1 week Ago
SANTA CRUZ — Elected officials will consider this week approving a response largely panning a recent civil grand jury report critical of the city’s handling of rape response . Among the 10 recommendations laid out in the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury’s “ City Of Santa Cruz: Preventing Rape and Domestic Violence ,” however, one change is underway: the hiring of a part-time administrative assistant for the city’s Commission for Prevention of Violence Against Women. The grand jury report focuses on the city’s perceived distancing of itself from a more than 40-year-old ordinance requiring the city to make the prevention of rape and domestic violence one of its highest priorities.
The report charts the activities of the city commission, as the most visible caretaker of outreach, education and policy work related to the ordinance. The Santa Cruz City Council on Tuesday will vote on an agenda item requiring no discussion to authorize Mayor Fred Keeley to respond on behalf of the council to three grand jury reports touching on the city’s prioritization of rape response, inclusionary housing and follow-through with past years’ grand jury reports. Among the concerns raised by the grand jury report was a finding that there is a lack of a consistent definition of rape, as reflected by the city’s rape statistics published to the Santa Cruz Police Department website .
According to the grand jury report, the inconsistency “leads to public confusion and potential undercounting of rape crimes in the City.” According to the proposed city response, reporting irregularities occurred as police staff began updating monthly statistics provided to the commission this year, so as to include additional types of crimes falling under the rape heading. A further area of confusion came out of comparing differences between the numbers reported to the commission, numbers reported under the Uniform Crime Reporting System, which is static and based on when a crime is committed versus when it occurred, and to the National Incident-Based Reporting System/California Incident-Based Reporting System, which individually counts all offenses under each incident and updates prior statistics as cold cases are reported, according to the city response.
The proposed response declines recommendations to mandate future commission updates in the City Manager’s Weekly Update, though invited commission members to send the City Manager’s Office write-ups of its doings, and to include prevention of rape and domestic violence as a priority in the 2023-28 Five Year Strategic Plan. The proposed response states that the item’s absence in the strategic plan does not mean it is not a priority and that the city had budgeted a more than 150% increase for the commission this fiscal year. A recommendation that the Santa Cruz Police Department reinstate community alerts for incidents of stranger rape was met with a response that the department had never stopped doing so, when considered necessary.
The response also rejects a proposal to review the commission’s ability to have access to redacted police reports of rape, citing victim privacy concerns. The response agreed to consider the recommendation to have the commission receive an update on the status of the Safe Place Network and the Bar Coasters program. The response also states its willingness to consider exchanging a portion of the 2023 Commission for Prevention of Violence Against Women annual report on national statistics for stranger-related rapes with local numbers.
A report recommendation to reinstate an in-person self-defense course previously offered through the city Parks and Recreation Department is also under consideration after attendance fell off in prior years. Ann Simonton, a member of the Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women for the past six years, has publicly voiced concerns about how the body is operating. Addressing the Santa Cruz City Council in April, she raised a host of concerns ranging from lack of consistent commission staffing and rape statistic reporting from the police department to her interactions with city staff and fellow commission members.
“Basically, I think that most importantly, we all want safety in our community,” Simonton said. “We deserve to have clear, transparent relationship with the police department.” What: Santa Cruz City Council meeting.
When: 11:30 a.m., Tuesday.
Where: City Hall, 809 Center St. At issue: “Preventing Rape and Domestic Violence” civil grand jury report response, consent calendar..
