Public Safety

Keeping our community safe is my highest priority. While many people believe the only solution is to hire more police officers, we must also make better use of the resources we already have.

Today, Milpitas has approximately the same number of public safety personnel that it had in the 1990s, despite significant population growth and increased demands on law enforcement. Our officers spend too much time on duties that do not require their specialized training. We should allow our Police Officers to focus on preventing and

solving crime while assigning administrative and non-criminal responsibilities to other personnel.

One practical solution is to establish a Parking Enforcement Division staffed by four part-time employees. Their responsibilities would include enforcing parking regulations, addressing abandoned vehicles, responding to illegal parking complaints, and enforcing commercial vehicle and oversized truck parking restrictions. This would free both Police Officers and Community Service Officers to spend more time on public safety, traffic enforcement, and criminal investigations.

We should also embrace technology that improves efficiency. AI can assist officers by preparing initial police reports from collected information, allowing officers to review and finalize reports instead of writing every report from scratch. This reduces administrative burdens and puts more officers back into the community where they are needed most.

Specifically for the Fire Department, we need to keep up with today's technologies and continue moving toward an All-Hazards Department, which will require investment in new technologies, certifications, and training.