including acquisition, personnel training, transportation maintenance, storage, upgrade and other ongoing costs so you will receive that and also keep in mind some of the standards that we have to meet are guided by post that are requirements of what we have to meet and our tactical team has to train so many hours every month or also become a huge liability for the City understood I didn't mean to suggest that there should those costs should be reduced or in any way I'm just kind of wanting to get a handle on what so I have one more quick question my understanding now is that standard issue equipment can overlap with the military equipment or not well per AB 481 you could decide to put whatever equipment you want to put on the list that we have to report out to that's ultimately your decision if you want to go beyond what is defined as military equipment per AB 481 okay thank you okay any other questions from council members if not I will take it out to public comment I'm going to check the zoom attendees and I see one attendee in zoom with their hand raised and that is uh joy s if you are watching from via zoom now is the time to call in and comment on item number 27 and you can press star 9 to raise your hand and you will have three minutes to speak or you can choose the raise hand feature on your webinar controls okay go ahead and unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes thank you hi this is joy shundle decker um I just wanted to speak to one particular area of this report there's I think a lot in every type of equipment that could be addressed but the tear gas section just because I know a little bit about this equipment and it's it's really disturbing that we have so much of it in stock especially these triple chaser CS canisters which are chemical weapons that are banned in war uses but not in domestic policing situations for example they've been used extensively in portland, Oregon Ferguson standing rock you know often used against people who are black lives matter or indigenous land protectors protesters I think generally they escalate rather than deescalate situations they don't keep the populace safe whether they're used on individuals or crowds when they're thrown they separate into three parts so they're kind of hard to control where they're going to land, who they're going to hit and how people can get away from them they also in the report it says that they do not cause allergic reactions which is they do cause allergic reactions there's extensive safety information that you can find with an internet search you can find the official safety data sheet for these canisters it's a 19 page document they also come with a prop 65 warning that they they include lead salts and hexavalent chromium which are known to the state of California to cause cancer and they also contain lead salts which are known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm they obviously can cause serious injury because they're projectiles they contain heavy metals they are persistently toxic in aquatic environments and they're toxic to people and animals there are several lawsuits in Portland that are ongoing because people have had problems with their health following exposure even when they have not been protestors people who just live within say a mile of where these have been used they also you know they're not so expensive but they only have a shelf life of five years so it's a kind of a cost where you have to keep buying them and keeping them in store and ultimately they have to be disposed of as hazardous waste which we know that our hazardous waste goes into 55 gallon drums and then is sent elsewhere so then just polluting some other community thank you for your time thank you for your comment I will now bring it to a member of our public and I'll do an alternating rotation here so please step forward thank you for waiting my name is Lee Brokaw I'm not speaking for the ACLU but I am chairman of the ACLU local boards police accountability and transparency committee I'd like to thank the lady for her in depth knowledge of tear gas I've been tear gassed by the best of them highway patrol Berkeley police and Alameda County tax squad and I can tell you that they evacuated hospitals and schools because of the drift to the tear gas I am here to tell you well first of all I've already communicated to you in writing in depth much more logical than I'll be able to do tonight I'm here to tell you that Santa Cruz police department has not satisfied the requirements of AB 481 the state has provided the people of this state the opportunity to look at what the police department have in a way of weapons what Santa Cruz police department has done is they have left off their assault weapons and I heard a discussion here amongst the staff and or the council and interim chief Bernie about service standard issue service weapons and that is what he's hanging his hat on by not telling you how many assault weapons we have in the city I asked him specifically I said I'd never seen anybody on a bicycle patrol with an AR-15 over their shoulder he says no they don't I said I've never seen anybody walking the streets of Pacific Avenue with an AR-15 over their shoulder he says no they don't and they had considered putting them on motorcycles and then decided against it if it is a standard issue it is carried all the time the Glock 22 is a typical standard issue of police and it is carried on by officer and every single officer carries that weapon they wouldn't even take them off for the Martin Luther King march at the request of Brenda Griffith and NAACP so the argument about standard issue does not hold and I would just like to say that Santa Cruz is an outlier just on a random survey on a Sunday afternoon when I would have rather been doing other things I found out capitol of Scottsville Santa Clara, Santa Clara Sheriff San Rafael Napa, Berkeley, Folsom Oceanside, San Diego San Diego Sheriff and guess what Andy Mills in Palm Spring all list their assault weapons I asked Andy I said well I call him up and congratulated him for publishing his assault weapons and he said there were people there who urged him not to do it and his reply was follow the law and one of the things that I've done for this community was advocate strongly to hire Andy Mills and I'm proud of that and he's following the law I've offered to work with the city attorney and the interim chief I bring the Quakers with me I bring the ACLU with me and go through all of this and make sure that this is in compliant with 481 as it is presented tonight thank you for your comment and now the next member of the public hi there welcome James Ewing Sheriff corner Jim Hart and Sergeant Robbins gave a presentation on March 22nd pretty good similar to yours I appreciate that you guys provided similar and different information thank you then I think it was April 10th that some other that Sheriff corner Jim Hart produced a little bit shorter presentation so this is all public information the what day was that that's the March 20th secretary wait I'm incorrect come on March excuse me the April okay I have the date wrong but there's some information that is not being disclosed as far as the other weapons that can be used there was the long range sonic weapons of ours the phased array antennas also do that kind of damage and have effects this is a really powerful weapon only one watt depends on how far it is from you but it's actually a really powerful weapon by my count there's over 50 phased array antennas the one that's just right up the street across from the post office that technology is very clearly explained this has only one watt one of the devices is eight 300 watts the other one is three 500 watts you can kind of imagine Star Trek lasers those things operate billions of trillions of times a second I actually think Justin Cummins for bringing up what's not listed and that's the standard issue equipment maybe the phased array weapons are standard issue to control people in this county and that's why it's not listed so I'm looking forward to being here more and maybe sit down with you a couple times and I thank you guys for what you produced thank you very much thanks for the comments of the staff thank you I will now take it to a member of on zoom if you can just hang on one second I'll do an alternating method here so I have out in zoom a couple of participants and the first hand raised is Jennifer to go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi can you hear me clearly yes thank you thank you this is Jennifer to with the American Friends Service Committee and I just wanted to encourage the council to really think about under what circumstances this equipment should not be deployed we heard in the presentation tonight about the extensive training and we learned a lot about who is allowed to deploy this equipment but we haven't heard anything about when the equipment should not be deployed so one particular example would be should any militarized equipment be deployed when there are children present when there are elderly present when there are vulnerable population members present and so I would really encourage the council to consider giving this guidance to the police department on under what circumstances the equipment should not be deployed kind of similar to that in the presentation we heard about how 40 millimeter impact rounds could be used in protest situations but then later in the presentation we also heard about how AB 48 does not allow that circumstance and so that's also a similar situation that it would be really helpful if the council could clarify and then I just wanted to echo what the previous a couple speakers ago Lee had mentioned about the AR-15 and just close with a question for the council which is we've heard that the AR-15 is standard issue for your police and we've also heard that they do not actually carry it as the previous speakers said in all circumstances the question I would like to leave you with is what public safety concerns does the city of Santa Cruz have that is different from all of these other municipalities that Lee had surveyed and found weren't using AR-15 as standard issue but had included them in their AB 481 policy thanks very much thank you our next zoom attendee is John Lindsay Poland go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself can you hear me okay yes welcome good evening my name is John Lindsay Poland I work for the American Friends Service Committee and we have been