson.

Come on down.

Good afternoon, City Council members, mayor, and everyone in the house.

My name is Cindy.

I'm with Basos Communizer with Secret High Community Service.

Our data should be protected, our data should not be a menu that everyone can see, touch, or check.

We need stronger protection.

We appreciate the first step that Senos APD, the Memo Council members Candela, Campos McCani Kohenka, and Councilmember Ortiz.

We strongly request that you pass additional guard deals from the letter endorsed by the community partners, such as requiring valid traditional wires for all our data searches.

We further call Mayor Maham to receive um recuse himself from the boat as a use governmental campaign, especially the 2.7 million dollars independent expensive front, flog investor.

Agree what he studied before we need more program promotional programs to keep our community safe.

And lastly, I thought to float out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Keep the cameras, catch the criminals, keep us safe.

My name is Robert Mikinen.

I'm a member of the HTLC community, hardworking, taxpaying, law abiding contributor.

The HTLC community demands that city council puts public safety first.

Protect us from the same criminals violating the community over and over again.

Repeat offenders, take up the majority of our wonderful law enforcement's type.

Do not cut the funds from law enforcement.

The state, the county, and the city jump the hoops, bend over backwards, and do cartwheels for criminals.

This is just crazy.

We don't need any, we don't see any public officials at any level speak out and put forth any kind of agenda to place the HTLC community above criminals.

All issues start at the city level.

How awesome it would be if we had a council member advocating for public safety along us.

We dream of one day having someone represent our values of being safe from repeat criminals, someone who will be tough on crime.

Thank you.

That's your time.

We need uh license plate readers to fight crime.

I am Sandra Mikinen, and I want to prevent a recent headline from being lost and forgotten in the abyss of nudes and headlines.

Mario Porter, a 51-year-old male, was arrested for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.

Thank you, San Jose PD, for capturing and arresting this repeat predator, convicted felon with a track record of sexual assault on minors and assessed as demonstrating above average risk for re-offending.

Did you keep him in jail?

No.

This predator was provided a safe home, pet park, serenity room, and garden with funding from Governor Newsom's home key program.

Our tax dollars went to helping this repeat kidnapper and rapist restart and rebuild his life.

But instead, and to no one's surprise, he kidnapped and raped again.

And now his victim will need to restart and rebuild her life.

To this beautiful 15-year-old girl, we are so sorry.

Negligence, stupidity, and greed cost you this.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Elva Wilson, come on down.

And Lori.

I already had my turn, so I'm just gonna let the other person speak.

But again, I'm standing behind the flock camera continuing and just place some common sense in this whole reason.

Sorry, sir.

We have to go to the next person.

Good afternoon.

Uh my name is Mike Krause, and I'm the president of the Penitencia Neighborhood Association in District 4.

There's about 615 members there.

And I can tell you that their focus, safety, security, quality of life, and apprehension of criminals.

That's why the FLOC system is so critical here.

And I think the chief gave each one of you an example of why that is.

The uh I respectfully request this council support the flock system, not do away with it.

Data security can be managed.

And uh with the understaffing of this San Jose police officers, this is a tool that helps them tremendously.

Okay.

Safety, security, quality life, trumps the civil liberty inconveniences.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I'd also like to call Alyssa, Alex Dillard, Christopher Andrade, and Michelle C.

Just before you go on, I want to make sure folks are not harassing anyone who speaks on either side of the issue.

Please keep your opinions to yourself and don't harass anyone who's spoken, whether you agree with them or not, no matter what side of the issue you're on.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

My name is Elva Wilson, 70-year resident of D5, San Jose.

As VP of Beautify Berriesa Neighborhood Association, I'm here to support LPR technology.

As a Latina, today I learned that while my people represent 30% of San Jose's population, my odds of being the victim of violent crime is closer to 60%.

We have understaffed police force, less police, more crime.

I have been the victim of crime more than once.

And grateful that police had the tools necessary to bring those responsible to justice.

Misuse of LPR technology is a possibility as seen in a handful of cases around the country.

Let's use these incidents as learning experiences to improve technology.

And we can do this also by implementing the guardrails detailed in the police chief's report to the mayor on council today.

Thank you.

That's your technology.

Next speaker.

I'd also like to call Angelica Guadalupe, Ali Victorine, and Michael Ospring.

Come on down.

As the city population increases, partly due to the trending growth of high density housing, the ratio of police officers to residents is declining at an alarming rate.

And since hiring training and retaining officers has been problematic, I see no path forward other than using technology to help maintain law and order in this city.

LPRs are not a perfect solution as privacy concerns are valid to a degree.

However, some anyone using a smartphone is already being tracked, and security cameras are everywhere.

LPR technology is relatively new, so issues are to be expected.

But if we don't use it, we won't be able to perfect it.

The police chief's recommendations to the mayor's to the mayor address the privacy issues brought forth, and our elected leaders should vote for the continued use of LPRs.

We'll sleep easier knowing the police have the tools they need to protect the law abiding citizens from the criminals.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Alex Dillard.

I'm a lifelong resident of this area, and also I'm from Human Agenda.

These license these cameras are not just licensed plate readers.

Flock's own patent states that there are neural networks for identifying people based on their height and weight, race and gender, and even the clothes and accessories worn like backpacks.

There are also neural networks identifying by between identifying bicycles and even animals.

I want to make it clear why this technology is so dangerous.

According to DHS policies regarding all ALPR cameras, all ALPR vendors are required to prevent leaving any trail of federal immigration enforcement agents looking to our data except in audit logs made available only to immigration enforcement, meaning that any audit logs we asked for would produce a false negative.

Thank you, next speaker.

Sarah Fox and Susan Aljelluni.

Come on down.

My name is Michael Ospring.

Flock ALPRs have solved violent crimes in real time.

Recent examples from SJPD.

January 26th, suspect randomly opened fire on a driver at night.

Victim could not provide a description.

Flock identified the vehicle.

Officers tracked and arrested to suspect, a previously convicted killer, recovered a firearm.

2025, SJPD detectives used Flock to track a homicide suspect who was driving toward the home of someone he had threatened.

Officers intercepted him two minutes from his destination, almost certainly preventing another murder.

January 26.

A juvenile walking to school is kidnapped and sexually assaulted.

We've heard that story three times.

RTIC used Flock to solve that crime.

This technology has helped dismantle organized crime, uh, including a violent takeover robbery at Kim Hung jewelers, where Flock data led to the arrest of 15 suspects.

Kudos to RTIC, Lieutenant Jennings, please fund a third shift for this this crew.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, City Council, Mayor.

My name is Ali Victorine, resident of D7.

I support the cameras and technological tools that SJPD employs to solve and prevent crimes, including the Flock ALPR cameras.

I appreciate and support the changes that Chief Joseph is proposing to add additional protections to ensure that data that is collected is not shared with any outside agencies such as ICE without justification and never with ICE.

I also appreciate upon hearing about the memorandum that several council members have proposed that there is a rich discussion on making these as safe and secure as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Angelica.

I am here with Siren and the wild eye, so the the youth.

I'm here to speak on ending contracts with Flock.

As a youth, I want my rights of privacy to be protected.

And I feel like if I wanted to be monitored 24-7, I would just sign up for Big Brother, to be honest, or I guess now live in San Jose.

With that being said, I want the mayor to step back from this vote because he does get funding for his campaign by investors in Flock.

And I just believe that our mass surveillance is not a real safety, and our rights should be protected.

And yeah, that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, thank you for your time.

My name is Susan.

I've been in the community for 50 years.

And I want the Flock.

We are already being monitored by a phones and a watches, so hello.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate your service.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, good afternoon, Mayor, City Council.

My name is Sarah Fox.

I've been in the community for over 30 years, and I support the Flock system.

I know it's not perfect, but I have nothing to hide, and I want to protect our community.

I want to protect my kids.

And if something happens to my house or to my kids, I definitely want these cameras.

I want to catch the folks that cause these issues.

So thank you very much, and thank you to San Jose PD.

I appreciate the support and the safety in the community.

Thank you.

I'd also like to call Dash Leeds, Christopher Alejandra, and Herb Bauer.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon, respected mayor and city council members.

I'm here to express my support for the continued use and actually the expansion of any automated license plate readers if needed.

The San Jose PD has been using these cameras as an effective tool to help solve crimes quickly and improve public safety.

At a time when our police department is under staff, it is important that we provide officers with the best technology and resources available to help them protect our community.

As a city located at the heart of technology, San Jose should lead by example and utilize modern tools that can assist law enforcement in responding to crimes efficiently.

