Item 5: The police department wants to buy 70 BolaWraps, at a cost of $112k.
A BolaWrap is this surreal Spiderman thing:
You aim your gadget at the bad guy, and shoot out this Y-shaped thread. The outstretched parts whip around your dude, and lasso him up tight.
BAD GUY CONTAINED! You saved the princess!
So should we buy 70 of these 7.5 foot Kevlar lassos for our cops?
Alyssa Garza is a hard no. She is the one pulled this item off the consent agenda for discussion, saying that purchases like this need some scrutiny and public attention.
- She read a bunch of cop message boards, and found cops laughing at how terrible they are
- She also notes that other communities hold big studies and have well-thought-out policies on new implements like this.
Chief Standridge is present. He comes up to talk.
- The point of the BolaWrap is that it’s a nonlethal remote restraint.
- It’s used to de-escalate situations where someone is having a mental health crisis, drug psychosis, or some other criminal behavior
- Does not rely on pain compliance
“Non-lethal de-escalation” emerges as a major talking point. I’ll grant you non-lethal. But de-escalation?
Let’s meditate on the word de-escalation for a second. That means that tempers have escalated, and you’re trying to calm everyone down, so that the situation can resolve peacefully.
Lassoing someone’s legs may buy you a couple seconds while you slap some handcuffs on them, but it sure as shit does not calm anyone down.
So no, this does not actually count as de-escalation. It’s absurd for Chief Standridge to toss around that word so much. He’s just grabbed it as a useful buzzword du jour. Restraining someone with a bug-zapper so that you can slap handcuffs on them may be less violent, but that’s a gross misinterpretation of de-escalation.
Are BolaWraps the worst thing ever, then? No, of course not. Let’s do some ranking:
- Shooting someone: the actual worst thing
- Tazing someone: quite dangerous and possibly lethal
- Bolawraps: not likely to hurt anyone, aside from making them trip and fall.
If you are happy with cops enforcing the current criminal justice system, BolaWraps are pretty neutral. If you are trying to dismantle the status quo and change the criminal justice system, then things that are neutral are bad.
To Alyssa’s questions, Chief Standridge says: “These are 80% effective. Not 100%. Just another tool in our toolbelt.”
Alyssa asks, “Where did you get the 80% number from?”
Chief Standridge says, “The BoloWrap website!”
Alyssa says, “So the people who are selling it? Who have a profit motive?”
Chief Standridge: “Yep!!”
Chase Stapp, the assistant city manager, steps up and says, “It costs more if we use excessive force.” In other words, if we taze or shoot someone and get sued, the lawsuit is more expensive than a BolaWrap.
[Side note: The reason you shouldn’t taze someone or shoot someone is because you are injuring their body. Cops are not judges nor juries, and so that bad guy is legally an innocent person, and you just injured or killed them. (But yes, lawsuits are expensive.)]
Chief Standridge says, “When you have a mental health crisis, you have a choice. You can use force, or you can use bolaWrap.”
Alyssa says, “Maaaaaybe mental health shouldn’t be under SMPD.”
Chief Standridge quips back, “Maaaaaaybe your police chief would completely agree with you! But until that system is built out, people still call 911 for mental health crises. We send out PD and an embedded mental health clinician, when she’s on duty. We’re working on your solution, but we’re not there yet.”
Another Sidebar:
This sounds like an invitation to create a new system, yes? Chief Standridge just explicitly says he’d like to see mental health first responders separated from SMPD.
In order to separate out mental health crises responders from SMPD, you’d need a few things:
– Public buy-in. If you think that a person having a mental health crisis should get a mental health expert responder instead of getting BolaWrapped, you should reach out and let city council know.
– City Council buy-in: they will only support something like this if they think it will affect their election chances. (Aside from Alyssa.)
– Staff buy-in: My read is that the city manager and assistant city manager don’t approve of progressive revisions of policing. That would have to be overcome.
– Chief Standridge is on record here voicing support for separating off mental health crises from the current police system. But I don’t know what he’s like behind the scenes, and how actively he’d advocate for this.
To me, this seems like something worth pursuing.
…
Some other facts get tossed around:
- Seguin has purchased these. (yay?)
- In 2022, SMPD had 65,000 interactions with citizens, and 59 required use of force. In other words, about once a week, they use force.
Saul: I need a demonstration.
Chief Standridge: I mean, it’s still a firearm. We shouldn’t just be discharging it indoors. But here’s a video!
Here’s the video they watched:
Next up, Matthew Mendoza chimes in.
I’m going to quote Matthew fully, because this is starting to be a trend. Clearly he’s done something like research, but whatever he found is total nonsense. He says, at 1:57:
Columbia County, in Oregon – it’s where Portland actually sits, in the center of that county. Let’s be honest, that tends to be an area where they are very observant of… they want a lot of visibility and interactions with our first responders and authority. As of 6 hours ago, their Fox station released a report saying that Columbia County sheriff’s department has been using this for the last two weeks. And it’s been successful! If Columbia County, Oregon finds this to be suitable…
Alyssa: For how long, now?
Matthew: For six days now! But I’m sure they’ve taken months to, I mean, this is Oregon. This isn’t someone I would imagine would just be jumping in, or tossing it up there. I’m seeing everywhere that people are trying this!
