Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Chief Jamie Field made her pitch for adding Saratoga to its jurisdiction, at the regularly-scheduled Los Gatos Town Council meeting on Sept. 15, including presenting a plan to recruit 16.5 new officers and support staff.
This drew mixed reactions from Council members and attendees. There was plenty of enthusiasm for the proposal. Some liked the idea in theory, but worried it could degrade the high-touch community police service the town has enjoyed. Some saw risk in the upfront and ongoing costs for which Los Gatos would be responsible as the employer.
Others, including several Los Gatos High School students, said they feared it could mean automated license plate reader (ALPR) company Flock Safety would be able to restart cameras in Saratoga that went dark after Santa Clara County identified data misuse.
“I don’t want technology to overshadow what actually defines this department,” Field said, addressing the privacy concerns head-on. “We keep high standards and hire good people.”
The plan comes with a $9.39 million annual base cost to Saratoga, plus $7.044 million for the nine-month lead-in period. The Town of Los Gatos would foot the launch cost, including hiring officers and staff ahead of time, as well as paying consultants and lawyers. Then the Town would get an estimated $337,000 back each year from Saratoga to pay that down.
However, some Saratoga residents say, if you include baked-in increases, the worst-case scenario is that Saratoga could be asked to pay more than $26 million by Year 10 (these opponents of the merger say around $15 million by this point is a likely midrange).
The model presented to Town Council includes a Saratoga workspace, while operations would be headquartered out of Los Gatos.
During the meeting, Council got word Monte Sereno Council had voted to support proceeding with the plan to take over Saratoga policing duties from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.
“The service across all three communities would be equal,” Field told Council. “For Los Gatos, this builds a stronger department.”
LGMSPD has been seeking ways to expand beyond the walls of its two locations—the one next to Town Hall, and the Police Operations Center on Los Gatos Boulevard—but extensive renovations or a new combined headquarters has seemed too costly to prioritize. This was highlighted in a report from Meliora Public Safety Consulting, which proposed a number of suggestions for strengthening public safety services in Los Gatos and Monte Sereno.
“We were just fine; we wanted to know what we could do better,” Field said of that report, which led her to act on a number of recommendations.
Then, Saratoga soured on its County contract, as the Sheriff’s Office jacked up its fee for policing hours significantly.
LGMSPD commissioned another study from Meliora, which was delivered on Aug. 28. Matrix Consulting Group sent over its cost model review on Sept. 3.
Field told Town Council she’d hire four new patrol officers, a traffic officer, a school resource officer, a detective and two community service officers. She said she’d divvy up patrol activities within four quadrants, but said officers would not be constrained by these boundaries if they were closer to an incident location.
Councilmember Rob Rennie said he wants to avoid “the bad things you hear in the news in other departments,” and urged the chief to continue hiring officers who are more “caretakers” than the “warriors” that might be needed on other police forces.
“What if we don’t get these officers and staff hired by Oct. 1 of 2027?” Councilmember Mary Badame asked, referring to the proposed Saratoga takeover date.
“Well, I would hope Council members are ready to have a badge and a gun and we’ll send you over to Saratoga,” Town Manager Chris Constantin said, emphasizing he was only joking. He said the fully-staffed number accounts for officers being busy just 60% of the time, so there is some wiggle room in the force.
He said staff has been reviewing Meliora’s projections carefully. “If nothing happened, and we had no additional officers, according to that study, it shows that we will exceed the ‘rule of 60’ during the middle-day hours, but we would be below 80%—which means there is still capacity to respond to emergency and proactive calls. But we would be working at a higher operational tempo.”
Vice Mayor Maria Ristow said there’d be plenty of economies of scale in expanding to Saratoga, noting it wouldn’t be like doubling the size of the Department.
Louisa Horwath, a 17-year-old senior at Los Gatos High School, said she’s worried that if LGMSPD joins with Saratoga, it could mean around 100 AI-powered Flock cameras in the vicinity could be switched back on soon.
“These cameras save information and continue to recognize vehicles every time they pass, creating a log of citizens’ daily routine that local law enforcement, federal agencies and more can access,” she said. “AI has progressed exponentially in the past few years, and I honestly don’t feel that my data is safe. I don’t want to grow up in a town that doesn’t protect my privacy.”
Multiple speakers referred to a case that had just come to light: of a San Jose Police officer who was fired for using Flock camera data to help a relative accused of domestic violence (the Department said he tracked the woman who’d accused his cousin with his personal phone).
Guy Shaha, another 17-year-old LGHS senior, said he’s not against combining police forces with Saratoga, but said that shouldn’t happen if it means Saratoga’s ALPRs could be reactivated.
“Until there’s a meaningful change in the usage of ALPRs—but more specifically Flock cameras by our police force—their jurisdiction should not be expanded,” he said.
In August, Flock ALPR search data from 2023 leaked—including two Department of Homeland Security email addresses (one of which was an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement email) in a list that also featured two Los Gatos-Monte Sereno investigator emails, as well as case numbers and license plate info. The incident was documented by independent security researcher Patrick Quirk on Substack.
The data had been stored with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a so-called “fusion center” where various departments share information and leads. It was accidentally published to coding website GitHub by Walnut Creek-based MaiVERIC (via its AstroMetrics platform). LGMSPD’s Flock transparency portal doesn’t list NCRIC as an agency it’s currently sharing ALPR data with. When approached by the Los Gatan, Chief Field declined to comment on the reported leak.
Jonathan Knowles, president of the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Foundation, said expanding to Saratoga (which doesn’t have a complementary group) could tap plenty of new supplementary funding from private individuals and businesses for policing. “Results speak for themselves,” he said. “A drone program that gives officers eyes in the sky for search and rescue and community events; canine and therapy dog programs; investigative tools that let our detectives protect kids from online predators; our school resource officers; specialized training; our DART teams; Police Explorers; and so much more.”
Council voted unanimously to move forward with the plan, but didn’t make a final decision. Badame made the motion, including direction to seek counsel from the Finance Commission, with Councilmember Matthew Hudes seconding it.
Saratoga City Council debated the possible merger on Wednesday night, and then again at a public meeting on Saturday afternoon. “I prefer not to rush this through,” said Councilmember Yan Zhao.
Councilmember Belal Aftab said both Saratoga and Los Gatos are looking to solve ongoing budgetary challenges. “We both have structural deficits in different capacities,” he said. “I don’t think this option’s going to be around forever.”
Vice Mayor Tina Walia said she’s supportive of moving forward but isn’t totally sold yet. “Once we have this contract, let us go through all the details,” she said.
Mayor Chuck Page told the Los Gatan the thrust behind ditching the Sheriff’s Office has less to do with the shut-off of Flock cameras and more to do with the financial realities. He noted their General Fund is currently at around $35 million, meaning police costs and salaries account for around two-thirds of their budget. “Law enforcement is at least a third,” he said. “It’s a huge chunk.”
Page said he likes the idea of having a police foundation in Saratoga, to help pay for items that they can’t afford on their own, since they don’t bring in the same level of sales tax dollars as Cupertino or Los Gatos. “We get about $1 million a year in sales tax revenue,” he said.