ALP technology has been proven to be valuable in many investigations, as the chief has pointed out to each one of you, council members.

Where crime was thank you.

That's your time.

What gives me confidence is Chief Joseph's proposal of clear and reasonable regulations for how data is stored, secured, and used to protect our residents.

I care deeply about the people living, working, and visiting downtown, and I sleep better knowing that suspects involved in recent neighborhood shootings were apprehended utilizing APLR technology before they could cause further harm.

Absent 300 or more officers patrolling our streets 24-7.

These are tools that are practical and legal to keep our community safe, and these policy amendments strengthen protections around how technology is used.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I'd also like to call Wanda W.

John Leeport and T.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon.

My name is Lisa Lovelace.

I'm born and raised in San Jose.

Um the whole time in District 6.

Um, and I want to express my strong opposition to the use of Flock in our communities.

I have enormous respect for the challenges our law enforcement agencies cope with every day, but there must be a better solution, which does not violate our constitutional rights and add to the fear and anxiety that many of our neighbors are experience.

San Jose residents and visitors should be able to feel safe and secure while enjoying moving through our city without fear of their information being used or shared by Flock, who has shown themselves to be an untrustworthy partner.

Additionally, Mayor Mayan, having accepted over a million dollars from Flock investors for your gubernatorial campaign and nearly three million dollars in independent expenditures.

I feel strongly you must recruit yourself from this vote on Flock.

So there's no thank you.

That's your time.

Greg Koopman, come on down, Paul Pham and Euritzi.

Hello, my name is Dasha Leeds.

I'm the conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter and a district three resident.

Flock has already demonstrated its capacity and willingness to go behind cities' backs to share residents' information with federal agencies like ICE in violation of local and state policies.

I'm disappointed to see that these violations in other cities weren't discussed during the presentation today.

This is a chilling effect on free speech and public activism.

It makes our immigrant communities less safe and it violates the privacy of our residents.

When a city discovers that one of its vendors is a privacy and security risk for its data, a vendor who has proven its disregard for city policies, the responsible decision is for that municipality to cut ties with that vendor to protect their community.

And yet the termination of the contract with Flock isn't on the menu of the agendas being discussed today.

You want to change city policy, but what good does policy do against a company that has already proven its disregard for these policies?

The way to actually protect San Jose residents is to consider cutting the contract with Flock and to consider the additional.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Good afternoon, Counsel for Bowen with Las Vasels, D10, and also with San Jose Neighborhood CERT.

We've been working with all your different districts before.

Sometimes I can get into them, like Peter's area, we had to help clean up crime.

And you know, it people shooting people's houses isn't go well with me.

And in our neighborhood in the past three years, we've had one of our managers beat, bludgeoned, you know, smashed into windows.

Uh luckily I had to jump in, but uh in you know, PD had them in two two hours.

So that was good.

We've had another gentleman, elderly beat in the hospital, died three weeks later.

He was caught because of cameras.

So you know, I hope you can endorse this because from a criminal thing, we need to stop it.

We can't do this to our people.

So I appreciate you looking at it, put some guardrails in place, and we'll go from there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

Um, my name is Wanda Wong, San Jose resident, District 2.

I support the use of automated licensed plate readers as well as the chief of police memo updating the department's protocol.

Automated licensed plate readers are a practical tool, and they help law enforcement solve crimes more efficiently and protect our communities.

They've assisted the police to respond faster and increases the chance of locating suspects, recovering stolen vehicles, and finding missing persons.

These systems help to strengthen our police department, especially when staffing is low and we are in a budget deficit.

They give officers better information to focus on the resources and where it matters first.

You've heard some of the examples.

Earlier this year, we had a sexual assault.

The teenage girl in downtown San Jose near her high school, the suspect again was trapped using the technology.

And thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

I'm John Leipelt, the chair of the District 2 neighborhood leadership council.

The D2NLC fully supports the chief's memo as well as the memo from the staff.

However, we do not support the memo from Councilmember Peter Ortiz.

Specifically item one B.

A data breach or improper disclosure should absolutely be investigated and addressed swiftly.

And those responsible should be held accountable.

However, the response should focus on correcting the failure, strengthening safeguards, and maintaining oversight, not turning off a system that is actively helping law enforcement keep residents safe.

And to those who are calling the cameras a weapon, please do not add unnecessary fear to the community.

These cameras are far from being a weapon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello.

I disagree with the last several speakers who are in favor of this flock contract, even with guardrails.

The root cause of crime, the majority of the crimes that were described this afternoon, is actually wealth inequality.

They're crimes of poverty.

And so if we were really serious about preventing crime as opposed to reactionarily looking to the police to solve all of our problems, which continues to be the American way, we would in fact be dedicating our political will to taxing the billionaires, which is why Matt Mahan will not be receiving my vote for governor as someone who is opposed to that measure.

But instead, we're choosing to invest in infrastructure that can be very easily accessed with a few Supreme Court decisions or the implementation of the insurrection act that demands flock or any such corporation hand over all of the data.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Come on down.

Go ahead.

Hello, my name is Greg Koopman.

I'm a cyclist and a member of the San Jose Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, speaking on behalf of myself today.

I'm also the vice president of my neighborhood association and District 10 lead for CERT.

I hope you approve the future use of license plate readers in the city of San Jose.

We all know we're lacking San Jose police officers as well as city funds.

So our large spread-out city needs this alternative help.

We should always try to protect all San Jose citizens the best we can.

I do believe license plate readers are a good tool and deterrent to keep the city that we love safe.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Councilmember.

Good afternoon, Mayor.

I'm here to speak in support of the uh license plate reader.

Um we can't govern based on just feelings and hypotheticals.

Have you seen the data?

That the facts don't lie.

San Jose is the safest big city and the most effective one of the most effective uh police departments around, considering the size of our city, considering the size of a police department.

The license plate readers help us to solve crimes and provide evidence to prosecute and uh take the criminals off the street and to keep them off the street.

A lot of speakers have spoken today about the concerns about privacy, but what is the alternative?

What do you tell the victims of these crimes who are waiting for justice?

I'm here to ask that you help keep San Jose safe and support the license plate reader program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I'd like to call David Mulvehill and Ted Scarlet to come on down.

Hi, my name is Yuditzi.

I'm here with Siren, but I'm also a constituent of District 6.

I want to explore the proposal put forward by the this governing body.

Let's say we keep clock with the additional guardrails.

Fine.

If we do, then we must cut SJPD's budget at least in half, since the cameras would be doing half of their jobs.

Ultimately, the truth is that we all know that surveillance is just about control.

When our economy takes a down turn downturn, people become desperate and afraid.

By framing ALPRs as a public safety issue, you are taking advantage of your constituents who are especially vulnerable.

Why do we keep throwing money at random things rather than putting money into items that actually serve public safety like housing, education, and public libraries?

Terminate the thank you.

That's your time.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mahan and Council.

Thank you.

My name is Chris Patterson Simmons.

I was honored enough to go on a tour to the Arctic to see how the cameras worked.

And I was totally impressed and totally in support of what's going on.

And knowing that we only have a thousand police officers versus 2500 that we need, I don't know who's going to be doing the work and investigating people and getting data.

We don't even have enough staff for our police officers.

So I don't know where these stats are coming from, and all these people that are talking about being investigated and surveilled.

Who has time to do that?

We're grateful for these cameras, but for these cameras, a lot of these crimes wouldn't be solved.

I live in District 4.

My business for 14 years is in District 3.

And I've been blessed enough to be helped by the police officer when I might my business was violated.

And these cameras are very necessary.

If their flock cameras are so bad, let's get some good ones.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Helen Massamori.

I'm a small business owner on D5, resident on D10, and I'm a president of a business association.

I support the user license plate reader technology.

Public safety is a major concern for our businesses.

Many of us experience theft and repeat criminal activity that affect our employees and our customers.

This tool can help law enforcement deter deter uh crime and respond more effectively while maintaining strong privacy protection.

Our small business needed to feel safe and survive and grow.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd also like to call Phil Oyselli down and Sandra Usman.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmember.

My name is Christina Bowie.

I serve as the board chair of Tilde Road Eastern Business Association.

I'm a resident of D8, and I own a business in D8.

Um our businesses have been deeply impacted by organized retail theft, vandalism, and safety uh concerns.

Many of our business owners have already invested private security cameras because they want to protect their employees, customers, and their livelihoods.

We strongly support the work of the San Jose Police Department and the expansion of our TIC and other uh ALPRs.

Um, tools that allow officers to respond faster and use technology to deter crime and crit and uh further our business corridors.

Triba would welcome the opportunity to continue partnering with SJPD and uh supporting that.