His argument seems to be: “We all know Portland is a bunch of liberal mushy-hearted saps, and even they love this technology! We know Portland would vet it thoroughly. If they’re in, I’m in!”
Just to be clear:
First, Portland is not in Columbia County, although I’m sure there are suburbs that spill over out that far.
Second, here’s the map for the 2020 presidential election.
Columbia County is Trump Country, by a margin of 53% to 42%. Whereas Hays County broke for Biden, 54% to 44%. So let’s not hold them up as a standard for anything, okay?
I’m editing things down significantly. There’s lots more repetition of:
– the nonlethal de-escalation bit
– how they are only 80% effective
– how they’re cheaper than lawsuits
Alyssa: We have a Use of Force Policy for the department. Where can we find policy and procedures document for this?
Chief Standridge: That would be backwards! The order goes:
- First I get permission from you all to buy them.
- Buy them.
- Get all the training done.
- Then we’ll know enough to write a good policy about them.
This is cousin to “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” Chief Standridge could have easily showed up today with a few policies that other police departments use, as possible rough drafts. But once you already have the BolaWraps in officers’ hands, you’re going to write the policy framed by eagerness to get out there and get going. You would have gotten a much more cautious and measured policy if they weren’t already holding their new toys.
Alyssa: A bunch of people say it sounds like a gunshot. Doesn’t that make a situation more dangerous?
Chief Standridge: I always wear hearing protection around guns, and I did not use hearing protection with these.
Alyssa: I’m a no. There are much better uses of this money.
Saul: How long do batteries last?
Chief: I don’t know!
Saul: Who gets the 70 units?
Chief: Patrol, School Resource Officers, Mental Health Unit, and Traffic Stops.
Matthew Mendoza asks if officers also carry lethal weapons.
Answer: Yes. Cops have guns.
Finally, Chief Standridge ends with a speech: “We act like officers are the impediment to change. But we’re all stakeholders in this community! The people, the city council, and the department. If we want to change the system, let’s do it!”
With all due respect, the community got enough signatures to repeal the police contract, and the city basically negotiated a nearly-identical one to replace it. From where I’m sitting, the city council, staff and SMPD are all impediments to change. (Also many regular people are content with the status quo. But they’re wrong!)
The Vote:
Yay, Bolawraps! Jude, Shane, Jane, Matthew, Saul
No to zapping and wrapping: Alyssa
There you go. The zappings will continue until morale improves.
…
Item 10: We saw this at the workshops last month:
Old vacant buildings look sad:
and scary:
We don’t want to make the opossums and raccoons live somewhere so sad.
But we can give them a quick glow up:
by requiring that boarded up doors and windows be painted to look like regular doors and windows.
Hooray!
In fact, we already have a version of this downtown:
and
So there you have it. Coming soon to a derelict property near you!
…
Item 11: I know “Sunset Acres” sounds like a retirement village, but it’s actually this neighborhood:
Mendez Elementary is right in the middle of it.
At Council one year ago, Sunset Acres came up because they’ve got a disastrous flooding situation happening. (And it sounds like it’s been going on for decades, and has just been chronically neglected by the city.)
The city is finally working on it:
Phase 1 costs $1,642,910.00. With that kind of money, you could buy 1,027 BolaWraps! So you can tell this is important. We’re starting Phase 1 now.
Saul asks: What happens if they take too long?
Answer: Contracts have timeline clauses. They get fined $800-$1K per day if their time runs out.
Sounds great! But also sounds like the kind of fine that never quite gets enforced.
(That’s a fine of about half a BolaWrap per day.)
…..
Item 13: Remember this, from last month? Shannon Mattingly was head of the Planning Department from 2015 to 2022. Then she resigned, started working for a developer, and showed up recently to advocate for some new student housing.
Apparently Jane Hughson has been getting an earful from people who are pissed off about this. It certainly looks shady.
It’s not technically a violation of our current code:
(Yes, it’s a screen shot because it’s not in the packet.) She showed up at Council meetings, not P&Z meetings, and so she is fine under the current policy.
So the point is: maybe our conflict-of-interest statement needs to be strengthened? Council is sending it over to the Ethics Review Committee to look it over.
…
Item 14: Let’s summarize all these Comprehensive and Area Plans:
- VisionSMTX++: punted till January.
- Downtown Area Plan: passed, minus CM Allen district.
- All the other Area Plans: still to come, over the next few years.
The current plan is that each Area Plan gets seen by Council at one meeting: there’s a presentation, a discussion, and a final vote. All wrapped up in one night.
Jane Hughson wants each Area Plan to come before Council twice, instead of once. In other words, the first meeting would have a hearing and a discussion. Two weeks later, at the second meeting, you’d get any fall-out from the first meeting, more discussion, and the final vote.
This is an example of Jane’s best skill as mayor: she’s looking ahead to upcoming issues, and figuring out that the community will care a lot, and that it may blow up if they don’t have enough opportunity to weigh in. She’s very thorough and thoughtful in detail-oriented ways like this.
City Staff says that the area plans will:
- Go through Neighborhood Commissions
- Go through P&Z
- Then come to Council
- And now, come back to Council a second time.
All this is to make sure that no one feels blindsided by things.
The San Marxist 