Santa Maria community members provide feedback to city’s police department

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – The Santa Maria Police Department held a community forum to discuss how the department is using community feedback to change policy.

Members of the Santa Maria community met with the city’s police Monday evening to discuss the department's three-year plan.

“It’s really that opportunity just to get things out in the open and maybe there’s some things we haven’t thought about that we need to include in this before we finalize it,” said police chief Marc Schneider.

The department brought in an outside consulting firm to assist in updating the plan. The priority – making sure the community and the department are on the same page.

Paul Conor of Conor Consulting made a presentation to the public about the strategic plan.

“The second strategic priority is engaging our community," Conor said. "The words, phrases we use for this are 'deepening the relationship with our community.'”

The plan has three main strategic goals: hiring and retaining more officers, building better relationships with the community, and protecting the city. 

Questions ranged from burglary concerns to mental health calls, but for some in the community, the department needs to do more outreach to better understand the community’s needs.

Gale McNeeley is a longtime resident of Santa Maria. He says the police department needs to do a better job of reaching out to members of the entire community.

“I don’t think the department did enough outreach to the Spanish speaking community, which is over 70 percent of us," McNeeley said. "There’s nothing wrong with their mission, but when it comes down to community input and community work, that’s one of the three objectives, I don’t think they’re really clear about what they’re going to be doing in the community.”

The department said it plans to hold more meetings like this in the future.