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City Council Meeting Minutes April 21, 2020 I feel that everyone in the community is mourning the loss of our valued police officer and the critical wounding of the other two officers. So I don't want the following remarks to appear insensitive to that. But San Marcos has an opportunity to set an example statewide in how to implement Cite and Release. I know the police association disagrees with the proposed ordinance, but I hope as they implement it, they will come to appreciate its value. I hope the council will reinstate the word "only" and make this law truly effective. Without the word "only" we really are making little change, and the stark statistics we see in arrests likely will remain. I also feel you understand that the ordinance as written gives police officers on the scene ample safeguards to protect citizens and the individual offenders. What we are doing now seems to unfairly target African-American and Latino citizens, while it overcrowds the jails at a high cost to taxpayers and disrupts individuals' schooling, jobs and families. This can't be what we want. Jordan Buckley: Dear Council, Months ago, I attended a San Marcos Police Officers Association meeting, the same group responsible for this despicable advertisement. At that SMPOA meeting, the presenters so poorly bungled the topic of discussion, by falsely conflating Cite & Release with the proposed Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, that Mayor Jane thankfully had to intervene to set the record straight. Now, that same organization is urging followers to send you all talking points that similarly suffer from serious inaccuracy. In some ways, SMPOA is talking out both sides of its mouth: they say they support Cite & Release, always have, and yet they also warn of the dire fallout & a fantasied Seattle-esque apocalypse that will result. They argue that the County must have their diversion program set up before the City can move forward with the ordinance; that is patently untrue. They argue that Failure to Appear rates -- of people not showing up to court -- will worsen, when according to system actors the FTA rate is already around 40%. To be clear, the FTA rate is chiefly a failure of our local criminal system. An expose in the Houston Chronicle last year -- titled "Lazy Judges" -- singled out our particularly problematic court system in Hays County, observing that of more than 500 large -court systems in Texas, ours is the 7th slowest. Mano Amiga has steadily urged Hays County system actors to implement a text -message reminder system, particularly given how transient our college town is. Snail -mail notices to appear in court, in literally one of the most glacially delayed court systems in the Lone Star State, is a formula for failure. We can blame people accused of petty crimes all we want for the failure of our local court system, but those are disingenuous, irresponsible claims. Lastly, we are grateful that SMPD has done a great job during the pandemic of citing, instead City of San Marcos Page 2