Recommendation to request City Manager, or designee, to work with all appropriate departments to report back to the City Council within 30 days on violent and quality-of-life crime in Long Beach with an overview of incidents and trends, an outline of current efforts and opportunities to address violence in highly-impacted neighborhoods, and a plan of action to meet the need for safety in all of our communities.
Communication from Councilwoman Zendejas. Councilwoman Allen. Recommendation to request city manager to work with all appropriate departments to report back within 30 days on violent and quality of life crimes in Long Beach. We're going to go in here. Here. The item. Please. I think I'll see. Believe it. CD1 Councilman's. Yes. Do we have any public comments? Maybe we can hear those first, Mayor. If we don't think we have any public comment on this item. Of course, speaker Mr.. Mr. Perot is on the line. Sure. Go ahead. Bill. Yes. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Council members. I am Bill Perl. I published Long Beach report dot com a media outlet now in our 21st year providing independent news online all the time and regarding violence in the city of Long Beach. As we have reported, the city of Long Beach has crime stats, have gaps, and we urge the council to fix them so you can do. The city of Long Beach, for example, does not list shootings in its official crime stats, but the city of Long Beach. But the city of Los Angeles does. L.A. residents can see every month how many shootings there were and where they were. They don't have to rely on Public Records Act requests to get neighborhood crime information. Long Beach buries it shootings with an aggravated assault, which is a category that includes various crimes. And the council can fix this. Any of you can. Agenda is an item for future use. It could be in the next week or so to begin listing shootings in long beaches. Official crime stats. We urge you to do so. Second, the city of Long Beach no longer lists serious part one Crimes against persons and property by Council District. The city used to routinely do that. It was easy for us to taxpayers to compare what's going on in Council District two with five and seven and nine. But that stopped. Elbe PD now only shows crimes by divisions north, south, east and west, which spans which spanned more than one council district and then invites confusion and misinformation. For example, in her official 2018 ballot statements. Councilwoman Mongo took credit for crime decreases that use numbers from East Division that included numbers from council districts three and four that weren't part of her council district and five reporting crimes by council district would end the confusion. If there are incumbents on this council who don't want the public to know the facts, let's find out who they are. Some council members should agenda is restoring reporting crimes by council districts. And third, this council needs to end the double standard. If a child or adult is shot by a police officer, the city collects and releases data on the person shot to disproportionate impact on various groups. But in non-police shootings, which impact historically disadvantaged and working class areas, the crime victim is invisible. This council needs to correct this inequity and begin to compile and release data on the victims of non-police shootings, just as we do for police shootings, because those crime victims matter, too. So I must add that there will be a report that has advocated all of these actions constructively and editorially, some for some time, and tonight will show whether the council wants to maintain the status quo or to move to fix things. Thanks very much for letting me be heard. Good evening. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. And thank you so much for public comment. And I also want to give a big thanks to all my residents who have been calling in to my office, who have been meeting with me on on this item and who have sent in any comments as well. First of all, I know that that this is a very intense item for me. So I really want to thank my colleagues for their help in bringing bringing this forward. Thank you so much, Councilwoman Allen. I know that you know how important this is as US council members, our first priority as is. The safety of our residents. And given the recent shootings and other high profile acts of violence in our city, especially in the First District, I felt that I must ensure to my residents that we are doing everything within our power to bring this to an end. And so this is why I brought this item forward. I as I said, I know that this is a complicated issue. And there there are no easy ways of doing this, obviously, because if there were, they would have already been found and done. That being said, the seriousness of this challenge means that we must find new solutions, renew our existing efforts to keep our community safe and free of violence. And law enforcement must be our first partner in this. And and continues to be. But I'm also interested in looking at ways we can work within our neighborhoods to address the root cause of violent crimes. COVID has placed incredible constraints on our ability to maintain programing within communities and provide the necessary opportunities for our residents. But we're all now all aware of these gaps that are deadly consequences to our neighbors. And we must find ways to address these needs. I'm grateful that staff has indicated that they will be able to bring this item back on such a quick turnaround. I know that it's usually a 90 day turnaround, so I'm so grateful for you accepting to bring this back in 30 days. That means a lot to me and to my residents. I want to make sure that my residents and our residents here in the city of Long Beach know that we hear your concerns. And it is absolutely my position and my responsibility as a councilwoman that we find an end to our violent crimes and that we acknowledge that these violent, violent crimes are not acceptable in our city, and they are not and they are intolerable. The first district has had history with with violent crimes. But this is not okay. We cannot and I repeat, we cannot normalize this behavior. We we have been having violent crimes for years. And