conducting a study of militarized equipment used by law enforcement throughout California for the last year really multiple years and the first thing I want to just emphasize is that the AB 481 gives you 180 days from the presentation of the proposed policy by the department to make a decision before the lack of making a decision has any impact on the use of the equipment which means that you can talk to the department you can talk with community members you can talk with constituents you can go back and forth you can send it to a committee you can do a lot of work on this 180 days to make sure that it's a good policy I was in one of the community meetings with chief in which we talked about the AR-15s and I asked that question specifically of the chief is there given that the surrounding jurisdictions and other jurisdictions in California are not classifying their patrol rifles which they have 95% of these departments have them as standard issue what is the public safety circumstance in Santa Cruz that has led you to issue these as standard issue to your officers and the chief did not have any response of any public safety difference if you don't want to go to them and say they shouldn't be standard issue or they should be justified as why they are standard issue at the very least you should ask for transparency piece which other departments have done Capitola said they are standard issue for them but as a transparency measure they are including them in their military equipment policy I want to remind you throughout this country by law enforcement is used disproportionately against people of color when you include military equipment into that equation it amplifies the harm so the disparate impact of use of force by law enforcement is amplified when you have militarized equipment which makes it all the more important that you have what other callers have called for which is prohibitions on certain types of use to be clear to the department that you want certain types of things prohibited laid out side the authorized uses of that equipment rather than language like included but not limited to or other types of fairly ambiguous language so I hope you will send it back to staff and we are very willing to work with you in any manner in order to make this a good policy thank you for your comment I will now take it to the POP members here in person and first member of the public thank you for waiting please approach the microphone welcome I'm John Golder what the heck sorry, I apologize I'm the alleged victim of the August 21st Santa Cruz maniac write out can you ask for a name what I look like our number one civic and community goal is informed and involved citizenry and responsive and effective government which is a clause I had inserted in the general plan and unanimously voted by the council on my birthday in 2008 during that event which was two months after the city council passed three ordinances to control mass rallies and events and marches and protestors every single traffic law in the city was violated in a 5000 bikers came through this town and raised hell and the Santa Cruz maniac maniac write out web page has 13 photos of the clubs with their star writers or presidents I don't know who and if you push on those pictures you'll get a video with a song which will tell you exactly what it was all about and basically it was all about we're the stars, we're the show we follow the rules, get out of our way and I watched the whole thing I'd seen it years before but it was incredibly disruptive and of course I've had conversations with many many people after what happened to me and there were hundreds events I did a record request for every 911 call for the city services I got eight responses including mine my victims the officer wrote the report completely screwed it up I didn't get to see the report until a few weeks ago and everything I told him was wrong and I'm going to do a citizen supplement and my victims advocate didn't get back to me until December and the next thing she told me was the case was closed because they couldn't find the security tapes you know when they looked for them in January I didn't keep security tapes around that long I saw at least three cameras that could have caught it so real quickly negligence by the city sloppy ordinance language like disturbs the normal floor traffic the city doesn't have vagueness in the law and I'm not going to hit you but get yourself a copy of the California peace officer's legal source book I got the law library to get that and that will inform any citizen how the police are supposed to act in every situation in anybody with the you know how good a book that is it tells everything an officer should do in different situations have it available as a resource for the people to learn and be informed and involved so these guys can be responsive and effective and we won't have civil unrest and need all these damn weapons thank you for your comment our next member of the public please approach the microphone I want to provide a perspective that might be somewhat general and a little bit unusual maybe in this type of discussion the Bearcat was pretty new we just bought it a couple years ago actually I think we got it free from the federal government and so it is actually new and I object to a lot of the language through this presentation it's basically an advertisement and I've seen this before I saw it when the community found out we found out quite accidentally that the city was considering acquiring a Bearcat we had a robust protest when that happened because it was military equipment and we fortunately found out about it but it is new and this is an advertisement I want you to know that it is an advertisement to use military equipment in a civil setting so at this point I just want to say we're facing food shortages we're facing increasing numbers of people being homeless because after 30 to 40 years of this neoliberal agenda with a concentration of wealth which is a weapon used against people poverty is a weapon having people out there deprived of mental health services when they desperately need it it's a weapon I know a young journalist in this community who's out on the street he had an interview with his therapist yesterday he's not getting another one for six weeks this is for somebody who needs probably a couple of appointments a week I'm saying we need to address the needs in our society people's needs need for food need to have environments that are not so polluted the military is one of the biggest polluters on the planet please let's step back and really get informed and not just swallow this advertisement like we swallow commercials for food with corn syrup that is also lethal we need to step back from this way of policing our community I want to add by saying she absorbs some presentations up at UCSE I wish I could remember the lady's name so I'm not going to try to say that but she studies the police nationwide her researchers research nationwide the police in LA are providing computers to elders in communities as a way of securing their favor we cannot just go blithely into acquiring military equipment except very keenly very specifically and I want to say Lee Broca told me that in that first incident that was listed up there that the equipment was used on 6.6.20 a resident took the assailant down tackle him none of the equipment was used for that thank you very much thank you for your comment and next member of the public here in person thank you hi I'm Tim FitzMorris justified here 2015 it was against the bear cat and I walked out the door this place was crowded I walked out the door and I was immediately intimidated by a lieutenant of the police department for not understanding what the police needed in order to do their job I understand how intimidating this situation can be for you the presentation was full of that type of intimidation you're going to lose officers you're going to risk lives you're going to those kinds of intimidations which are constant you have to decide what your legacy is going to be this is a moment to decide that do you know what time it is do you know what day it is do you know what year it is this is not even 2015 when maybe there was something in someone's mind that said the militarization of the police was not a bad idea this is a new day we're in a transformative situation that may end up protecting the police by making them more integrated into the community rather than the force that controls the community I know what the word police means I know what the word policy means you do policy, they do police there's two different things everything I heard in the report that had to do with policy you take it with a grain of salt at least I went to every swearing in I could go to when I was in office I met the families every time I heard a siren go off from 1998 to 2006 I felt responsible for the person who was in the vehicle I knew they were in danger I knew that was a difficult situation and that I would have to live with whatever my decisions were with regard to them I know you feel the same thing I really respect that that this is an important decision and you're going to want to figure out a way to costume them with power and I work in a prison I've been involved in pepper spray events and riots maybe a dozen times in the last six years I've seen the costumes of power and the necessity for being able to control events but please please understand that this is your legacy you will be judged by this this is the reason I came back after seven years to address this body because this is important because now is the time to change what policing is in our community and the only way you can do that is by changing the costume by taking away the armor and putting people out there with all the vulnerability that citizens have when they address each other we all have that vulnerability I really like the fact that the AR-15 was brought up that shows you that things are not being presented accurately that's a problem I think I've said what I need to say and I do appreciate what you folks have to decide but decide carefully because when the results occur your name is going to be on it this is not them they're the people who are operating the system you're the person who's in charge you're the person whose name is on everything they do everything they do they follow orders when they're at their best they do it excellently beware next member of the public in person please step to the microphone welcome good