CCPD Gathers Feedback for 2025-2027 Strategic Plan

The Culver City Police Department presented the foundation of its 2025-2027 Strategic Plan at a Community Meeting Monday night at City Hall to hear input on the Department's proposed direction.

Alongside management consulting firm Conor Consulting, which worked with the Department on the plan, the CCPD received feedback from members of the public on the pillars of its Strategic Plan to finish its first draft. It plans to publish the final draft of plan — its first since the 2016-2019 Strategic Plan — in January.

Four Strategic Priorities comprise the plan's framework, with other objectives to measure progress or success in advancing those priorities. Each of these priorities has two or three Strategic Objectives that elaborate on what each entails.

While these objectives provide some detail, there will be more specific and measurable action items under these objectives that will be decided with feedback taken from the meeting being considered.

The incomplete plan with Strategic Priorities and Objectives presented at Monday's meeting is as follows:

1. Enhancing Community Alliances
   1. Continue to Prioritize Transparency and Accountability Measures
   2. Set the Industry Standards
   3. Maximize Positive Public Interactions
2. Advancing the CCPD Team
   1. Succession Planning and Professional Development
   2. Recruit and Retain a Diverse Workforce
   3. Preserve and Strengthen Team Dynamics
3. Optimizing Resources
   1. Utilize Technology to Maximize Department Efficiency and Effectiveness
   2. Create and Implement a Comprehensive Asset Management Program
4. Reducing Crime Through Collaborative Policing
   1. Assess and Integrate Innovative Crime Mitigation Technologies
   2. Prevent Crime Through Public Partnerships

Micah Conor, who spoke on behalf of Conor Consulting at Monday's community meeting, said the goal of this meeting was to gather feedback to create specifics for achieving and measuring success in each of these objectives.

"Based on the feedback we have gathered, we are going to be filling out what the Department wants to accomplish," Conor said at the meeting.

While many of these objectives are vague without action items, the Department was able to elaborate on others. CCPD Police Chief Jason Sims noted that the Department looks to continue its proactive approach to transparency, pointing to CCPD's extensive data reporting and early Racial Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) reports as previous accomplishments in that area.

Sims and CCPD also take pride in their efforts to connect with the community. Captain Andrew Bellante praised the work that community groups have done with the Department to help create a unified network to locate and identify those who have committed crimes.

"We have strong working relationships with different residential areas within the community," Bellante said. "We also work with business owners, the Chamber of Commerce, our school district, and various rotary clubs."

Maintaining the Department's healthy racial diversity was also a key objective. According to the CCPD's Q2 report, which is accurate through June, 45 of the 105 sworn personnel in the Department are Hispanic, making up the largest ethnic group among CCPD officers.

There are also multiple Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander officers in CCPD, with 39 white officers making up 37.1% of the Department.

Following a presentation of the plan, some members of the public had questions and comments about the plan itself, while others took the time to share their views on policing as a whole.

One speaker, who introduced himself as Luther Henderson, expressed hope for more proactive crime prevention to help stop crime before it reaches Culver City.

"It seems to me that most policing since I have been in Culver City is reactive," Henderson said.

Despite extensive efforts by the Department, numbers presented in CCPD's 2023 RIPA report show a disproportionate number of incidents with the Black and Hispanic population.

Of the individuals detained by CCPD in 2023, 31% were Black, and 37% were Hispanic, despite just 8.7% of Culver City's population being Black and 18.7% being Hispanic.

However, approximately 21% of the 233,290 residents in Culver City and its five bordering communities in 2023 were Black, and 30% were Hispanic, according to that report. This explains the significant disparity between detentions and Culver City's residential population, CCPD argues.

"The numbers of detentions are more proportionate to the demographic makeups of Culver City's daytime and regional communities than they are to the demographic makeup of its residential community," the report reads.

Another speaker asked how unhoused residents were considered in the Strategic Plan. Sims said that addressing the homelessness issue was "at the forefront" of the Department's operations and praised the efforts on other fronts, like Project Homekey and Safe Sleep, to help unhoused residents transition into permanent housing.

"We support those efforts in whatever way we can," Sims said. "When we work with our unhoused population, it is always a service-first approach."

Police spending was also a concern, with a few speakers pointing out the city's more than $17 million projected General Fund deficit in the 2024-25 Culver City budget.

Sims noted that the City Council set the budget, and the Department's approach to finances depended on the specifics of situations. He also pointed to grants as outside resources to help address some concerns about spending, using over $400,000 in grant funding for equipment and services related to wellness that helped expand their programs as an example.

"Technology is expensive, so of course, there is going to be a budgetary piece of that objective," Sims said. "I think it is something that is going to be sprinkled throughout our strategic plan."

A video of the meeting will be published on the CCPD website, and the first draft of the plan will also be available for public viewing upon its completion.