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City Council Meeting Minutes April 7, 2020 impose a Cite & Release Ordinance on our police officers that will effectively take away their discretion to use other means of law enforcement if they feel C&R is not appropriate. Furthermore, I feel that if we mandate a C&R policy, we may be causing our citizens possible victimization or retaliation from criminals and criminal activity. For example, if we permit C&R in lieu of arrest for some thefts or illegal possession of stolen items or worthless checks under a specific value, how can the harmed citizen be made whole? We may be inadvertently creating situations for repeated criminal activity, perhaps involving the same citizens, if the offender feels there is no real consequence. Another result in a Cite & Release policy can be the high rate at which offenders fail to appear for their scheduled court date, which was as high as 40% in one Texas county between 2009 and 2012, compared to a 15.3% failure to appear rate for offenders during the same period who were booked and released (Plohetski, 2013). It appears that some of our City Council members appear to have personal agendas as to why they are anxious to vote for an Ordinance without more study and research into cities who have tried to implement C&R and are not happy with it or are choosing not to implement it. There is a very vocal organization named Mano Amiga who is pushing Cite & Release as an Ordinance, rather than even considering further study or research. It seems obvious, from my observations and their comments at community meetings I've attended, that they are primarily interested in students who are caught with illegal possession of illegal amounts of marijuana. My primary concern is that we should always show trust in our police officers to uphold the law and give them the authority to take whatever actions they deem necessary to protect and serve our law-abiding citizens. When we take that discretion away and mandate through an Ordinance that they must C&R low levels of criminal activity, we are effectively tying their hands and taking away their effective enforcement of the law. This has been shown in other cities who have experimented with Cite & Release and found it to be a mistake. If you vote to make this a City Ordinance, you will be ignoring the safety and protection of our citizens by potentially allowing offenders to become repeat offenders against law abiding citizens with only minor warnings. Example: Repeated theft of personal property to pay for illegal drug use. Another example brought up at a recent City Council meeting: Two offenders, one local citizen, another living in nearby jurisdiction that results in the local offender being Cited and Released while the other offender is handed over to nearby jurisdiction and arrested for the same offense. Depending on the ethnicity of the arrested offender, perceived discrimination can result. (Comments were limited to three minutes, time expired) City of San Marcos Page 2