evening council members I can't resist saying you should be proud of this day today I feel like we could be on the verge of saying you hit a home run this day after having been here this afternoon and having feeling appreciation for what you're doing right now which is something that's long overdue this is not a topic over history that has been widely discussed at Santa Cruz City Council meetings before and I don't know who it is but we should thank the author of AB 481 that it's a topic tonight because this is darn important and deputy chief please forgive me if this is impolite but I want to say something that you said in different words you should you said something to the effect that I bristled at and that was that we should use those tools that are available to the industry and I recoiled when you said that because we should use those tools that are available to protect public safety we've painted it on our police cars for decades and it's not about the industry it really isn't that's what's wrong here tonight is that it is should not be about the weapons industry should not be about can we get a better toolbox I mean it's a nice metaphor it's okay but the fact is we should be seriously and repetitively thinking about these things that are happening in our town and they're happening in towns all across the country and whether they are protecting the public safety so let's think in that frame most of the time not what's the best tool in the industry and I just want to say some brilliant comments happen tonight already and regarding the use of force incidents which when I was on the city council for eight solid years sometimes wonderful sometimes dragging my feet ever so slightly those discussions didn't happen I think it's unique that we're having this discussion tonight and it's important and it's valuable for all of you and all of us who participate in this thing called community government and so why should the use of force incidents be hidden away in reports that just happen to come forward to the public safety committee get read there but nobody in this town or very few people even know that those meetings are taking place and somebody even made a comment that people don't come to those meetings I know three council members go to those meetings I was one of the first ones that did that and I wasn't thrilled with it because we used to have a citizens police review board and that was a good thing I know that it had problems but it was a good thing that we had these discussions so keep having these discussions be happy that you're going to hear this again on May 10 in between now and then put in some modifications to this so that if we're going to have AR-15s we at least acknowledge it they're designed to kill people thank you for your comment next member of the public in person good evening I'm Scott Graham the chief of police was mentioning appropriate use for the situation and I'd like to give a few examples of where this went awry many years ago at the town clock on New Year's Eve two minutes after midnight the police in full riot gear surrounded the crowd and tried to disperse everybody instead of letting people enjoy the moment well somebody some drunken inebriant in the crowd decided to throw a bottle at a police car so then the police went into high gear and started corralling the crowd and forcing them down Pacific Avenue instead of down Water Street towards the jail it made absolutely no sense to herd people down Pacific Avenue and then once people were being herded down Pacific Avenue of course a number of other drunken idiots started breaking windows to me that was all caused by an inappropriate use of force by the police if the police hadn't tried to break up the New Year's celebration two minutes after midnight and it had allowed people to just enjoy themselves for a few more minutes none of this would have happened it happens all the time not only here but all around the country where the police show up in riot gear to some peaceful gathering whether it's a protest or not and the police because they're in riot gear cause a riot to happen that's not appropriate use another example Sean Arl had a rake he was swinging around an appropriate response would be to check him with a shovel not unload your gun into him which is what happened and the city paid millions of dollars to his family because of that so when you hear that they're going to use appropriate use there's too many examples when that doesn't happen I would implore you to not rush this through there's no reason to rush this through there should be a bunch of public engagement in this the citizens of this city need to be engaged need to be part of this process so having one Zoom meeting is not public engagement I'm sorry so we need to have a lot of meetings not just one we need to have several meetings so put this off do not pass this tonight please let the public be involved in this thank you thank you for your comment it looks like that concludes our public comment from in person as well as Zoom and actually there's one hand I'm just double-checking Zoom there's one hand raised if you are commenting on item number 27 your phone number ends in 5542 go ahead and unmute yourself and even the council members mayor I'm on the pomegranate a few years ago I was very impressed and admired hell police chief Mills in motion the Santa Cruz police department's role towards 21st century police and blueprint in part that would mean police officers would see their role as guardians and not warriors the equipment and use policy guidelines before you today run contrary to this direction there's six pillars in the 21st century police and blueprint take note of pillar one building trust pillar four community policing the question I posed to the council tonight is how do you reconcile the contradiction between 21st century policing and the use of military equipment residents are not enemy combatants I asked the council to look at really look at the list of military style equipment that's been approved over many years military equipment used in more situations is this what community policing and building trust and legitimacy looks like I think not are these weapons that guardian tabs I think not if you've got the proverbial hammer everything looks like a nail I thought I'd offer you what's best for the community what's best for the police department and vice versa for me this is seriously minimized military equipment to the barest potential and policies to avoid the look and feel of an invading military force of warriors allowing people allowing use policies of military style weapons escalate to dirty fear especially for poor and people of color and provides and promotes tools of escalation rather than de-escalation de-escalation of tent situations is the best way to go to protect officers and the public as well I find many of the police department's military weapons and supporting policies potentially in direct conflict with First Amendment rights as well as needlessly endangering the public with serious injury and or health consequences as you've heard tonight chemical weapons are one such example I believe that officers need good protection to do their job the public also needs protection from excessive force please keep the preponderance of military weapons on the battlefield and not in our yards and our streets or in other public places I sent in a couple days ago I hope you'll take a look at one of the advertisements of one of the contractors that provides for tear gas if that doesn't look like a battlefield situation I don't know what does, I wish I was there to show you in person I thank you for your time this evening I hope you'll seriously take much more time for this very very serious matter good night thank you for your comment and it looks like that concludes our public comment on item 27 this evening I will bring it back to council for action and deliberation Vice Mayor Watkins I just wanted to see if the staff wanted to respond to any of the issues that were brought up by the members of the public I did take note on one specific question or scenario regarding the use of some of this equipment with children or elderly present what's really difficult is to present every possible scenario that we could be involved in and talk about whether this equipment would be used or not used and specifically say that if there's a scenario where we have time to do our homework and our tactical team will go out several days in advance to do their homework on a particular location if there's signs of elderly or children present at the location all of this sort of chemical agents and less lethal devices are not approved for deployment period so I did want to touch on that again it's really hard to capture every single possible scenario but I'm proud of the work that we do prior to any sort of pre-planned situation and even unplanned situation to determine what is the safest piece of equipment to resolve the situation again around the AR-15s I've worked closely with the city attorney's office and Stephanie Duck we're utilizing the law and the way it's been given to us and we think that our scenario must be different I don't know about all the other agencies but I know that for example, I know Watsonville was mentioned they do not issue every single officer their own individual AR-15 so I just think that the scenarios should be put into context and I think that our situation is maybe unique but that's why we've come to that conclusion the weapons are in every single patrol car as they get deployed we're not trying to hide them so everybody knows we have them it's not a matter of us trying to hide them it's basically we're just complying with how we interpret the law Council Member Calentari Johnson I have a follow-up question for Interim Chief Escalante what would it take to include AR-15s in the inventory and what would that look like, what would be the challenges could we do that you can make that decision as a governing body and we would add them it would be included in all of our future annual reporting moving forward that's your that's part of this process actually there are other equipment items that we may not know about that would be similar to an AR-15 that might be considered to be included nothing no, I mean there's other equipment that we carry like tasers batons OC spray again all standard issued equipment when an officer goes out to patrol I mean the 40 millimeters are already included because they're called out based off