Public safety is essential to a thriving local economy, and we appreciate the city's leadership in investing in solutions that help keep our neighborhoods and businesses safe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is uh David Mulvahill.

I'm a district tree resident and an employer in District Tree as well.

I employ over uh a hundred people in the hospitality industry in uh downtown here.

Uh I feel like I have an obligation to help keep them safe.

Many of them finishing work after midnight.

Um obviously there's concerns about surveillance, but uh just given people I've met here in the room down through the years and PD.

Uh, I do trust these cameras.

I do trust you guys that you're bringing in a system that is going to help keep uh my house, my family, and my dog safe, but also my employees safe.

And if there is an overreach by an outside agency that you guys will deal effectively and efficiently with it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Gary Dilbaugh, come on down.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon, City Council, Mayor.

My name's Ted Scarlet.

I absolutely support our police department, even at times I get frustrated with them.

This is a tool.

And it's a tool that I believe the police department needs, and how the examples that the chief uh already stated that it's been used for heinous crimes, violent crimes.

Those people's lives are altered forever.

They get some solace in the people that perpetrated them are gonna pay for them.

And so I uh I support this.

I I think that people have to realize that uh if if you haven't been a violent a victim of violent crime, you have no idea.

And for someone's uh perpetrator to go loose for years and years and years.

Okay, the anguish in that as well.

But it's a tool, and I trust our police department to use it right.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Hello, my name is Samina Usman, and I'm the government relations manager of Secure Justice.

And at Secure Justice, we are urging San Jose to use to end its use of FLOC ALPRs.

This technology creates a system of mass surveillance, tracking the movements of millions of drivers who are not suspected of any crime.

Across California, we are already seeing how these systems are being misused.

Our investigations have revealed that police departments using FLOC have shared license plate data millions of times with out-of-state agencies in violation of the California law, including SB 34, which prohibits this type of data sharing.

Hundreds of those out-of-state agencies participate in the federal 287G program, meaning that local police data can end up supporting immigration enforcement and deportation efforts far beyond California's borders.

This technology doesn't just track sucks suspects, it tracks everyone.

People going to work, attending.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Um Karen Matsueda and go ahead and Anne Marie Lang.

Come on down.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Phil Orselli.

I'm a member of the Silicon Valley DSA.

I wasn't planning on speaking today, but after hearing many misconceptions throughout the city council meeting, I felt it was necessary.

I heard a lot of advocates of FLOC argue that it makes our community safer.

I would ask those seeming people to think deeply about the incidents I'm about to list off regarding the malfunctioning and misuse of FLOC on some cases of Flock deliberately being misused.

Which of the Kansas police officer Victor Hayar used Flock to stalk a stained strange wife with flock.

Sedgwick Kansas police officer Lean Yingard used Flock 228 times over four months to track the vehicles of his ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend.

Milwaukee police officer Jose Ayala is alleged to have run the license plates of two women nearly 200 times over two months, unrelentingly monitoring their locations for personal reasons.

On some cases of Flockman making mistakes and not being checked properly, Espanola, New Mexico.

Jacqueline Gonzalez and 12-year-old sister were handcuffed and held at gunpoint because Flock mistook a 24-7 on her license plate.

Again in Espanola.

Thank you, next speaker.

Terminate ALPR.

The City Council and public decision makers in general must apply the precautionary principle before imposing any technology upon the people.

The precautionary principle holds that the product has the burden of proving to people that it's safe and effective.

The application of this principle is even more crucial in the case of mass surveillance, since individuals have no protection from free prior informed consent.

ALPRs in general failed the test of safety and effectiveness.

Cases of abuse are rampant in Minnesota, for example.

ICE use ALPR to identify and follow legal observers for the purpose of intimidation.

There are many cases of sanctuary jurisdictions that are violating that trust by intentionally or unintentionally leaking ALPR data.

With respect to effectiveness, AOPRs also fail.

Several statistical analysis showed that AOPR never uh neither deter crime nor help solve crime.

Decision makers must be a chair.

Thank you, next speaker.

I'd like to call Jay Craddock, and I have with calling Jay Craddock's name, that's the last card I've called everybody.

If you did not hear your name, you may have just missed it if you stepped out.

Go ahead and line up.

Good afternoon.

Uh the perspective I think I can represent today is for two groups that I believe are critical to the long-term health of the city.

Uh these are companies, both small and large, are looking to collectively invest hundreds of millions of dollars into making the city healthier and more vibrant.

Um as we work with these groups, the number one question we get by far is how safe is this city?

And I can tell you their perspective, their current perspective is that SJPD is an innovative, thoughtful, and extremely effective.

So my suggestion is that we support um Chief Joseph, who is responsible for protecting and uh the residents and workforce and visitors of San Jose.

He's also built a national reputation as making this one of the safest cities in the country that would continue that momentum, and this will ultimately help attract the day the millions of dollars the city needs to continue to grow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Karen.

Um I'm from District 3, and I'm a member of showing up for racial justice.

And like it sounds like everybody in this room, I am deeply invested in uh public safety.

Um, I urge you to adopt the additional guardrails from the coalition's letter, an even shorter data retention period, judicial warrants for all data searches, and the expanded list at prohibited camera locations.

True public safety means weaving a social fabric where people from all walks of life can live, love, worship, work, and move through the city secure in their constitutional rights and their state rights.

Public safety is not about surveillance and control, threat and retaliation, exposing our data and movements to potential hacking or misuse by bad actors in the government or the private sector.

Vote for true public safety, not the illusion of it.

Strengthen the policy with the guardrails proposed by the coalition.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

These cameras can help law enforcement respond faster, identify suspects, and solve crimes more effectively.

This isn't about invading in privacy.

It's about protecting our neighborhoods, businesses, and our families when used responsibly.

Technology like this becomes a very powerful tool to prevent crime and keep our community secure.

Supporting the flux system means supporting safer streets and safer future for our city.

I'm a small business owner in a district three, and I represent the East Village Business Association.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon.

I am Jay Craddock of District 2.

Ms.

Campos.

We were at a Baskin Ridge meeting last week, and Lieutenant Todd gave one of the most incredible, incredible speeches about the inner workings of all of these systems coming together real time.

It was incredible.

It should be embraced.

We live in the area of technology.

Let's use it.

Come on, it's right there.

Prime example, half a mile from my house.

13-year-old girl walking home from school, groped by a male individual.

Went home, told mom, mom called the police.

Within two hours, a person was identified arrested as a multiple offender.

All through the camera systems.

If it wasn't for them, this person is probably still be out there groping.

13 year old women.

Come on, let's use the stuff.

Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Ray McGolens, and I have been called a criminal more than I've been called Raymond.

I'm here to speak for people that are being called criminals.

Flaw cameras is not gonna protect nobody.

As a criminal who've committed crimes in the city of San Jose, where I am from, cameras didn't sway disuade me from committing no crimes.

Flock cameras are now to be used to prevent crimes.

Flock cameras are going to be used to violate people's civil liberties.

The money that we can save from these flock cameras should be going into investment into deter crimes into investing in school programs to help the communities that will be impacted by these cameras.

If you want to prevent crimes, you can invest in the community.

Well, one young lady said is if we give them flock cameras, then cut half the police budget because we're not gonna need the officers to patrol our communities.

And I will say I have to agree.

Thank you.

That's your time.

Next speaker.

My name is Michelle Coleman.

I'm a voter in District 6 and a member of showing up for racial justice.

I'm old enough to have read 1984 when it was still set in the future.

Its warning is even more salient today.

Mass surveillance is incompatible with the free society.

I can't disagree more with the person who said we need public safety more than civil rights.

Places without civil rights are Soviet Russia, North Korea, etc.

The flock system was designed without robust security.

Flock cameras can be hacked in less than a minute.

Live feeds appear on the dark web.

Even though our own local officials and officers are completely honorable, the system is too insecure.

Too many bad actors can access the data.

The big tech company behind the cameras cannot be trusted.

I urge you at a bare minimum to pass the strict guidelines recommended by the community coalition.

Thank you.

Back to council.

All right, coming back to the council.

Thank you, Tony.

Uh I want to thank everybody who spoke this afternoon.

Obviously, this is an issue that generates a lot of strong feelings on all sides, and I appreciate that most folks, vast majority was able to keep the conversation really respectful.

And uh look, as a community, we're not always going to agree on everything, but it is important to be able to engage in these debates respectfully.

Um before I go any farther, um, Susanna, would you just repeat the point about there seems to be some confusion about when we are supposed to recuse ourselves also?

No, we don't abstain in San Jose.