at the beginning of the of my term here in the first District, I saw a lot of violent shootings. And I've been working really hard to try to find ways to eliminate that. But all we've been seeing is the uptick in these violent crimes, and it is not okay. I know we have lost a lot of officers and our public safety is at risk. You know, for our residents in the first district and I know that, you know, we need more more public safety in in the First District. And I know that that's something that is very important to my residents. And I understand that we we must try to figure out ways to eliminate these violent crimes. One of the things that, you know that really upsets me is that every weekend I or even it doesn't have to be during the weekend. You know, I have to be with my fingers crossed hoping that we don't have a shooting that weekend. We should not live like that. You know, that's not quality of life. We we as leaders have the responsibility to create safety for our residents, safety for our children. Right now, during this city council meeting, we got a council notification that a 16 year old young male was shot, another shooting while we're in city council meeting. This is not acceptable. So I thank the staff for being open to bringing back and bringing back a presentation on what we are already doing to prevent this and and finding new ways and finding new solutions to putting an end to this and also, you know, finding and finding ways to be able to involve the community and bring the community in and work together as partners while we eliminate this this violent crime epidemic that's happening not only in the first District, it is happening throughout our city, but we really need to take care of this. And so I just want to thank all my residents for all of their support on this item. I want to ensure that to them that, you know, I will continue being their strong voice on this matter. And I look forward to the presentation being presented in 30 days. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, I have Councilman Sara. It's full of germs. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank council member Councilwoman Sunday for bringing this item for it with the support of Councilwoman Allen. I definitely hear and reiterate the concern that council members and I have as my district borders hers and we have the same and increased rate in violence, gun violence as well. And I, I believe that we need to make sure we pay attention to this as much as we are doing a lot of work and important needed work around our response to COVID. And but I also want to make sure that they're not separate either, right? That we know that a lot of this is connected and there intersected, and that there's also been an increase in how things lead to violence. And some of these cases are interpersonal dispute. And I so I want us to consider also appreciate stop being willing to do a report back in 30 days. But I want to make sure that we also take into consideration past report that's been done around violence prevention. I know that we want to make sure we have short term, immediate response to the current rising violence. But I also don't want to and I want to acknowledge and honor the work that's been done for many years and what we need to do to prevent and address really also some creating some mid-term and long term approach to this and really also empowering our. Community with. Some kind of resource because they've also been very inspiring during this pandemic to support and demonstrate kindness is that it shouldn't be limited certainly to just, you know, groceries and other, but that everybody's shown other ways of acts of kindness. And I think that this. Pandemic has prevented certain level of support. But I also want to think about can we also include all those other methods that we had explored in something like Safe Long Beach violence prevention plan that was certainly created before I closed it. But are there some ways we can integrate that into this as a way where we can have a response that doesn't only look at it from a public safety perspective, but also a public health and equity perspective as well. So I just wanted to share that and I think staffer, you know, taking this on and your leadership council members and Dana and also to all of the residents and everyone that has been very concerned, we are concerned with you. It's it's not a day that goes by that we all doubt that this isn't care, that this is it doesn't rest heavy. It's all heavy on my heart. And I want my residents and to know that I think about this a lot and and looking into ways that we can work together to decrease it and prevent it . Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I'm hoping that when this item comes back in 30 days, it also has the opportunity to touch upon the technological advances that Ms.. Ericsson has made to allow us future greater capabilities in pulling reports. I know that for each community meeting that our commander and lieutenants joined me at, we pull data and statistics for that specific neighborhood by crime, and we make sure that they know neighborhood by neighborhood zip code, by zip code where we stand as compared to years before and even a decade before, if that's important to them. So we pull that data, but we've also worked on the technology that's necessary to make the changes so that residents can make that pull those reports themselves. I want to thank one of our community members, John, who has worked hand in hand with two of our prior commanders on some of the challenges with the systems that we have, but that there's also progress being made. And I think that that would be a valued part of the of the presentation if a maker of the motion is so open to it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Allen. Yes, thank you, Mayor. I also was drawn to this item, and I notice that our residents don't feel as safe as they used to. I also want to acknowledge that the 30 days was a, you know, aggressive timeline. And I do appreciate the PD for getting this report back to us so quickly and I to look forward to the presentation. I have recently seen the difference in the quality of life and the feeling of security that many of our residents all over Long Beach have long