A Pledge for Public Safety

By Bobby Lopez

For decades, San Jose has had a top-notch police department and avoided the controversy over policing that is a routine occurrence in major American cities. But recently, San Jose has seen a seemingly endless string of negative stories regarding its police department. What’s different here is that the source of the controversy is not a bad cop on the beat or a rogue group of officers. Rather, the problem stems directly from weak administrative and political leadership at City Hall.

For example, the number of arrests made downtown, which some believe is excessive, is a result of administrative policy. The feuds between city leaders and the Task Force on Public Intoxication is a turf battle. The fiasco over the hiring of a new Independent Police Auditor is a political fight between the Mayor and Council.

These stories don’t accurately reflect the outstanding work of our cops on the street. Our officers are highly educated, well-trained, and reflect the communities we serve. We are respected by the vast majority of San Jose’s citizens, as is demonstrated in numerous City surveys, for the tremendous job we do with limited resources.

But negative stories caused by poor leadership have hurt officer morale and distracted us from our real goal: keeping San Jose’s streets and neighborhoods safe. So, in an effort to return our focus to what’s really important to the people of San Jose, I’ve asked our city leaders to pledge the following:

1. Return San Jose to the rank of “Safest Big City in America” within the next five years. We once enjoyed and bragged about this achievement. This goal can be met not just with more cops on the streets but also fully-funded libraries, more homework centers, and cleaner parks. All of these contribute to public safety by keeping our kids off the streets and out of gangs, thereby reducing violent crime, which was the major culprit in our recent drop from the top spot on the FBI list of Safest Big Cities.

2. Support our officers by refraining from knee-jerk reactions to activist complaints, particularly from those who lack expertise. If the experts from the Consortium on Police Leadership in Equity, who were hired by the City Council to review downtown arrests, are hesitant to pass judgment on one set of arrest data without further research to back it up, our elected officials should refrain from doing so as well. Yet we’ve consistently heard prejudicial statements about downtown arrests from the Mayor and City Council when vocal critics of our police force are in front of them.

3. Involve more neighborhood leaders on committees and task forces regarding public safety in addition to the regular cast of activists, who have many complaints when it comes to our police department. San Jose neighborhood leaders know best what the entire city wants from their police force, and should be heard as well.

In December, Mayor Reed was quoted in the Mercury News saying, “We like the bragging rights of being one of the safest big cities, and we're committed to getting back to No. 1.” Now, on behalf of the dedicated men and women of the San Jose Police Department, I’ve challenged the Mayor and City Council to re-commit to putting us back on top by signing this pledge.

Bobby Lopez is President of the San Jose Police Officers' Association.

EDITOR’S UPDATE:

As of this posting, Mayor Reed and all but two Councilmembers have committed to this pledge. One Councilmember refuses to sign pledges as a matter of principle, and another has yet to respond.