If we're here, we're expected to vote yes or no.

But Suzanne, I'll let you repeat the point about recusal.

Uh yes, certainly, Mayor.

Uh, the recusal requirement would come into play if, in fact, the council had a decision to make on the actual flock contract today.

That's not in front of you.

Would you be would so it's not triggered?

Uh, and so there's no requirement for a recusal.

What you have in front of you is a recommendation from the police chief to amend the current policy for the usage of the system.

Yeah, thanks.

And I'll just note for the record I don't have any direct donations from flockers executives.

We all have donors who themselves go invest in a lot of other things, and with very rare exception, that's not grounds for recusal.

So we did consult the city attorney very closely on exactly what was required, and uh, I'm expected to be here and vote on this item.

Um, I want to thank uh Chief you, uh Chief Joseph and uh staff for the presentation and all the good work.

Uh I appreciate that the department is proactively coming forward with support from the city manager and broader administration to update our data usage protocols and ensure that our community understands what this technology is, how we're using it, how we use it to keep rev residents safe, but also protect their privacy.

Uh look, the the truth is this is a real issue we should be discussing.

We know that surveillance technology has been used around the world to violate people's liberties in authoritarian regimes in plenty of places that are not as scrupulous and serious about following the law as we are in the United States and particularly here in California and San Jose.

So I think it's very fair to have concerns.

I just I want I do want to acknowledge that.

I think we should never minimize the argument of those we disagree with.

We absolutely should be proceeding with caution when we collect people's information.

We should be transparent about what we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, how long we keep it, how we keep it safe.

If there are breaches, how we ensure accountability and oversight, if there are breaches, uh, and all of the protections around it.

I will say um San Jose has been a real leader in the use of technology, not just license plate readers.

We collect data in many different ways.

We have many different types of cameras, many different digital systems, and we started very early years ago, uh, with a digital privacy policy where the city convened external stakeholders and put a lot of thought into the kinds of things I just listed, what we collect and when and how we make it transparent and keep it safe and monitor for any breaches and so forth.

Um so we've intentionally built a framework that prioritizes transparency and clear guardrails around uh what information is recorded, accessed, and shared.

And I think that's uh and that includes restrictions on federal data sharing and strong auditing requirements.

Our federal sharing feature is not enabled, and there is no uh pathway for ICE to access our ALPR system.

I think because San Jose was ahead of the curve in establishing these protections, even before the additional uh recommendations from uh from the chief, uh, we have not experienced the kinds of breaches and vulnerabilities you have seen in some other cities.

We have been really ahead of the curve on this.

That being said, it is important that we're always looking to evolve our policies, make them better, listen to critiques.

We have heard the questions and concerns.

And um, this is the department coming forward and saying we can collect even less data stored even less frequently, and here's how we can even further reduce any potential exposure because the truth is these things are never binary, it's always a question of um of trade-offs and what's an acceptable uh trade-off to make.

I want to thank uh my colleagues who uh submitted memos.

I agree with the recommendations in the group memo as well as the memo from council member Ortiz.

I I do agree, and I just want to note that item recommendation one B from Councilmember Ortiz says may include deactivating.

And so I I just want to highlight the may include, I know sometimes it's nuanced, but uh I personally would would not want to see the system automatically shut off any time we have a breach, but I don't think that's necessarily what's being recommended here.

So I personally support both memos with the understanding that that this is really for the most part, these recommendations and both memos are about getting more information and continuing to have an informed discussion about trade-offs and guidelines and guardrails.

Um also just want to be clear, and I think it was stated earlier, but um the technology captures license plates, which are publicly visible on the front and back of a vehicle.

Uh our ALPRs at least do not scan faces, perform facial recognition, have any sort of biometric analysis.

We know the time and place of a vehicle, and with the proposed changes would only store that for 30 days to help in an in investigations.

Uh, but Chief, do you want to just confirm that point about how little we really do capture here?

Yes, Mayor.

So the I think the technology that the gentleman was referring to was a different product offered by the same manufacturer that we don't have and we don't intend to get.

All we have is a flock camera system, a license plate reader camera system that is focused on license plates of vehicles passing through public intersections.

None of those capabilities apply really to our system.

And actually, I'll turn it over to Lieutenant Jennings for a little bit more on that.

Yes, uh Mayor, City Council, just for clarification, there's no biom biometrics, facial recognition, or anything in our flock camera devices.

Um that'll never happen.

Great.

Thanks, Landon.

Thank you, Chief.

Okay, great.

And then have we experienced in San Jose uh any unauthorized access breaches or improper disclosures of LPR data since the program was implemented?

No, we have not.

Okay, thank you.

And then, Chief, and your recommendation, in addition to going down to just 30 days of storage of just license plates, time and location, uh, no personally identifying information beyond the location of a vehicle.

Um, you've added another layer here of uh of approval for accessing data.

And can you just remind I know you presented it, but would you just remind folks of that as well?

That's correct.

So anyone outside of the automatic sharing agreement that wishes to see our data has to provide a justification that would be within the boundaries of where our officers could look at the data, and then that request has to be approved, not just by a detective or a sergeant, but by some command level officer.

So we want to make sure that anything that's not an automatic share is getting the highest level of uh of scrutiny uh by someone in in the command staff position.

And again, the justification has to be exactly what would be authorized for one of our officers.

No differences.

Okay, great, thank you.

And then Colin, if I could maybe just uh I'm sorry to bother you with this to come down here, but just curious if you could just say a little bit about maybe two topics I'll just start to ask as you come down.

What one is um what what is our capability and current practice around auditing who's acts uh who's uh accessing the system and for what purpose, to what extent are we able to kind of audit and monitor ourselves, and then maybe you can also talk about there's some discussion of other tools.

My understanding is what we're using is is generally considered and we thought was best in class, but I don't know if there's been any evolution in the technology space since we adopted this tool.

But if you want to comment on both of those, that would be great.

Oh, your mic went up.

There you go.

Thank you, Mayor.

Calatophic Chief of Commission Officer.

Uh every year around this time we get the raw data from PD, and our privacy officer with his team, they go through the log to identify uh how many people accessed our system, what location the cameras were accessed within our staff within PD.

And also we were looking to if anyone accessed the information outside the the state of California.

All this information is processed, reviewed, and annually we we publish this information on our website.

Uh this is independent of all the audits and that PD performs, but the ITD has been uh going through this practice as you mentioned for years from now.

Yeah and we continue to do it in an annual basis, and we just started the process for 26 for the data that we collected from last year.

So we haven't seen any any incidents or anything suspicious, or we haven't been able able to identify any any flags.

And at this point, we we don't we don't see any concerns in the data that we have received that will suggest otherwise.

Great, thank you.

And then could you just comment briefly on the technology space to the extent that you've been forward?

We're using new tools just to to expedite the the assessment and just to make sure that we we can do it in a rapid way.

Uh I guess you look for if we're using AI or anything like that, we we're not really uh we we're doing some analysis with that, but it's not really the core uh solution that we use.

And and we're not feeding the ALPR data we collect into some generative AI model to train it.

No, we're uh according to Flock and according to our contract, no data is collected is used to train any AI model or generative AI.

Okay, correct.

Okay, great.

Appreciate it.

I I do think it's important and and good to just know that um thank you, College.

Appreciate it, uh, that in addition to the internal review and auditing in the department that we have an external department doing an independent audit and then publishing that transparently for the public to review as well.

Um okay, great.

I appreciate this.

Look again, this is an ongoing conversation.

This technology space is rapidly evolving.

We're gonna continue to have a conversation about how we balance the capabilities of a tool that has helped us achieve a 20% reduction in crime and become the safest city in the country and supplement a very thinly staffed department that is overstretched and used that has used the tool incredibly effectively while also ensuring your privacy and safety and that this very limited data that we collect in store for a very limited period of time is um not used in any way to harm any of our residents, which uh we have to have an equally strong commitment to.

I personally believe from everything I have read, seen, studied, discussed with uh folks in the city and outside of the city that we've struck the right balance here.

I appreciate my colleagues' memos and support them, but just um you know appreciate again the presentation and chief, you proactively bring in some additional safeguards to the council for our review.

And I will turn to Council Member Condellas.

Uh thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the questions.

Um, I want to begin my my comments uh by thanking my colleagues for their collaboration on the memo, Council members uh Mulkehi, Casey, Campos, uh, and and Cohen.

Um, you know, I also want to thank obviously uh Deputy City Manager Shambri, uh Chief Joseph, and Deputy Chief Tibaldi, as well as Lieutenant Bennett for their input.

And uh finally to the community advocates who showed up and um work closely with my office on on the group memo we authored.

