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City Council Meeting Minutes March 3, 2020 commit the same times get to live outside of a cell, when black and Latino citizens lose employment and housing because they stay in jail for days, there has to be accountability. Guidance is not enough. An ordinance is the only fair and moral solution. Thank you. Samantha Benavides, San Marcos Advocacy Fellow for Move Texas, addressed agenda item #29 and made the following comments: "The first component of the policy I want to address is the issue of officer discretion. In the time that I have spent advocating for this policy, I've heard officers say that as long as someone is complying with them, isn't giving them a hard time, isn't lying to them, they give them a break. But when you come from a community that has been historically victimized by law enforcement, and many still are today, you may be nervous, young people especially, and may not be in total compliance, and you may lie, because you do not trust them based on their history with the community. Mandating citation by curtailing officer discretion means understanding this relationship. This is why we need an ordinance that guides officer discretion and to requires them to use it to the benefit of *all* San Martians. We've already seen dramatic racial disparities in the use of this policy. In 2018, they didn't use the policy on a single Black person; out of the 72 cases, all eligible for cite and release, every single one of them was arrested. Despite only making up 5% of the population, they accounted for 22% of citation eligible arrests. Without this ordinance guiding officer discretion, I know and I am certain that we will continue seeing racial disparities in SMPD's use of cite and release. The next thing I would like to address is the overcrowding in Hays County jail. At a recent commissioners court meeting it was stated that the county spends over $87,000 to outsource inmates and that we have contracts with nine counties to outsource our inmates to other jails. Instead of implementing the state level framework that outlines citation eligible offenses, keeping low level nonviolent offenders out of our pretrial jail system, San Marcos has preferred a system where an arrest option is still on the table. An arrest not only separates them from loved ones, but in many cases, our overcrowded jail can mean being sent to an unfamiliar facility. At the same time, their cars may be impounded, their dependents may be left without proper care, and they could be left jobless. Young people in San Marcos should not have their lives so destabilized by a system that we can improve together, today, with the policy option on the table. You were elected to the positions you are in now because our community, young voters included, trusts you to bring justice to an oftentimes unjust system. I hope you won't accept anything but a cite and release policy that guides officer discretion, takes racially discriminatory policing seriously, and has in place diversion programs so that people can remain in their communities rather than City of San Marcos Page 5