of the definition but we do have other equipment that also did not fall within the definition Council Member Golder well, I appreciate the members of the public that came out and I was really thinking hard after hearing what what Mr. Fitzmorris and Mr. Porter said and it got me thinking to what some of the callers also called in and said and I'm just curious I'm trying to think back in my head with these uses of force in our community how many of our own officers in the county have been killed in the line of duty in the last, I don't know, 10 years and I don't know if you know versus how many people have been killed by officers and I'm not counting the ones that got killed or maybe counting them with how many instances like that where the uses of force have become lethal either way I don't know statewide just in the county or just in the locally within the last 10 years I know we've had two officers killed and obviously the sheriff's office just recently had one and unfortunately we do hear and read a lot about violent crime on the rise across the country and so from my perspective like when I think about the AR-15s I guess it makes sense to include them but what I was also thinking is I've seen also on the Santa Cruz police and the sheriff's Instagram pages where you've taken those off the streets out of the hands of criminals too and so it's just from a public safety standpoint for me it makes sense for our police to be carrying the most effective weapons I mean you don't want to be outmatched I don't have to say it articulately but when someone's out there protecting the community I wouldn't want them to have less weapons than are readily available to people on the street and so and even when I was thinking about when someone said around seniors or students we practice safety drills for active shooters on campus all the time you know a couple times a year at every school and I would really I appreciate that you have the non-lethal but I also appreciate that you have some lethal weapons it's really terrible to think about what these kind of tragic mass shooting events happen and I don't like to live in a state of constant fear but I want our police department to be equipped with the most effective tools to protect the people of the community so I am happy to move the motion I'm happy to include that bit about the AR-15s and I don't know if we want to continue going around the community but I would like to thank you. Councilmember Golder has made a motion to is it the staff recommendation and then we could add the AR-15s to the inventory and if that's the only thing and I can second and if I may clarify mayor I believe that would technically include including AR-15s in the definition of military equipment so in the definition of what qualifies as military equipment AB-481 includes any other equipment as determined by a governing body or a state agency to require additional oversight so here you would be saying you think that AR-15s require additional oversight and therefore you want them to qualify as military equipment to be included on the list yeah that sounds reasonable and I think that's kind of sounds like that was your intent thank you for that clarification okay we have a motion on the floor Councilmember Golder seconded by Callentary Johnson and we can have discussion on the motion Councilmember Myers I just have a question based on our attorney's comment then so requiring oversight that would put the AR-15s just trying to understand put the AR-15s into a category that would require for example employment policies trainings all of those kinds of things that were outlined with the various other um categories that we have went ahead and put into the military category weapons category and do any of those actions take place now or is the AR-15 basically in a sense a field a field response you know you mentioned they were in every patrol car so I'm just trying to just trying to understand what that looks like that particular point you just brought up in terms of this additional oversight because to me that renders that particular weapon used by our force to I'm just trying to find out I'm trying to understand a little bit more about what that means I think essentially what it means for us is that it's added to the list and part of the annual reporting and everything that is currently required by AB 481 to be included in that annual report would now include the AR-15 so whether it's replacements whether it's any acquisition cost of trainings and so forth but it wouldn't impact day-to-day operations within the department no are there any other comments or discussion from council members council member brown thank you mayor I'm forgetting to take this off so I can hear me so I just want to say first off you know having read the inventory and listened to the presentation it's pretty daunting and I the comments I'm going to make right now are general thinking about this on a societal level just because I feel the need to say it that frankly I can't understand why we as a society accept using some of these weapons which after all are weapons of war on civilians and again I'm talking at a general level here my comments are not specific to the SCPD intended to question our officers use of equipment appropriately I'm talking about the fact that these are weapons of war that are intended to maim and in some cases kill the chemical agents alone which are categorized as less lethal and probably on balance that's true but evidence suggests they can certainly be lethal we were told tonight that they can't be fired at people but the reality is they can be and they are not here that I know of but they are happening in communities around the country the item before us though tonight is not about whether or not we're going to ban these weapons or consider what to do about them right now we are as I heard we've had them here for many years but what we're talking about is compliance with AB 481 and a consideration of how it is that these weapons are acquired, used potentially utilized and you know, managed in our community I'm glad that there seems to be support for including assault weapons the air 15s on the list because I believe that that transparency is an important first step and that's a lot of what AB 481 is about it's opened up a conversation that I welcome although it's difficult I would like us to spend more time now that that conversation has been opened up reviewing the equipment on this list getting a better understanding of what the consequences are the potential impacts and I'd also like for us to consider elaborating in this policy the rules under you know under what circumstances this equipment should not be deployed I understand you take this very seriously and the rules that you have in place and the training you have in place prescribes much of that but what I see in the language in the document is in the documents we have before us a lot of including but not limited to and I think a few of the public commenters raised this that provides a pretty wide opening for use beyond what we might anticipate what the expected use is and it concerns me and I take the comments of folks who are here who have served on this body have thought about these matters very deeply and I think that we do have an opportunity here to use this as a conversation to open up a conversation about how we move forward and try to demilitarize our environment our community so you know right now I don't know that I have the information that I feel I would need to vote that we've made the findings that are required to move forward here I would like us to spend more time on it and get more information and I guess I'll just leave it there and see if others have comments before we thank you council member brown are there any other comments for discussion from council members council member Cummings thank you mayor and I want to thank the members of the public for their comments on this item and I do want to just acknowledge something that was said around engagement and discussion and you know I think that as a governing body I believe that even throughout the course of COVID and as we've been really trying to make sure that we're getting information out to people that moving forward I think there's opportunities for us to do better as well with getting information out to the public about what items are being heard by our various committees and subcommittees because this item did go before the public safety committee and that is one of the layers of transparency and community engagement that we use in order for the public to be able to engage with us on these topics such as these where we really do want to get community input and I should say that there were people here in the audience who did come to that meeting and who did express their opinions about this at that meeting so I just wanted to be clear that we are trying to do our best to make sure that there is transparency and communication around especially when it comes to items of high significance like this one I think Council Member Brown alluded to this but we also brought this up earlier that before this item came up before council we didn't have any policies around transparency of this type of equipment and we also to my knowledge and I stand to be corrected but I don't know if we have as much transparency around what as I mentioned earlier what are the non-lethal forms of standard issued and I think it would be good for the public to know what that is to and that it's easily identifiable on the website because just by doing a quick search of lethal equipment or what have you it's not really easy to find out what types of equipment whether it's standard issue or otherwise that we have in our police department our police are using and so I think that this is helpful I did just do a quick search and Capitola has their policy online about the use of assault rifles and you know maybe that's something that we could build on in terms of you know we move in this direction and it doesn't seem like based on the language that really hinders the ability of police officers to use that equipment and I will say to you know what came up in the presentation and you know being mayor during 2020 when we did have the incident that led to the death of a police deputy and the entire Santa Cruz police department was a way of responding to that call and the bear cat which there's a policy and that policy is public on how it's used every year and it's demonstrated consistently that you