You know, I believe that when people are seeking help, they should always feel safe in doing so without fear um or concern about potential repercussions.

And you know, I love San Jose.

I I was born and raised here, and you know, in our city, our our our community trusts our police department because regardless of immigration status, our SJPD shows up responding to calls for service, proactively patrolling our streets, and supporting our all sorts of businesses, whether they're immigrant-owned uh or big businesses, um, you know, and as our police chief mentioned in the opening comments, I heard you I was in the back.

Um, you know, the the department tracked down a violent group uh that ransacked a small immigrant-owned business and violently assaulted an elderly man.

Um this technology helped with that.

And I recognize the challenges that come with staffing shortages and appreciate the continued effort shown by the department, especially in recent years utilizing this technology, and and um you know uh it helps to preserve that that sense of safety that our residents demand.

Um, however, uh you know it's important that we use these technology, uh this technological tools responsibly, both to enhance public safety while also protecting those civil liberties that we all cherish.

Um, you know, I I do want to quickly touch on a comment I heard uh uh during during public comment.

You know, I I also believe in upstream interventions, investing in our youth upstream, championing youth services and after school program recreation, um, and I and I've done so since I took office, championing that, and and as we go through the budget, we'll have an opportunity to invest more.

But I don't think it's an either-or conversation, it's a yes and it's how are we doing both?

And you know, it's important for me to to talk about that because you know, we we as as policymakers have to have to uh juggle a lot of priorities.

Um and you know, with regards to our group memorandum, you know, the the staff recommendation prohibits placing ALPR cameras in positions that capture data from vehicles entering or exiting any reproductive health care facilities, uh primarily providing abortion services or any other location primarily used for religious observance.

Our memo would also add diplomatic offices like the Mexican consulate to that list.

Uh the consulate has uh experienced a significant increase in demand uh over the last year, uh providing essential services like expedited passports, dual citizenship registry for residents throughout the county.

And you know, although there's currently no cameras directly in that area, our memo uh ensures that moving forward.

And while we appreciate the regular audits that ensures that data is not misused or improperly uh accessed, it's equally equally important that those findings and audits be presented regularly to the council for oversight.

Um that is uh increased transparency for the public.

Um and uh there are also concerns specifically around flock um and why we added a directive to the city manager to explore alternative vendors and report back to the council.

Uh protecting the integrity of our ALPR system and the data collected is essential to maintaining that public trust and any suspected or confirmed data leak involving ALPR data must be reported uh promptly.

And you know, the staff memo, yes, it codifies safeguards to prevent data access from unauthorized users.

Uh, but you know, we we must go even further to ensure that our data remains protected.

Um, you know, uh look, I understand our community's concerns, um, and that's why I believe believe in codifying these safeguards and these guardrails that we talked about.

Um, but you know, while I know that community advocates wanted more, um, know that we as a council are paying attention and that we will have oversight and it will continue.

Um, and and with that, I I will move our memo as well as council member Ortiz's memo uh and ask for a second.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ortiz.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh, I just want to thank all the activists who came out today to share your concerns and priorities.

I also want to thank our uh small business owners uh and our residents.

I think both of your perspectives are valid.

Um, and as a council member, um I take both perspectives very very seriously.

I've been one of the um loudest advocates for immigrants on this dais, as well as a very loud advocate for public safety.

And I think it's not an either or I think we need to do both.

And we are we are we are doing both.

Um I I also want to just be very clear about about something.

Uh I support our San Jose Police Department having the technology they need to solve these crimes.

As the chief said, there's crimes going on day in, day out.

I know these small business owners know.

Um day on the daily, I'm getting news from our business owners that their windows are being smashed, that people are breaking in to their jewelry stores, to their clothing shops.

Um, and us as a council as a city council, we have a responsibility to make sure that uh the police have everything they need uh to try and apprehend these criminals.

But that that being said, it's also important to have protections in place to make sure that this technology is not used in a way that can hurt our community.

Uh and and so uh I I don't make this decision like uh lightly um because really it's a it's a balancing act.

It's it's not something that's really either or.

You know, in my district, we've seen firsthand how this technology helps our investigators solve serious crimes and generate leads that might not have existed otherwise.

ALPR systems have become an increasingly valuable investigative tool for our patrol officers, the crime analysis unit and the Bureau of Investigations, contributing to cases involving robberies, carjackings, domestic violence incidents, burglaries, and even child abductions, which was mentioned earlier.

The reality is ALPRs are helping our San Jose Police Department solve crimes in our districts every single day.

I also want to thank the department for the proactive steps they've taken to strengthen the security of this program.

I think part of the reason why we're having this presentation is from a memo we introduced previously.

Uh, and so I I really appreciate the chief willingness to lean into this conversation.

We've had multiple uh discussions about this because it is important to me, and I think it's important to this council that we protect the progress that this body has made in defense of our immigrant residents.

Um and because ALPR technology is powerful, it can also help solve crimes and make neighborhoods safer.

But it's also an emerging technology that can potentially carry serious privacy and data security implications, if not handled carefully.

And so my concern is not with ALPR technology itself, my concern is with Flock safety as a vendor.

And honestly, I believe we should end our contract with Flock today.

But I uh unfortunately I don't I don't know if we have the votes for that.

Across the country, we're seeing increasingly the scrutiny of Flock uh based on their data governance practices.

Their policymakers and oversight bodies have raised questions about transparency around how their nationwide ALPR network operates, including how outside agencies may be able to have access to that local data.

Federal policymakers have raised concerns about inconsistencies and how the company has described its relationship with federal agencies and the scope of its system access.

And that's that's why we need to approach this this technology with caution and vigilance.

Right now, Flock has not fully demonstrated that it is the responsible steward of this technology that our residents expect and honestly deserve.

And that is why I want to thank the signers of the other Brown Act memo for signing the safeguards and strengthening the safeguards around this program.

Their recommendations reinforce the protections already being implemented by the police department and direct the city manager to explore alternative vendors capable of providing the same investigative benefits while meeting the highest standards of data protections and public trust.

With that being said, I do have a couple questions.

So I know that we're um directing the um city manager to look at possible other vendors.

Is there anything preventing us from ending our contract early with Flock and taking up uh another contractor?

That would be a question, I think maybe for the city attorney as to Okay under what circumstances we could end the contract.

I'm not 100% certain about that.

Councilmember, we're under contract, and so we there would have to be very um very limited reasons for us to be able to not continue with the contract.

I'm not familiar with the contract myself, so I'd have to take a look at it to advise the council so we don't know when it's up or anything like that.

No, um, unless Chief Deputy City Attorney Johnny Fenn knows.

I think uh Lieutenant Jennings can shed some.

Sure.

So every year in June, the uh contract is up um for an extension, and we're in like step two out of nine options that we can step into.

So it goes about 2034 before we have to go out for an RFP.

Oh, I see, but every June we renew the contract then.

Correct.

Okay, so in theory, not saying that this body is has the votes to do it, but in theory, we could shutter the contract in June.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Uh we've also had some members of the community ask about judicial warrants and how requiring them for ALPR usage could increase the community's confidence in their use.

Uh at first, uh, you know, I I have concerns about this.

I don't know how that may deter your officers' ability to you know enforce the law or apprehend uh criminals.

Can you could you speak to how prohibit prohibitive that would make the usage of the cameras and if it would slow down investigations?

So that's a complicated answer only because we are being sued over that very topic, and I don't want to provide an answer that could potentially affect the litig in any way.

All right, then it's just about requiring judicial warrants.

Okay, well then I guess we'll talk about that in closed session or something.

Uh I want to clarify our intent in item one A of my memo.

Based on the discussion with my staff, my understanding is that this provision would not exclude ALPR cameras near all healthcare facilities, but specifically those primarily that provide gender affirming care.

I just want to make sure that staff have the same interpretation of the provision.

That's correct.

And and again, no none of these cameras are pointed directly at a driveway, any private driveway.

They are mounted at intersections to take photographs of license plates of cars passing through those intersections.

Yeah, I I understand that, but just to put the community at peace, because there are there are concerns.

But yes, I I understand.

Our understanding is the same as yours, Councilman.

Great.

I want to highlight that both the recommendations in my memo regarding facilities that primarily provide gender affirming care and the Condelas Memos protections for consulates and embassies recognize that there are certain places where residents must feel safe, accessing health care, legal assistance, and other critical services.

These guardrails help ensure that as we deploy powerful public safety technology, we remain mindful of the real fears that many residents carry and uphold the trust that our communities place in us to protect them, uh their safety, and the safety of our local economy.

