Correspondence - #14 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Orozco, Norma From: Ellen Einkauf Isais < Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2023 12:47 PM To: eComment Subject: Public Comment for Item #14 Please include my comment to the agenda Dear City Council, Regarding Item #14, we need to discuss non -police options in the same public form at the same time. Having this item on the agenda without exploring other options at the same time is baised and jerry- rigged to create the only option for police intervention. Why would the police really be needed for this? Doesn't it make more sense to fund groups in OC Health for homeless removal & outreach or independent groups like Be Well? They are trained and equipped for medical response and targeted for the homeless population specifically. If there's a criminal concern, they can easily escalate for police support. I'd much rather have the police focus on high speed driving, road rage, fireworks, breaking into homes, and other crimes. I don't see much success with police response in any of these areas. Having them gather up homeless people will seemingly increase the already high response times for calls. There are programs like Be Well & there's other groups too. (https-//www.bewelloc.org/bewell-mobile- response/) We don't have this in Santa Ana right now... so my question to our city leadership is, why not? I am certain that the salary of multiple people in a response team is significantly less than the salary of 1 police officer. We al,so need to consider pension/benefit/overtime costs. And of course the opportunity costs of police not doing other critical work when doing a cost analysis. There needs to be significant data and independent analysis on how this would affect the police in our city. As a voter and community member, I would like to request that the following be looked into: - Projections on how it will impact current wait times/lack of officer response - Full cost analysis of this program compared to others (BeWell, OCHealth, etc.) Any council member who votes in favor of this without comparing other programs with proper data analysis is making a blind decision that affects our community and that is dishonest and disgraceful. Sincerely, Ellen Einkauf Isais Washington Square Resident Ellen Einkauf