know it really is used for the purposes of safety and that's a really good example of how it was used to protect officers who could have otherwise been hurt or potentially killed and you know it's unfortunate that our country is you know being militarized more and more we're hearing about more and more school shootings mass shootings we had not only Ben Lohman but Gilroy a couple years back and this is something that we really need to be conscious of and make sure that when those situations occur that we're able to actually provide increased public safety and so you know I think that there is a balance that we're going to have to there's a tightrope we're going to have to walk as it relates to you know not militarizing our public safety to the point where people live in fear but also giving them the tools they need so that when people are intending to cause harm on mass scales to our communities we're able to protect ourselves and so I guess I'll leave my comments there I had some other questions and yeah I guess one question because I'm interested in potentially making some friendly amendments I don't think might be acceptable but I just want to circle back because one question I do have is around how pieces of equipment become standard pieces of equipment because I don't think any of us know like at what time did an AR-15 become standard issued equipment and who made that decision and like what was that based on so I'm just kind of curious about that because it sounds like the way the law stands is that if we were to designate another form of lethal equipment to be standard use it wouldn't necessarily have to go under this policy and so I'm just trying to reconcile who decides when something becomes a standard issued piece of equipment especially if it can be used for the purposes of force I would say that the standard issued definition is when a new police officer shows up and we issue all of their equipment that they're going to deploy out in the field every single day that's standard issued so I mean everything from a duty belt to boots to body camera all of those pieces of equipment that are standard for them having their possession when they go out into the field that's what I would consider standard issued may I just clarify so AB 481 does not exempt all standard issued equipment it only exempts standard issued shotguns service weapons and standard service issued handheld pepper spray I wanted to get that clarification out there yeah I guess I think I don't know if my question might not be clear but I guess at what point so like let's say I would imagine back in maybe the 1980s AR-15s weren't considered standard pieces of equipment and I guess who determines when something like that becomes a standard piece of equipment maybe the city attorney can speak to that well the problem here is that the statute refers to standard issued service equipment but it doesn't define the term so so in consultation with my office and the police department we determined that because AR-15s are issued to each and every police officer that they are a standard issue item and I would just note that the statute specifically refers to assault weapons with the exception of standard issued service weapons so by implication the legislature contemplated that assault weapons can be standard issue and as a practice they are here but we don't have a statutory definition upon which to hang our hat okay I think possibly and maybe we could talk about this on the public safety committee but I think my question is more related to how does something become standard issued equipment because like for example if we were going to say okay tomorrow like an M-16 considered a military weapon and then who is the like if the police department was then going to issue M-16s to every single officer and that's now considered standard issued equipment who would be the body to make that determination that's what I'm trying to get to. I think the answer to the question councilmember Cummings is that before this new law went into effect then there wasn't a clear process for doing that but now that 41 is in effect that's what you're doing right now so there wasn't a clear mechanism for you know dealing with that situation before and this is the legislature's attempt to sort of bring that process into the public sphere. Thank you that was my question so and then and then I guess also just the I just want to make it clear to the community that back in 2020 the city council unanimously approved that any military great equipment whether it's going to public safety or public works or any department would have to come through the city council for approval and I believe that's what NS29862 which is the resolution that came before city council is that that is correct. So I just wanted the community to be clear that we've been proactively trying to work on this issue and this really what's before is applying with state law and so sorry if I wasn't being clear earlier but thank you for the time. Thank you council member Cummings Vice Mayor Watkins. I just have a really quick comment because I think what I am hearing in general is that these are iterative and that they're new and they're learning and will refine and if other equipment comes about that we need to take a look at then we could adjust our policy and even adjust our ordinance in the future but this is where we are now with this legislation and I feel comfortable with the motion and I appreciate the addition. Thank you Vice Mayor Watkins. At this time we still have one more item after this our parks and recreation report and I know that they're still waiting. So if that concludes our comments on this very important item thank you so much everybody thank you to members of the public I'd like to ask the clerk to take a roll call vote on the motion on the floor. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Calentari Johnson. I. Boulder. I. Cummings. I. Brown. I. Myers. I. Vice Mayor Watkins. I. And Mayor Brunner. I. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. At this time we will take a two minute break to just readjust the equipment and allow the city clerk to reset. We will return at 948. Director Elliott might be drinking coffee. I can hear you now Mayor. Are we up? Thank you. Thank you. If council members are all present great. We are now at item 28 on our agenda today. This is Parks and Recreation Department annual report for fiscal year 2021 and I'd like to welcome director Tony Elliott and Lindsay Bass principal management analyst via zoom. Thank you very much Mayor and city council for the opportunity to present our annual report for fiscal year 21. Thanks for staying up late with us as we present. Just by way of a quick acknowledgement, yeah principal management analyst Lindsay Bass is on the call. Also out there is our park superintendent Travis Beck and then coming in from Texas tonight is our recreation superintendent Rachel Kaufman. So happy to answer questions once we get to that point. So let me go ahead and share my screen and we'll move through this presentation pretty quickly here this evening. Okay can you see my screen? Yes. Okay so yeah we'll move through this pretty quickly this evening but please don't let my brevity in the presentation discount the really exceptional work that's been done here in the Parks and Recreation Department and by Lindsay and Travis and Rachel to put this report together. So for the council and the community this report is available and so even though the presentation will be short tonight a lot of really great information and detail in this report for the community. So the purpose of doing this report every year this is our second edition the purpose is to summarize this report folio to the community to benchmark and assess performance against the department's mission goals and objectives and to summarize service level demands and needs within the community and for a little bit of context and especially for the community as we're looking at this we're talking about fiscal year 21 we're currently nearing the end of fiscal year 22 and we're planning for our budget for fiscal year 23. At this moment we're looking what seems like a long time ago backwards but it's relevant to look at where we've been to help us be very strategic about where we're going so just wanted to give a little bit of that context in terms of the time frame on this. The mission of the Parks and Rec Department is to provide quality public spaces and experiences that build a healthy community foster equity and better the environment and within the report there's some really great narrative that drills down into detail about that mission and what we do. In the report you'll see a number of goals, our 2021 goals that we have outlined here and by way of numbers you can see some of these on the screen I think one that we often talk about in Parks and Recreation here in service to Santa Cruz is that we've got 96% of all of our residents within a 10 minute walk of a park so we have 50 total park properties, 32 neighborhood parks so a really world class a truly amazing park system we've got more than triple the national average of trails so from a numbers metric standpoint we stand out nationally and we stand out among our comparison agencies even throughout the state of California so if you look at our Parks Master Plan comparison agencies like San Luis Obispo Santa Barbara so on and so forth even surpass our levels of service compared to a lot of these communities so a real point of pride there again I'm going to move through this very quickly so a couple of the highlights that we've included in this year's annual report and reflecting on 2021 during the sort of during the pandemic and challenges we faced in 2021 we had about a 10% vacancy rate that vacancy rate was even higher within our park maintenance division I think it was over 20% within our park maintenance division at its worst but even with staff shortages we were able to keep 99% of our park acreage open and accessible to the community and we saw a real increase in usage of parks during fiscal year 21 use of west cliff was up over 100% the golf course had increased over the year in terms of play and revenue so parks were in heavy use a number of highlights in terms of our investment in the natural environment from investment in clean energy from solar to our street tree master plan and work to migrate our gas powered equipment to battery powered lawn equipment in addition to others reforestation tar