And with that, I just want to thank our our police department.

I want to thank our colleagues, and I look forward to the vote.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Ortiz.

Councilmember Collin.

Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor.

Um first I just want to say I've been appreciative of the power and effectiveness of this camera system as a technology tool that assists us in real-time uh law enforcement in our city or you know, in the short period where we are investigating uh criminal activity.

The ability to be able to find out where a stolen vehicle is, for example, or where a specific vehicle that was used in a crime is is traveling in our city is very helpful.

Um and I want to thank you, Chief, for um implementing you, Chief and NIT and our uh uh IT department um for implementing this system with care.

Um I do feel that we've done a good job in San Jose of implementing the system in a way that uh is sensitive to uh potential uses of the system that we don't intend.

Um the the purpose of today's discussion was to come forward with ways to even to do better and even and strengthen it further.

Um as was pointed out, the contract expires, doesn't expire now.

This wasn't intended to be a question of yes or no on flock, it was intended to be a uh a question of how how can we strengthen and and improve our protocols?

But it's also important to acknowledge that we're not operating in normal times.

There are people out there, many uh in our in our federal government now who would love to be able to access indiscriminately access our data and use it to target people that we value in our community.

And the fact safety that comes for some comes at the expense safety for some that comes at the expense of safety for others is not community safety.

So that has to be acknowledged.

So I just want to ask a few questions.

Um so the first one, and I think this has been the big concern.

We've we've heard a lot of concerns about Flock as a business and Flock as a vendor.

Does Flock have access to our data because they're saying storing it on their servers without our knowledge of their of their bill of what they're doing?

So they don't first of all, it's stored in a cloud and not on a server.

The data is owned by us.

Flock can look, they can't look up the data in the way that we can.

In other words, they can't seek uh to search for license plate 123 ABC and all the times that it's past a camera.

Their ability to see a camera is just to ensure that a camera is working.

So if there's a question that if the camera at first in Santa Clara Street is working, they can look at it to see that yes, it's capturing images, and then that's the end of that.

So it's kind of yes and no, but no, they cannot look at the images and do searches and access data in the way that we can.

Right.

Okay.

And then if there is access to the data through a search, is this something that we would know?

In other words, if somehow there was a breach or something in our system, would we would do we we have ability to track who's viewing the data?

So every every access of the system is tracked and auditable.

Okay, yeah.

And that's important.

Um as was the as the mayor clarified before, the the data that we're collecting is license plate location and not individual identifying information of drivers or passengers or or anything.

So it's important to understand how the data is used.

It's for tracking a vehicle that's under pursuit for some reason and understanding where a vehicle goes after it's used in the commission of a crime or a victim of a crime.

Um there's there's a lot of talk about judicial warrants.

Your policy, um, let me just get the wording here.

Your the policy you're we're recommending um asks for, says that San Jose Police Department will only share data with California law enforcement agencies.

And the data cannot be shared with um federal agencies or other agencies that are doing other kinds of what they would call law enforcement questionable in my mind whether some of it is law enforcement.

Um the if a judicial warrant is comes from a federal agency, would we have to honor that judicial warrant for them to access our data?

If you could be able to do that, it's gonna depend because of course if it's a judicial warrant involving a criminal investigation, then California law does not prohibit us from participating and providing that information.

But it's gonna it's gonna depend on the content of the judicial warrant and what they're asking for.

So it sounds like the question of whether an external agency accesses our system basically would require a judicial warrant, but that doesn't even the judicial warrant doesn't guarantee access.

Well, you since your question was regarding a federal uh agency, um if it was a criminal investigation.

Then California law does not prohibit the police department from cooperating with criminal investigation.

Yeah, I know you're using legal terms, the legal language here.

It does not prohibit.

That's the opposite.

I mean, I'm asking whether it would require access, or you're saying it wouldn't prohibit us from cooperating.

Does it require us to cooperate?

Okay, well, anyway, these are questions I I think that still require some clarification.

Um, but I do appreciate that there's some strong language in here that says we are not this is for California law enforcement agencies similar to our police department who might be tracking vehicles across multiple jurisdictions during um particular investigations, but not uh federal agencies for any other purpose, unless and presumably there could be some exceptions to that if there were some judicial warrants that come from the outside.

Um I just wanted to make sure that we had strong enough language, but it strikes me it's pretty strong language that's in the policy right now.

Um thank you for the for the clarification.

Um I'm appreciative to our other group of us who worked on the memo and and Consumer Ortiz as well for um providing guardrails, additional guardrails uh beyond what was proposed.

Um I know that there's a list of sensitive locations that where we're trying to make sure we don't angle cameras in a way that we can see where their vehicles are coming going from those locations.

Um I I was interested in having courthouses be part of those list of central of of um sensitive locations.

I don't know whether that's amenable to uh you know the motion, but I I don't know whether we would ever um you know tracking people in and out of courthouses to me is potentially a risky situation in the current environment as people have been you know going in for various things and then tracked by ice in our community.

I think we want to make sure people feel safe going to court and being and coming in and out of court.

Um so just something I wanted to raise, we can discuss that as a as a counsel.

Um I'm I I just want to make sure it's that you know, just to reinforce that it's important that we we immediately or quickly know whether there's unauthorized or authorized access to our data from that's uh that's outside the scope of what this policy is saying.

I think it'll be very helpful for us as a council knowing forward, especially as we come on the question of renewing these contracts year over year, whether they're what how the data is being used outside of the how we expect it to be used.

Um and so this shouldn't be the the end of the discussion.

This should be uh a milestone in the discussion.

So as we move forward, we are constantly being uh being made aware of how this data is being used and whether we are at all sacrificing anybody's security for the security of others.

So um anyway, thank you for for the proposal.

Thank you for to our police department for I believe seriously safeguarding our data while using it in a way that's keeping our community safe.

Thanks, Councilmember.

We'll go to council member Casey.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you, Chief Joseph.

Appreciate the presentation um and your, as the mayor mentioned, proactive approach to assuaging some of the community's concerns.

Also want to thank your staff, in particular Assistant Chief Mary, for responding to a number of questions I had.

Uh I'm just gonna make a comment.

I don't necessarily support uh going down to 30 days, it'd be my preference that we'd keep it for a year.

Um I received a number of cases that were solved post the 30-day time period we're discussing, so I'm only gonna list three of them that are problematic for me.

There are three homicide cases, one in 2023 or two to three months of flock data was reviewed to finally put together a filing.

2024, six months of APLR data was used to help identify a suspect, a homicide case.

2025, three months of flock data was also used and needed to solve the case.

So for me, um, as a municipality, our our first order in order to actually have authority to govern is to provide safety.

And as it's been mentioned, we're understaffed and we're leveraging technology, and I fear that we're blunting this technology and this tool unnecessarily.

Um, as it's been stated, there's been no breach.

This information has been safe.

Um I understand I won't necessarily have the support, but it would be my preference to keep it for a year, and I appreciate the work you guys do.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member in chief.

I know in our offline conversations I'd also asked about the optimal timeline.

Do you want to comment on 30 days versus other time frames?

Sure.

So we are comfortable with the 30-day time limit.

Um that's the industry standard throughout the state.

Uh it's actually uh a time limit that we initially wished to utilize um for cost purposes.

Um, you know, certainly the longer we keep the data, the greater potential for us to learn something, uh, but also the greater the concerns.

So we're trying to strike a balance here, and we feel that going with the industry standard is is that balance.

I think anything lower than that would would seriously hamper um our our ability to to use this as an investigative tool.

And I and I um certainly uh share some of the concerns of council member casey, but we also did speak with our investigators in the Bureau of Investigations, and most of the cases in which ALPRs play a factor uh are from data that is collected within 30 days of the incident.

Okay.

Thanks for adding that context.

Uh let's go to councilmember Kamehameha.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for bringing this forward.

And you know, just like a lot of the techn other technology that we use, um, you know, we iterate and try to uh get better at uh using it as well as uh what can be done.

Uh so thank you for that.

I also want to thank all of the speakers uh who came to give uh their um uh thoughts and and and concerns.

Um I think that your example in my district, that's just one example, but there have been many, and I know that uh we uh are looking to strike a balance.

And I had some of the similar questions that have already been answered.

Um, but I was I was wondering about, you know, even though we've taken many precautions, um there are breaches and vulnerabilities that do exist.

I'm wondering what is what is the protocol in place.

I really like that you have a data usage protocol uh that really like specifies prohibited uses, operational procedures, and it just goes on and on.

I think that's very good.

But in the event that something would happen, uh, is there like a specific protocol on the data itself?

I'm not sure what you mean about the data itself.