enjoyed. And like Councilwoman Sun has said, I think we all as a council bear the responsibility and making sure that our community is safe. I took that oath very seriously when I was a police officer and was seriously injured in a line of duty protecting my community. And I take this very seriously now as a councilwoman. And when I look at gun violence is up and I don't want our quality of life and or the feeling of being safe and secure and secure to go back to what I experienced when I was a police officer back in the nineties. So, you know, our kids need to feel safe going to school. People need to feel safe playing at the parks or walking to their stores or whatever they do. We just need to have a sense of safety. So I, I just like I said, I care a lot about this. I care a lot about the safety of our community and and those who are serving on the front lines. And this will always be a priority to me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Council member, Sunday House and all the signers on bringing this forward. It's certainly a challenging issue. And Long Beach is committed to violence prevention time and time again and and to the community. I just want to just remind just remind you to let folks know that violence prevention, it's a it's a long term it's a long term strategy. It's the process of looking at the conditions that surround a community. Communities in common that have shootings and look at some of the factors are those communities. They have a lack of investment. They allow the lack of programing, open space opportunities for, you know, investments into education and and poverty is a lot of times the common thread between these communities. So you all you meet violence prevention. Within a public health lens to be coupled with investments into that into those communities. You also need crime suppression, intervention by both law enforcement and and community based organizations that can do intervention. So it is really three dimensional chess. What's happening? I think one thing I would highlight is that I believe that the next city council meeting, we're going to see a presentation about a lot of the work that the community has advocated for in terms of youth development, youth strategic plan, our investments in the youth that will now be boosted with measure us and all of these things that presentations come to council very soon. And City Council has a previous budget in alignment with the reconciliation plan, just funded additional investments into activating our violence prevention plan. So we've had a plan for some time, but it hasn't had the Stafford investment in this recent budget and the reconciliation funding. We funded staff to begin that process of violence prevention. So I think whatever we do in terms of response needs to be balanced with look at the investments we have ongoing. Let's look at the new capacity we built, CARES Act and other things and couple that with the crime suppression strategy. So it should be it should be comprehensive because unfortunately, a lot of times when you hear about crime or violence or shooting, it's already happened and it's already too late. And that family's already impacted, their communities already impacted. And so we have to make sure it's just like, you know, putting, you know, putting some money towards savings for the future and paying for some bills right now. That's how we have the best in violence prevention. We have to really think about that with all the investments that we make. So I look forward to it. Councilmember Sunday House, Thank you for taking the lead on this item. Look forward to supporting this effort. Look forward to jumping in fully and making sure that what we do is real. Thank you so much. Catherine Ashton, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to appreciate also Councilmember de Haas and Allen for bringing this item forward, because I think it's very important that we have an honest conversation at the city council right now. Crime is really on the rise, particularly violent crime and gun crime in our city every day for for several now months , it seems like there's been a shooting or multiple shootings. And we can't sugarcoat that. We can't gloss that over. I don't want to put that responsibility on our health department. I would put that responsibility on on anyone other than the the the the our our police officers. And they need our support to do this to do their jobs. We have had a violence prevention plan for a few years now. Just a few months ago, we supported and voted for a violence into violence intervention strategy. And now we're talking about a crime suppression plan. And I think all our great acronyms and great approaches. And yes, we do need to have a balanced approach, but we need to call this for what it is. You know, this is this is street politics. These are these are this is the illicit market. We have we have a gang culture in our city. And we as a city council cannot make excuses for gun violence. We have to come up with the solutions. We need to move the resources. We need to get prohibited possessors off the streets and get the guns out of their hands. I mean, I think we just have to call it what it is. It's a problem right now and it's a big problem. And and we're not going to get out of it inspired by sugarcoating this. We have to make sure that that our police officers are supported to do their work and to do their jobs and in every area of the city. You know, I've asked for our our acting commander ten is able to to increase and chief of police obviously Chief Luna to put more resources in the north long. It's I mean whatever it takes right now to to suppress the strategy of the crime that's happening right now. We have to do it this this. This is this is a this is a problem. We have not had crime a crime spree. We have not had violent crime like this in our city in many, many years. And so what we are experiencing now is not normal. And and it can't we can't we we have to use unconventional strategies and approaches to to to deal with a very, very unique and unconventional spike in crime. Something is going on. You can see it with the watch commander alerts that we as a city council get every every evening. Right. Something is going on. It's different. And, you know, this is this this impacts our ability to to be the city we want to be. This crime is impacting, you know, the quality of life for our residents. It's impacting our ability to attract economic development in key corridors and key areas of our city that we want to revitalize. It's an issue that we have to come to grips with honestly in how this conversation about the direction that we want to go in as a city. But I'm happy to support the item. That comes from San Diego that you have something additionally. Yes, Mayor. I just wanted to thank all of my colleagues for your support on this item. But I also wanted to see if if Chief Luna was available, I know that he might have had a small, brief presentation that I might have missed. Yes, Chief Luna's available if he'd like to hear from him. