Two presentations, about Green Guy Recycling and SMPD.
Green Guy Recycling
We’re renewing our 5 year contract with Green Guy recycling. We’ve been working with them since 2009.
San Marcos residents get some free drop-offs per year, because of this contract.
Per year, you get recycling for:
- 24 hour drop off for common items
- 5 passenger tires
- 1 TV
- 2 CRT screens
- 2 appliances with Freon
- 2 mattresses or box springs per year
This costs you $1.85/month.
They also provide a ton of long dumpsters for recyclables at Community Clean Ups throughout the year, and other things, like nuisance vehicle recycling, for the city. It all sounds good to me.
….
Police Chief report
Congratulations! If you made it this far, you get a personal anecdote.
I actually come from a family of communists. Literally, Marxists on both sides of my family. At one point in the early 2000s, I was arguing with my uncle about the 2000 election. He did not live in the US, but he was saying he would have voted for Bush over Gore. I was outraged.
He explained to me why: he felt that the entire capitalist system is so rotten that the only recourse is a revolution. Electing Al Gore would placate everyone and delay the revolution by releasing steam, whereas electing Bush would make life worse, and thus hasten the revolution.
To an abolitionist, small improvements are counterproductive because they distract from the revolution. When things get worse, it lights a fire under people to fight for a revolution.
(I still don’t agree with my uncle: I think it would have been better to elect President Gore, and I’m guessing 150,000 Iraqis might agree with me. But here we are.)
At the same time, sometimes the abolitionists are right, and you need a revolution. This is the WEB Dubois and Booker T. Washington debate about civil rights: can you fix things incrementally? Or do you have to fight for revolution? There wasn’t really an incremental fix for Jim Crow laws – people risked life and safety to fight for the civil rights movement.
So now we’re talking about SMPD, and there’s a split in philosophy:
- Small improvements to police departments are good, because it improves policing.
- Small improvements to police departments are bad, because the whole system is rotten and needs to be thrown out. Small improvements prevent the fire from building that will motivate real change. In other words, an abolitionist approach.
Here’s where I stand: I’m okay with incremental improvements to SMPD. Waiting for a revolution leaves too many vulnerable people stranded in 2024.
Chief Standridge’s entire presentation is “Look at these positive incremental changes we’ve implemented, and the modest successes we’re showing!”
Here are Chief Standridge’s main talking points:
- We did a huge amount of community events and outreach in 2023.
- We have 60 active volunteers.
- School marshall program for the elementary schools, officers for the middle and high schools. (bleagh, but that is a different conversation.)
- Brought in a qualified mental health professional to respond alongside the mental health unit. (This is good!)
Accountability:
It sounds like they’re documenting and investigating any significant incident. Do I have the proper context to analyze this stuff? no, of course not.
We hired a bunch of new people:
Our crime stats are trending down:
Two comments:
- Nationally, violent crime went down, because we’re getting further away from Covid life disruptions. But the drop in San Marcos does seem bigger than the national average.
- Chief Standridge says something like, “You can’t credit the police for a drop in crime, and you can’t blame the police for an increase in crime. Crime is due to complex socio-economic factors.” I give him credit for framing everything in terms of grounded evidence like this.
There are a bunch of mental health initiatives, collaborations, and new hires made, both to support the mental health of the officers and to take a holistic approach to crime reduction in San Marcos. These are good things!
There was one interesting question: Shane Scott asks about reserve officers. Do we let volunteers be officers on the streets?
Chief says diplomatically, “I’m not comfortable with that. This city is still pretty …challenging.”
GOOD. I would be worried about George Zimmerman-style volunteers.
The San Marxist 