Well, well, well, I I I guess I'm thinking more of uh someone hacking into it, not not that you would allow it to be used or anything like that, but but more from the technology side.

I so I I mean I we we've worked very hard with our IT department to make sure that we have as secure a system as possible.

We do the constant audits to make sure that that we are maintaining that security.

Um if we were to find some sort of systemic issue like that, then obviously we would have to address it.

Um an individual who violated this policy, an individual employee of ours would certainly be subject to an administrative investigation potentially leading to discipline, as well as potentially a criminal investigation, and that would apply to anybody in our data sharing portal because they're all California agencies under the same guidelines.

So I really I recognize that one of I think one of the points in the memo was to develop a more uh thorough or or more comprehensive protocol than that.

And so obviously we will follow council direction there.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much, and um thank you for all you do.

Great.

Thanks, Councilmember.

I also just note as a point of information, and Chief, please correct me or call it if I'm wrong.

I believe the memo noted that uh it's stored in AWS, which is an industry uh leader, uh, but also at a higher level of security, the government standards that are laid out by the federal government for government data.

So that was what I at least took away from the memo.

That's correct.

It's all all of our data is has to be CGIS compliant, meaning meeting federal DOJ standards.

Okay.

Thanks.

Go to Council More Tordios.

Thank you, Mayor.

I want to start by just thanking the police chief and all of our city staff for coming forward with this set of recommendations, as well as a thank you to all of the members of the public who came out to speak.

Uh I know that everyone in this room values public safety and considers it a top priority for our city, and we've seen how difficult it is to achieve that end uh given the thin staffing in our police department.

So I think we do have a responsibility to explore and leverage tools that can help to uh support public safety in San Jose.

Uh but at the same time, we've heard from many residents today with serious concerns about these cameras and legitimate questions, not about SJPD's commitment to our residents or to privacy, but about the technology itself.

Uh that's why I think that having these strong guardrails in place is so important to give our uh community that assurance.

I wanted to probe a little bit more about the question of the 30-day uh data retention limit.

Uh as you said, I think there's this emerging standard in California of the cities that have adopted retention periods uh around 30 days in Oakland and Stockton and San Diego.

Uh but wanted to note that there also seems to be this emerging consensus around a slightly shorter retention period of around 21 days.

Uh that's the recommendation from the Brenner uh Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU and a couple states at this point, including Virginia and Maine have adopted 21 day limits, and uh Washington State has a bill in the works of this legislative session session that's also pursuing 21 days.

Uh so was just curious if uh Chief you could speak a little bit more about what kind of factors we weighed here uh when we determined of a 30-day limit, uh, and if you think there's any potential in the future to give it a second look, see if a lower limit is something that would be feasible without sacrificing the actual utility of these cameras.

So, first of all, uh I'm very respectful of and humbled by our responsibility to not just keep our community safe from crime but respect the rights of our residents.

So this is very important issue to us, and it's something that we're gonna constantly be taking a look at, which is why we have brought forward proactively a proposal to reduce our retention period by 92 percent.

Um I think that reduction to get to the industry standard here in California maintains a balance between trying to address some of the concerns that understandably folks in our community have while still keeping this tool um as an effective tool for our for our detectives to do the work that they need to do to balance this public safety side.

Um I would not be in favor of going lower than 30 days.

Um I'm not saying that couldn't ever happen, but I think I I think a 92% reduction in our um data retention period goes a long way towards addressing some of the concerns that people had thank you, Chief.

And I do appreciate the fact that SJPD was not waiting for an incident here, they were proactive and kind of bringing forward these recommendations.

Uh my hope here is just that we kind of continue to be proactive moving forward, kind of looking for additional guardrails that we can institute moving forward as we get more experience with these cameras and the way that they interact with uh our department's work.

I also just want to thank my colleagues for the extensive conversations and collaboration that went into all of the recommendations uh bringing brought forward today, uh especially appreciative of uh some of the changes to add additional sensitive locations like consulates, like uh health clinics that offer gender affirming care, as well as the commitment to uh ongoing periodic auditing and uh additional protocols around how the city would respond if we ever do identify any unauthorized access.

Uh so we'll be supporting the uh the motion on the table.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Councilmember Mulcay.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, just a couple of things.

Um first of all, I want to thank the chief and Lieutenant Jennings for the work you're doing and for the presentation today and for being proactive around these um important issues and thank the community.

I think you know it was an incredibly balanced pro and con here in the room today, and I think it sort of represents a bit of the conversation we had as a Brown Act group in terms of even on this retention question.

I want to point out in item two of our memo, it does talk about and refer to direct the city manager's office to continue conducting audits performed by the information technology department.

Um I think that's a well placed location for you know ongoing look at this days of retention.

You've heard from council member Casey and I would lean towards more time of retention and um certain you certainly uh uh council member Tardillos on perhaps considering shorter like other cities throughout the state, but I think that would be a well placed location to sort of add that to the roster of things that we'll be looking at on an ongoing basis.

So with that, I'll be approving uh the motion on the floor today, and thanks for everybody's efforts.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

All right, thank you to all my colleagues.

We have a motion on the floor.

Tony, I think we're ready to vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Great.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Chief.

Okay, we are on to item 4.2, our last agendized item.

Police department overtime spending.

All right, Jim, when you're ready, turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Uh good afternoon, uh, early evening, mayor, members of the city council.

My name is Jim Shannon, the city's budget director.

Sitting alongside here, of course, of police chief Paul Joseph here to talk to you about the item here regarding police department overtime spending.

I'm just gonna make a few quick remarks and then we'll be here uh to answer any questions that you might have.

Uh in 2425, uh the police department's personal services exceeded its modified budget by approximately 16.5 million, uh, which reflects a growing and increasing complex service demand and a sustained period of time, uh, whereby the um the additional spending of overtime was uh um was exceeded the amount of funding we had available from vacant sworn sworn positions to do that that work.

Uh so we have undertaken both the budget office and the police department really dug dug deep into the data, try to figure out sort of uh what is going on and what is the right path forward.

Uh and so that's what this memo is incorporating.

It summarizes the work done done to date, um also talks about the additional controls that have been put in place, including stricter overtime can controls.

Uh, it's it recommends some redeployment of existing personnel, which uh would result in a net reduction of about eight million dollars of overtime costs on an annual basis.

We'd want to have those be effective with the May 26th shift change um so we could also uh so have those ready for that for those re redeployments as well as uh get some of those savings before the current fiscal year ends.

Um we'll also be including some actions in the 26-27 base budget with those re redeployed positions.

We're gonna take some of the uh savings there and ship that over to the uh over overtime budget as part of a multi-year shift to sort of right size the police department's budget.

Um and so we really appreciate um all the work that both the police department staff and the budget office staff has done.

It's been sort of a uh uh quite a labor over the last few months.

We also appreciate the support and collaboration of the San Jose Police Officers Association, and with that, we're gonna be happy to answer any questions.

Great.

Thank you, Jim.

Tony.

Thank you.

I have three cards.

Ted Scarlet, Jose Reyes, and Herb Bauer, come on down.

Okay, we'll give folks just a second.

I'm not seeing anyone approach one second Herbs here.

Come on.

I mean, we're one minute, or three people.

Once we change it, we keep it.

Sorry.

So I heard some information that uh some of the overtime for our captains, lieutenants talking to the neighborhood associations wouldn't happen.

Is that true or not true?

People we you know, we've been developing the neighborhood associations.

George wants to do a hundred.

What do you have to do?

15 now?

Okay.

Pamela's got two.

Working in David.

Oh, Cohen's gone.

So we're trying to build out the neighborhood associations.

Key to put cert in that once we have a functioning group.

So I'm kind of concerned, you know.

I mean, usually we have a lieutenant or the captain talks to these groups every quarter and tells what's going on.

And I is it are we still gonna do that?

So, Chief Joseph, could you talk a little bit about your overtime controls and how you're approaching that for on regular time versus overtime?

Sure.

So it's not that you'll not have anyone at your neighborhood association meetings.

What I'm trying to do is reduce overtime by avoiding situations in which people are appearing while working overtime.

So if it's a captain's regular time to be scheduled working, he he or she can show up.

If not, they can send a representative who is somebody that is there on street time.

So it's we obviously recognize as as you point out the community engagement is a huge part of our public safety efforts, and we and we don't want to decrease that, just change the emphasis a little bit on who's actually gonna be present.

So we'll still see somebody if it you know our neighbor association comes out and says, Yeah, we need Lieutenant Gat, I don't care if we get Sergeant out, just giving our stats.

I mean it's it's for the community to get out and talk to the officers.