plant recovery at erotic gulch as well so significant investment in our natural environment even in the face of staff shortages in a challenging year in fiscal year 21 we also made significant investment in our community services so 2021 was not a normal year so we were providing essential worker child care at the London Nelson community center summer school classes began at Bayview and galt elementary schools offered a number of teen employment opportunities to get teens plugged into local jobs and a lot of efforts geared toward reaching our senior population with new technology working with new wave of vista elder day and number of programs to serve our senior community as well in 2021 so a number of lessons that we've learned now with our second annual report at number one here our report can really help us support a dialogue with the community on the value of parks and recreation that's part of the reason that we're here tonight and we've continued to put this document together to inform the community on the value of parks and recreation and so we're seeking feedback tonight from the council on how is this report what can we do to improve it and what is your feedback on this report and our efforts to communicate to the community and to the parks and rec department secondly we continue to do work this was a topic that the council raised last year when we presented the annual report we continue to make progress standardizing our benchmarks our KPIs our key performance indicators on what are we measuring and what is the community want to hear what do they need to hear in terms of metrics and measurement from parks and recreation we've done that and taken the council's direction from last year but we continue to work on that and that's a real focus for me and Lindsay and the team to really get solid data key performance indicators so that we can report to the council on that over time and then our perpetual challenge is how to cover everything that we do in parks and recreation communicate this out but keep it as succinct as possible as a challenge as we go into the report so just a few key takeaways I want to leave the council with and the community just reflecting on fiscal year 21 is that parks and recreation is really essential and we saw this more perhaps than ever in 21 from an infrastructure standpoint parks and our facilities are infrastructure and served in that capacity in an emergency service capacity during the CZU fires the essential child the essential worker child care opening our facilities to that need and then again just parks in terms of that infrastructure to serve the physical and mental health and well being of our community we knew that, we talk about that a lot from the health and wellness and health and all policies that lens but when everything was shut down we were still going through those early months of the pandemic we saw even more so that parks and rec provides critical infrastructure for physical and mental well being another key takeaway is just that we continue to face the challenges of the time in fiscal year 21 that included the pandemic and wildfires but in the annual report we do a spotlight on the impacts of homelessness and parks an ongoing challenge as we're talking about San Lorenzo Park and the bench lands and so forth and then just tight budgets we've got really tens of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance and so really facing those challenges at the time and finding innovative and creative ways to address those challenges that's kind of a key theme I mentioned it briefly earlier but I think that the parks and recreation system and the staff here in Santa Cruz it's such a point of pride I think we truly have a world class park system here really high levels of service iconic amenities west cliff and the wharf and so on and so forth highly ranked amenities and assets throughout the city so there's a lot to be proud of there earlier in the council meeting today heard from a number of volunteers and the volunteer recognition that occurred around four o'clock this afternoon I think that was a great reflection on a real key aspect in parks and recreation which are partnerships if we are successful in parks and rec it's likely because we've got a successful partnership going on and that's credit to our volunteers through partnerships with some of the organizations that we heard from this evening save the waves, save our shores so on and so forth so a lot to be proud of the community loves the parks they're engaged and so again wanted to leave the council and community with these key takeaways from our annual report and with that I will end my presentation and again just acknowledge Lindsay Travis and Rachel for all of their work on this acknowledge the parks and rec staff and just appreciate and thank the council for your support always of parks and rec and we'll just welcome your feedback on things that we can work on and improve on this report moving into the future thank you thank you director Elliott I appreciate you giving that overview and really all the work that your department has contributed during that time period really calling out the investments in some of the above and beyond or unusual programming and services the summer school classes and essential day care and really really thankful that you're investing in some of the environmental aspects and seeing examples like battery powered lawn equipment and so on so thank you for that overview I'm going to bring it to council members for any comments and discussion on this item we do have it's an item to review provide feedback and accept the parks and recreation department fiscal year 2021 annual report councilmember Golder I just wanted to thank and appreciate everyone who worked on that report all of the quality work that went into making everything happen in the last year I can't thank you enough for all of the work that you did to provide services to our community and all the collaboration you did with community partners it's a great comprehensive report I appreciate it thank you councilmember Golder councilmember Callantari Johnson I'll echo those sentiments thank you Tony and team for the report and the work that you do that is clearly articulated in the report and I was really thrilled to see the Children and Youth Bill of Rights as one of the objectives under the goals and objectives so thank you for your continued work and a thorough comprehensive and easily digestible report thank you Callantari Johnson councilmember Brown I'll add my enthusiastic appreciation for the report and for all you do and I just have a couple of comments this is a wonderful report I was thrilled to see it last year really thrilled that this is an ongoing goal to provide this information in a way that really highlights some of the really innovative and amazing work that's being done makes it accessible to the community and to council members and I just have a couple of comments the first take away that you included Tony or director Elliot was that parks and recreation is critical and I would say or essential absolutely and I'd love to see some more reference I think in general in the the work that parks and rec does that parks and rec workers are essential I mean the work that you all do in the field the hours that are put in the challenging issues that have come up over the past couple of years I'd like to see highlighting of workers in addition and maybe that could happen in these reports through a profile and I know that happens in other formats and other mechanisms but highlighting the workers who are doing this when I talk to parks and rec workers their commitment is just you know undeniable they really embody the mission and values that are espoused in our parks and rec master plan and in the department's guiding documents and so just wanting to really bring that out I get a little bit tired of hearing comments from the public and we don't hear a lot of it but there seems to be a disconnect we hear people say stop all this the workers get paid too much we need services at the same time that there's a denial that we need resources to pay people to do those services so I'm just saying that is it like a frustration and I think a way to maybe make that more highlight that more for the public it would be nice to see that in this format in other ways and I'm saying it now is a way to highlight it as well I didn't see Neri Lagoon and I have a couple questions about what's happening there I mean it is a treasured part of our parks network wetlands and you know really you know a significant ecosystem an ecological resource as well as a recreational resource and I know that we did get some funding for some repairs along the walkways and just wondering where that's at and maybe it wasn't something to highlight because it's in process but just would love to hear a little bit about that yeah thank you Council Member Brown and appreciate the comments about highlighting staff I think really appreciate that I think that's a good idea something we could include but yeah well said yeah our boots on the ground staff are the ones that make it happen so I appreciate that comment I would welcome our Park Superintendent Travis Beck if he's out there to speak to updates on Neri Lagoon thank you Tony and thank you Council Member Brown for that question yes we did receive funding from the State Parks System to replace a section of the floating walkway in Neri Lagoon and we've been working on laying all the ground work for that so Lindsay and our park planner Noah Downing and Field Supervisor Blake Westner have issued a request for proposals for contractors who will perform that work and we are expecting to receive those proposals at the end of this week which will keep us on schedule to do the actual construction work once we enter the permitted season for that work which will be later this fall thank you and I'll lastly say I did appreciate the picture the last page with the goats and I'm really a big fan of the goats these days so we got them for the RTC right of way and just love it thanks thank you Council Member Cummings thank you Mayor thank you for that presentation and I'm actually going to build off of something that Council Member Brown brought up in her statements and this might not sound related at first but it's related so one of the things that I think would be good for us to have a discussion about the childcare tax got passed by the community and that money is the cannabis childcare tax