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the city council. I am here with all of you tonight listening to every word that all of you are saying very intently. And I did not have a presentation that's going to be set up for 30 days, but I'm available to answer any question you have regarding violent crime or as a matter of fact, almost any crime going on in the city. What I do want to emphasize with the comments being made is that even though this report is due in 30 days, we are not sitting on our hands waiting to report out to you what we're doing. Yes, we are absolutely, extremely concerned about the shooting activity that happened in 2020. We ended the year not in a good place. We didn't begin this year in a good place. I know that not only the members of my command staff, but I personally lose a lot of sleep over the shootings that occur. You have supported us the last several years with neighborhood, safe streets, overtime, money that's already been utilized in some of the locations that you've already spoken about. Some of these hotspots per se, where we're seeing more activity pop up, a very data focus not only on those spots, but individuals that we think are perpetrating a lot of these shootings. And I'm looking forward with more time to brief you on a lot of the things that we're seeing that are very problematic. And I'm going to focus on our city, but I don't think I'd be doing my job if I didn't tell all of you that every major city, almost every major city in the United States right now has experience, assert a surge in violent crime, specifically murders and nonfatal shootings or hit shootings, as we call them. And you will never hear me make excuses. I'm going to focus on our job here. My job is to stop these shootings. Whether I get help or not. That's my job. It's our job in the police department. And I welcome meetings, strategies, community input. When I do speak in 30 days, I'll talk about the strategies that we've come up with working with some of our city partners, and I'm really looking forward with a lot of energy. I'm ready to go right now. Matter of fact, I wouldn't mind going out in the street right now and working. That's just my passion and the passion of the people that I represent on this police department who come out here 24, seven, seven days a week, putting their lives on the line. Shots being fired in a matter what it is. They're taking guns off the street, putting prohibitive possessors. As Councilman Austin stated, he knows because he's worked a lot with me. Our prohibitive possessors, for example, are arrest in 2020 were up over 40%. That's people that are out of prison because of COVID, who are carrying guns, who are have no business carrying guns, who are involved in a lot of the criminal activity in our city. And the councilman has nailed it. And a lot of our efforts are there. And we'll continue that. And I look forward to making this report out in 30 days. Thank you very much. And I stand ready for any questions any of you may have. Thank you very much. Real quick. Well, I'm sorry. I have one more comment. Sure. Go ahead. I just wanted to thank you, Chief Luna. I know that my residents are very, very happy with the interaction that they have with our public safety officers. They're always there. They're always presence there. Are there to answer any questions? I know that I've been able to call on them at the spur of the moment to come meet with my residents. And they've been there. And we also know that you've been overworked. A lot of our public safety has been overworked and continues to be overworked. And yet you still find ways to provide more resources for us in our district, and we are aware of that. And so we do want to thank you for that. And I believe that, you know, I think that when it comes to these violent crimes and we can't put it all on public safety officers. We we as city leaders have to find solutions. This is like. These crimes that are happening. Yes, are happening not only statewide, nationwide, but we need to do something about stopping them in our own backyard. So, you know, I look forward to your presentation in 30 days and I look forward to an action plan for my former city staff as to how we can address these violent crimes. And again, I want to thank my residents for always being so active and and being being great neighbors and making sure that we focus on what's happening out in our neighborhoods. So thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor, thank you again. Then just a question for the chief in the request on chief. Can we make sure? I'd love to. You mentioned some of the issues with respect to folks being let out early with COVID 19 due to COVID 19. I'd love to hear more specifically how many of the early release folks been perpetuating these approaches. I'd love to. I'd love to know some specifics. If I. Yes. Or vice mayor, if I hear your question, you want to know how many prisoners have been released due to COVID between L.A. County jail and the state prison system? The correlation between that and the violence has happened in the. I don't understand that. So some data to help flesh that point off. Absolutely. I'll be closer to the report if this council chooses to have that information. Thank you. Roll call. Vote, please. District one I. District two. I. District three. I. District four. I District five. I. District six. By district, by district seven. By. District eight, district nine. By. Motion carries.