DEPARTMENT: Mayor's Office
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Mayor Ivy R. Taylor
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: Citywide
SUBJECT:
Mayor's Council on Police-Community Relations Update
SUMMARY:
The Mayor's Council on Police-Community Relations (MCPCR) has met five times since September of 2015. At each meeting the council, comprised of community members, faith-based leaders, police officers, activists, and elected officials, has worked together to identify ways to improve policing in San Antonio and strengthen relationships between citizens and police. Key issues to address this challenge were identified as: recruitment, training, communication, and community collaboration. With these areas now defined, the council broke up into committees and began meeting, seeking feedback from the general community and other stakeholders.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The creation of the Mayor's Council on Police Community Relations was in response to a critical community concern in San Antonio and one that is being expressed in communities across our nation. The excessive use of often-deadly force by law enforcement officers on unarmed citizens (often minorities) has eroded the confidence of many US citizens in the police officers whose responsibility it is to keep them safe.
In addition, the recent debate over a contract between SAPOA and the City of San Antonio underscored the need for focused efforts on strengthening the relationship between the police and the citizens they serve.
Although San Antonio has had its share of incidents, they have not to date been followed by violent, destructive unrest. Therefore, one of the goals is to ensure that San Antonio does not experience that kind of unrest and to restore confidence in law enforcement in those quarters of our community where it's been lost.
To achieve this goal the Council, expanding on the work of the 21st Century Policing Taskforce and its members, will explore and recommend solutions for the challenges that f...
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