I don't even know if it's childcare tax or if it's the children's tax but the idea being that children's fund not a tax though the children's fund right so that funding is supposed to go towards supporting programs related to children in our community and we haven't really had a discussion as a body on how that money is going to be spent sounds like I know that having been on the City Schools Committee there's some discussion there but I'm wondering if there might be an opportunity for us to discuss that because Parks and Rec offer a lot of programs for children in our community and when I was on the City Schools Committee we had scholarships and I think the last time we had an update there was a substantial amount of money in that fund but I think it would be good to get a sense of how much money is being generated from that fund annually and could some of that money be used to provide staff who are going to be working and operating these children's programs because I think one thing that I've heard meeting with some Parks and Rec staff is that they're in charge of running whether it's Junior Guards or other camps but some of these staff members are running around trying to support these programs that are understaffed and if there's a way for us to have whether it's one staff member who's supported from that fund or what have you I think it might be good to see how we can make sure that we have enough staffing programs for the children in our community and for the programs that support children in our community and just have a look at how that money's being spent I think it would be good too because often times members of the community don't understand where that money's going towards and what kind of programs it's supporting so I think it might be good whether that's during budget actually maybe budget's appropriate that we can look at that fund and have the conversation. I'm happy to see that. Vice Mayor Watkins. There's been a lot of discussion about that and it changes the structure in which the funding recommendations will be coming forward in the future but the retroactive approach to it and I mentioned this earlier in the report this next year we'll have recommendations from the City Schools Committee to the Council to use the funding but also simultaneously there will be a process to use or identify key stakeholders in our community who want to help us in a more formal oversight advisory that will also provide transparency and leveraging partnerships and resources like we do with First Five currently they don't have any administrative overhead that they take for providing a lot of our scholarships I will say though that the fund is written pretty specifically in that it's not used to backfill staff or programming but it's essentially used to provide kind of an equity lens to support our most vulnerable who could use scholarships to support the kids and families directly so that conversations will have to ensue around a different purpose or a leveraging of another funding source for that kind of purpose but in the ballot language is on the City's website so I encourage you to review that too and to get more familiar with the nuances of it but I also know that we do have recommendations from the City Schools Committee that will be coming to the Council and the discussions that could be held around much time as well just a quick moment just want to thank Parks for your presentation and for the essential work you provide all the time for making Santa Cruz so uniquely amazing and beautiful for all to experience this was a beautiful report Thank you Vice Mayor Watkins Council Member Myers I'll just make it very brief I just do want to thank you for everything that you guys do every day in the City I think your department is one of the ones at all levels of their families and their experience and I thought the report was great I like some of the suggestions brought up today it might also be great to maybe in future reports do a little deep dive into a particular park or a particular facility we have a lot of capital needs and it's hard to learn all that in a budget framework so help us understand what are the needs for the Civic Auditorium when are we going to rebuild that gosh darn lifeguard headquarters put a face to these issues that we need to be thinking of for some of these capital investments for our future generations give us the ugly pictures and the nice pictures it's fun also to just learn a little bit about the history of the buildings and the places we own and so that's another place to just sort of bring pop that information for us helps us remember and distinguish thanks for your work you guys thank you Council Member Myers alright if that yeah that concludes this meeting we will go to public comment on this item and then come back before we conclude this meeting I am checking the attendees on zoom thank you for being with us and if you are a member of the public and you are joining us via zoom now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen and you can press star 9 by raising your hand or selecting the raise hand feature on your webinar controls on your computer when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will then be set to three minutes members of the public who are joining us here in chambers and wanting to comment on this item please line up to the right of the dais you will have three minutes to speak we ask that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name minutes however it is not required okay so now I will look to our attendees and I am not seeing any hands raised in the zoom I am not seeing any hands raised and now I will bring it out to members of the public here in person if you would like to comment on this item please approach the microphone thank you thank you my name is John Golder grandpa and I have been doing this for 30 years more than 30 years diving into city parks and rec programs and ball fields in particular and everything about the green bell planning and everything in fact I want to enter into the record a fresh copy of a tattered document I did 12 years ago the quimby basics the first two pages of the basics I give you all the basics I did all the research and then another eight pages that the attorney told me I knew more about the quimby act than any attorney in town because I had every decision and everything could think of so this please enter into the record so I have 19 points to make and I will be super brief if you want more I have got it Rene knows it I don't even have my glasses so we will start with number one you want a world class parks and recreation system this city has built one ball field in the last 50 years I was quoted by the Sentinel in a meeting years ago at that rate my grandchildren's grandchildren might see the next one built I was president I was president or vice president of the Santa Cruz rugby club in 1984 for 10 years we never had a home field and basically had to leave Santa Cruz because we could never get a home field and we played teams from all across the world how could it be a world class if you got the De La Viega plan has been unfinished since 1962 and the golf course revenue that Gary Lustelot used to brag about that was made money the city had to forgive a $2 million loan to the golf course the Charles Derby small ball range was destroyed and $300,000 worth of infrastructure improvements with no public meeting about the closure only about the remediation deep old park the first ball field in 50 years two acres a green plastic failure the field within two years and cost $1,387,000 repair and I don't know if that even includes the litigation Quimby for 37 years no parks have been purchased with that money the money for P&R CIPs have been gone almost off repair and maintenance and I've got the figures to prove it there's no criteria for different activities in parks there's no description of park zoning every time we have a new park there's endless debate about it the definition of parks essentially an unapproved partial use for recreation does that describe urban parks? I don't think so general plan land use you're supposed to be able to tell a difference in the land use plans the city the buzzer buzz will you give me extra time go ahead and finish up your sentence general plan land use map which is an extremely important document you're supposed to be able to tell a difference in land use heavily improved city parks are the same color and pattern as the state parks Wilder Ranch, Henry Carl that's a mistake that came from using the assessors maps describe parks thank you for your public comment on this item we've received your documents and the public comment thank you you appreciate it with all due respect Mr. Golder your time is up and this thank you really appreciate your input and thank you for joining us in person I will bring it back to council now and is there a motion to accept the parks and recreation department fiscal year 2021 annual report council member Cummings I'll move the I'll move accepting the parks and rec department fiscal year 2021 and the report has to have a comment to make after there's a second is there a second council member Golder seconded okay and any further discussion or comments council member Cummings I wanted to follow up on a comment that was made by the member of the public and we'll want to say to the parks and rec director that there is a group in Santa Cruz that very much is interested in trying to establish a rugby field here and I think they're also you know willing to try to help fundraise around that if there's a park that might be adequate for having such a field so just wanted to let members of the council know and members of the public know that there is still interest in that and also just speak on behalf of that group because any time I see them they ask me about you know what can we do about getting a rugby field in the city so if there's a park that needs some some love and you know some additional funding and might be adequate for putting a rugby field in I think that might be worth considering so just wanted to mention that since Mr. Golder brought up his time playing rugby and they're not being a dedicated field here in Santa Cruz thank you council member Cummings alright I think we are ready for a roll call vote please thank you mayor council member is Calentary Johnson aye Golder aye Cummings aye Brown aye Myers aye Vice Mayor Watkins aye Mayor Brunner aye that item passes unanimously thank you very much for that report and this meeting is now adjourned oh there you go