It's really positive as we build more of these neighborhood associations.

Herb, thank you.

We're sorry, it's public comment.

It's not actually a time for back and forth, but we'll yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

I didn't see anyone else come down, so we'll come back to the council.

We'll turn to colleagues, Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

I know this was a difficult task to come up with a way to reduce overtime spending.

And I just want to acknowledge the efforts of the men and women of the police department and how much time they do spend working overtime and how they work hard to keep our city safe.

And the discussion we just had on the cameras actually helps make their job more efficient.

When we can use technology, that means we can attempt to reduce overtime, and overtime has a tremendous drain on our budget.

Um I know the reason for this, and I'm going to support what's going forward.

But I have to say I'm disappointed in the traffic enforcement unit because that's the one department I think that all of us call regularly or attempt to call regularly and say, can you come out there?

I also know that we have funded uh to a higher level, the TEU unit, and we don't have enough people to fill those slots.

So I'm I'm begrudgingly going to approve that portion of it because I think that's the part that really mat really helps us, particularly around our schools, uh, to help reduce traffic or reduce um speeding.

Uh I do have a couple of questions.

I noticed that one of the recommendations is related to BART.

So if BART, if we reduce or eliminate uh PD at BART, who will be responsible?

What will be responsible for keeping passengers safe and the transit area safe at Beriesa?

So that's still to be determined.

We are the only police department to our knowledge in the Bay Area that patrols BART property.

So it's um something that actually I've been wanting to get us out of for quite some time.

BART has their own police department.

Um so I'm not sure you know if if BART is BART PD is going to take over or if they're going to seek to subcontract those security services out to perhaps the sheriff's department, which does handle all VTA security here in the county.

Um I'm really not sure, but I just don't think it's with our limited resources an appropriate uh deployment for us.

Okay, great, thank you.

And then uh with with PERT effectively being eliminated due to county funding withdrawal, what alternate response model will the city use for mental health crisis calls?

So obviously PERT is a program that we were invested in and wish to continue and and we're disappointed that the county uh did not have the funding evidently to keep it going.

Um however, we do still have our MCAT team, our mobile crisis assessment team.

In addition, uh the one thing I will say uh is I'm grateful that the county took the PERT clinicians that had been assigned to law enforcement agencies, and they sent them back to their mobile crisis response team, which is the county's behavioral health services field response component.

So and we work with them frequently, so um we can still access them, reach out to them, have them come out and respond to calls, and and they frequently do so.

Okay, great.

I I appreciate that.

Thank you very much for the work you do and the work that your department does.

I will move approval of the memo.

Second.

Great.

Thanks, Mr.

Mayor.

We'll go to Councilmember Command.

Thank you so much.

I too was disappointed about the school liaison program because it's just one that uh really helps a lot.

And um, you know, it just it was I understand, but uh it was a little bit disappointing.

Same thing with traffic enforcement unit.

That's one of the units that really really helps us a lot.

So those two um somehow we're gonna have to uh grow the pie a little bit to see if we could um bring some of that back because I think that there's a tremendous amount of uh benefit that they provide.

So um I just wanted to emphasize my agreement with the vice mayor.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Councilmember Condos.

Um, thank you, Chief.

Uh, you know, and City Manager McGuire and Jim for bringing this item today.

Definitely not an easy conversation, not a fun one as as uh uh alluded to by by my my colleagues.

But you know, uh I did want to you know have a glass half full moment, you know, uh take a brief moment to shout out my captain uh Max Zunigan Foothill.

He's Rain or Shine, he shows up.

Um whether it's side shows or whether it's issues around like the break-ins or community members blowing me up.

He always answers.

So kudos to Captain Max.

Thanks.

Thank you for the kind words.

I I share your fondness for Captain Zuniga.

Now everybody's gonna shout out their captain.

Here we go.

They better.

Yeah, we all we love our captains.

All right.

Well done.

Councilor Cohn.

Thank you.

And as you know, I've been uh pounding this drum for a long time about the amount of overtime we're spending.

It's clearly, you know, we spent a lot of our budget on public safety, and as we head into difficult times, it's even more important that we figure out how to get it under control.

I appreciate the thoughtful approach to figuring out where we can streamline.

Um I will make a comment about BART.

Um, you know, when BART opened, VTA was given the opportunity to say we're gonna have our figure out our own way to contract out for this VTA contract.

San Jose Police for some reason at the time bid on that contract, but it wasn't uh necessary that BTA that San Jose Police be the policing agency.

What I didn't realize until this conversation was the amount of they were paying us for that contract was only half of how much we were spending to actually do that policing, and so it's really important that you know we don't take on that burden responsibility that VTA and BART should be responsible for the full cost of policing that station.

Obviously, at the time, you know, have being in the community right near that bar station.

The concern always is oh, if you're opening a bar station, it's going to attract crime.

People are gonna come from other parts of the Bay Area and they're gonna commit crimes here.

So I think police department here said if we step up and police it, we can be more in touch with the community around it.

The good news, and you know, as I suspected, there hasn't been this increase of crime as a result of the Bart station, and it's time that VTA pay the f their full share of VTA and BART paid a full share of policing the station.

Um I think I just want to ask a couple questions.

In addition to these areas, we're clearly, you know, a lot of our overtime is because we are a short staffed and have to use overtime to staff some of these programs.

Um we're also I presume I I know we're also implementing think technology and other things such as uh AI for doing reports that may make jobs more efficient and reduce uh overtime as well.

Is that a is that correct?

So there's I mean there's a whole host of things that we're doing to try to become more efficient, more streamlined.

We're undergoing a redistricting proposal for all of our patrol districts.

Um the current district boundaries in which we operate were drawn about 25 years ago.

Uh the city's patterns and growth since that time have created an imbalance between the 16 districts, and you're you're well aware of that because council member Duan's district unfortunately has the busiest police district, but your dist your council district has the next closest one right behind because of the massive growth in North San Jose since those lines were drawn.

So we think that will be that will make us more efficient.

We're going to area-wide dispatching where off where callers don't need to wait for one particular officer, any of the officers assigned to that district can handle any call for service.

Uh we're going to two-man cars, which we think will speed up our response times and make us more efficient.

We're looking at technology solutions to increase the speed of our report writing to increase the efficiency for our call takers who are getting 911 calls.

Um there's a whole host of things that we're doing to try to be more efficient and and get uh the best value for the precious tax dollars that we recognize we spend a lot of.

Yes, I I you answered my second question, which was going to be about how redistricting ties into this, so thank you for that.

And my my area of the city has had the slowest res or the longest response times for calls, so I appreciate that work.

I I um think though that the most powerful thing we're doing are some of these things which are making policing more efficient for the for the everyday work that police officers do.

But I I appreciate the um you know the the thoughtful approach to saving us these this money as we move into the difficult budget here.

So I'm happy to support the recommendations.

Thanks, Councilmember.

All right, I don't see any other hands.

Tony, let's vote.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

We are on to open forum.

Do we have any open forum cards?

I'm not sure if they're all here.

Carmen, Jose Reyes, Raymond Goines, Peter Frederick.

Okay.

And a reminder this is for items that were not on today's agenda, but are city business.

And whoever just submitted this last person.

Okay.

Oh, Ted.

All right.

Uh, good afternoon.

My name is Raymond Goans.

On January 21st, 2026, after a family call, law enforcement to plead that their loved one was dealing with the mental health crisis.

They plead with law enforcement not to kill the loved one and pleaded that you they approached him with caution.

Well, San J police, when he got here, executed him.

And several of you guys up here supported and made the heroes to become police.

I ask of you, how do you guys that feel that support of the police feel about all law enforcement killing somebody that was mentally ill and whose family reached out and saying with concern?

Mr.

Mahan, you said the video verified with the police's actions.

That verification of not treating uh of allowing criminality to replace one's humanity is the very exact reason why we don't need you as governor, and why we need good leaders here in San Jose to support those from the community.

Thank you, next speaker.

When your mayor presents a proclamation with the Hindu American Foundation's managing director standing beside him, does this council know that HAF faces a formal complaint accusing it of acting for a foreign government and that the DOJ has been asked to investigate it under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Three weeks ago, after an operative pled guilty in the India directed assassination conspiracy against a sick American, HAF's managing director went on a podcast and laughed about it, mocked it as sloppy, said if you're going to do a job, do it right.

That's who your mayor shared a stage with.

I locked myself in the master bedroom for more than two weeks because the landlord brought a homeless person in there to force me out.

So I still need help, guys.

Thank you.

Back to council.

Okay, thank you all uh very much.

We are adjourned.