Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department Chief Jamie Field appeared before Council on Dec. 3 to go over the hundreds of pages prepared by a consultant tasked with helping the force prepare a roadmap for the years ahead, as Los Gatos expects thousands of new residents to arrive.
Top ideas included integrating the two separate police stations into a single headquarters, securing additional crimefighting and administrative software, and adding officers and civilian employees to their ranks.
“There’s going to be a lot of community growth,” Field said. “In developing the vision of the future from a progressive and contemporary outlook, we wanted to bring in a third-party.”
Meliora Public Safety Consulting, in a sole-sourced contract, developed 130 recommendations in a 322-page assessment, after reviewing department operations and conducting both internal focus groups and community outreach.
Field said the department is committed to going “from good to great,” and has already implemented several of the recommendations.
“We recognize that local policing, it’s very high-touch,” she said. “I think there’s always opportunity for improvement.”
Council members seemed quite pleased with the results of the report.
Councilmember Rob Rennie really drilled down into the details, analyzing Meliora’s approach to staffing from the lens of a former Silicon Valley engineering manager. He said he was concerned that following the company’s plan might make the department too top-heavy.
Field said hiring another lieutenant would lift some personal or worker’s compensation-type duties off of front-line personnel.
And he questioned why the company made a point of telling Los Gatos “to recruit qualified diverse candidates particularly amongst women and Asian groups to better align with the community they serve,” when their own report found “LGMSPD has women in every rank within the department” and a the percentage of Asian employees as the population of Los Gatos (8%).
“We always strive to recruit the most qualified,” Field said, adding she’d even addressed this point in her conversations with Meliora, because it stood out to her, too.
Rennie said this led him to question whether Los Gatos was getting “cookie-cutter” recommendations in some parts of the report.
Councilmember Rob Moore said he took the note about the racial and gender makeup of the department as a goal to keep in mind for the future, not necessarily a criticism of something Los Gatos isn’t doing properly now.
Ristow said she’s happy to see the department seeking to improve on what it’s already doing, and copyedited Field’s mantra slightly.
“We want to go from very good to great,” she said, adding she hopes the changes will “make this department an example for other communities.”
Vice Mayor Matthew Hudes reminded the Council he’d asked for a fiscal analysis, a number of months back, that was not agreed to.
He said he was happy to see that the Town was now realizing there will be significant impacts caused by the addition of new housing.
Field declined to estimate the number of employees the department will need in the coming years.
She said she believes a new facility housing all operations would result in efficiencies.