Remember this? It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences. Clinton was just coming off her loss to Donald Trump. We didn't know it at the time, but this speech marked an important turning point in American politics. The political establishment and its sympathizers in the press sought to convince Americans that not only was democracy under attack, but so too was reality itself. And what was the enemy's superweapon? Disinformation. Journalist Jacob Siegel laid out the origins of this panic in a guide to understanding the hoax of the century, an essay and tablet. The hoax is the false claim, and I would argue the deliberately false claim, that the United States and indeed all liberal democracies are under a dire existential threat from disinformation that was so dangerous in the way it undermined the foundations of electoral legitimacy and liberal democracy itself, that it required a wartime response and a wartime mobilization, meaning the suspension of due process, of constitutional rights and protections, and the giving over of the political system itself to security agencies and their adjuncts within the administrative bureaucracy so that they could protect us from this disinformation threat, which was more dangerous than terrorism because it was everywhere at once coming in through our very screens and iPhones. Siegel says there's one big problem with all that. All of this constitutes the hoax because there was no grave threat from disinformation, let alone a existential threat that justified the state of exception that was used to fundamentally re-engineer the political system in the United States, which is what took place. Newspaper headlines warned Americans that Russian disinformation had cost Clinton the election. And CIA director turned NBC news analyst John Brennan theorized that Trump was being blackmailed by Russia. I think he's afraid of the president of Russia. Why? Well, I think one can speculate as to why that the Russians may have something on him personally. A two-year $32 million investigation turned up no evidence that Trump colluded with or was compromised by Russia. In terms of the 2016 outcome, a better explanation is that Clinton had been one of the least popular presidential candidates in American history. And Russian troll farms were responsible for a tiny fraction of the political content that appeared on social media during the election. So how did the notion of aggressively policing dis and misinformation catch on in the first place? Siegel says it comes down to a progressive, technocratic mindset that aims to treat individuals as empty vessels that need to be filled with the correct opinions. There's a sort of special synergy between progressivism, not liberalism, but progressivism and techno surveillance states. They do share certain important things in common that sort of enhance. Can you talk a little bit about them? I mean, what is that?  So they need to, you know, what else? Faith in the expert class, a faith in the idea that things converge towards singular, correct outcomes or decisions that can be discerned through technical processes. That technocratic attitude is on full display in a series of statements from the public intellectual and podcaster Sam Harris, who defended the idea that suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, though true, might have been justified. So my argument is that it was appropriate for Twitter and the heads of Big Tech and the heads of journalistic organizations to feel that they were in the presence of something like a once in a lifetime moral emergency. And we cannot afford to have four more years with this guy, right? And so what should, well-intentioned people do who have a lot of power in these various ways, you know, you're running The New York Times, you're running CNN, you're running Twitter, what should they conspire to do? The way I would frame it is, listen, I don't care what's in Hunter Biden's, I mean, Hunter Biden, at that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared. Sam Harris has decided that it doesn't matter what's on Hunter Biden's laptops. It doesn't matter that Twitter and Facebook censored and repressed this. What matters is that he recognizes the grave danger of Donald Trump. So here we have a very important connection, which is the connection between the kind of underlying, let's call it the sort of metaphysical layer of the technocratic mind, which he is a supreme representative of on the one hand, and the oligarchic ruling party certainty that it is in the best position to decide whose votes should count, whose votes shouldn't count, what information can be seen, what information can't be seen. But the good news is that this total dominance of the information sphere is unlikely to be realized. Technology tends to be a double-edged sword, providing the means to control, and simultaneously the means to evade control. Current technologies are in the process of giving us a level of privacy we have never had before. Essentially, there are now well-known ways available in free software of encrypting messages so that only the intended recipient can read them. As mathematician Eric Hughes wrote in his 1993 Cypherpunks Manifesto, which would later become a foundational document in the cryptocurrency and decentralization movement, information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. His belief that cryptography could lead to more freedom has been borne out with the rise of stateless money like Bitcoin, private encrypted messaging platforms like Signal, and emerging decentralized social media projects like Nostra and Blue Sky. And it only takes a relatively small but devoted contingent of users to keep these potential escape hatches propped open for when they're needed most. It's a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly. Americans don't need Hillary Clinton or John Brennan to filter information for them to keep liberal democracy safe. What we need to keep liberal democracy safe is unfettered access to real information about how our government operates and the freedom to talk about that information amongst ourselves without state interference. So we could say broadly speaking that the old rule in America was one of self-government broadly speaking or of a liberal democracy that favored a pluralistic outlook in which the individual was the proper subject of state protections. Counter-disinformation and information regulation as a sort of foundational philosophical basis of government just replaces that wholesale because it declares that the function of the government is not to protect the rights of the individual, the function of the government is to protect the individual and the clients of the government from external threats in reality to protect their own institutional position and try and stay in power forever. Hey, thanks for watching. If you'd like to see our full conversation with Jacob Siegel about what he's termed the counter-disinformation complex, click here. For a clip from that conversation, click here.


In the cloud business world, we have three major public cloud providers, and each of them has their own unique technology that is not translatable between each other. If that cloud changes their prices, if your company acquires a business, is already using the second cloud, you want to do business in two places, but you have two different languages and how you're going to cross that barrier. OpenSource technology from Red Hat, which encompasses Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, provide a company with that complete cloud-native platform, regardless of which cloud they're running in, regardless of the geographic region, and their employees only need to learn that one command line interface, that one API, that one syntax to be able to do business in any of those major public cloud providers.


I'm Tom Merritt for Daily Tech News Show, here are the Top 5 Greatest Game Characters. Video game characters live in our heads. After a marathon session, you see them jumping, shooting, rolling through your mind, even when your eyes are closed. We're even starting to see good versions of movies and TV series based on them. But who among them is the greatest? Now we all may have different views, but here are the greatest video game characters of all time. At number five, the ball from Pong. I mean, Pong wasn't the first video game, but a game very much like it was. And Pong was the video game of the 1970s. Atari was built on Pong and the entire video game industry built on Atari. So hats off for the bouncy ball that started it all. Coming in at number four, Glados. A character you almost never see, and yet their voice will ring through your ears for days after you finish playing any version of Portal. The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one. I can't think of a more memorable video game villain than Glados. Plus Glados had a hit song. Up to number three, Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl. The only character on this list based closely on a real person, and the only real person to be desired is essentially a cheat code in gaming.  After all, Bo knows all sorts of things, so why not winning at Tecmo Bowl too? Sliding into number two, Link from Legend of Zelda. I suspect you could put out a Nintendo game that was just Link standing in a field, jumping and going, huh, and it would set records. Link is so pervasive. There's a good chunk of you who are listening to me right now who never played the game, but you know who Link is. You just thought Link's name was Zelda. At number one, Jump Man. Well, you know him as Mario. He has appeared in more than 200 games, multiple series, and several movies. He was originally a carpenter before he became a plumber, but he's a tradesman nonetheless, and man, he cannot stay away from mushrooms. I know. Master Chief, Pikachu. I left Doom Guy off this list. I included the pong ball, but not the running man from Intellivision. Five is just a really small number, folks. Extend this list with your favorite video game characters of all time in the comments. And who knows, maybe we'll count down a fan response version later. Also, the cake is a lie. And if you want more great tech news and info, subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. Get the podcast in your ears, DailyTechNewsShow.com. And if you get a little value out of this, support us at patreon.com slash DTNS. I'll see you there.