Seaside cops likely to get Taser cams, more time with residents.

“This stuff will put you to sleep, no doubt about that.”

With that intro Dave Sylstra, a consultant with the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, launched into a presentation about the Seaside Police Department’s workload at the March 1 City Council meeting. The bottom line: At current officer staffing levels, service call response time sometimes lags and there isn’t an “ideal” number of cops patrolling neighborhoods. Five additional officers would help correct those problems, Sylstra said.

But if those details put audience members to sleep, a later agenda item jolted them awake: discussion of the police department’s use of Taser stun guns, which are intended to prevent the use of lethal force against combative suspects. The presidents of the local NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens argued that cops often use Tasers when they wouldn’t have used guns, and on mentally ill suspects without the presence of a trained social worker. Plus, the electrical jolt can be lethal. Tasers have killed three suspects on the Peninsula since 2004.

The Seaside Police Department has equipped its entire force with Tasers since 2003, at a total cost of more than $30,000. Officers used them about a dozen times last year, says SPD Captain Steve Cercone, and the suspect injury rate has gone down as a result.

At the council meeting, the NAACP and LULAC presidents scolded councilmembers for approving the Monterey County grand jury’s recommendation that police forces within the county continue to use Tasers. The Civil Rights Coalition of Monterey County had prepared a report on just that subject, they said, but the council did not consider it before giving the grand jury the nod.

At the very least, the coalition would like the City to equip Tasers with video cameras that would automatically record stun gun deployments. Cercone says the department is “very likely” to buy the cameras, as recommended by the grand jury.

The department also wants more officers to make time for what Cercone calls “positive community policing”: sending cops into neighborhoods to patrol, walk around and chat with residents. The SPD already employs one community liaison officer, who staffs the Mobile Community Substation—an RV that parks in prominent places around town twice a week. “Its primary purpose is to be visible,” Cercone says.

Whether for additional officers or Taser cameras, the City will likely give its police department more money. Recent Fort Ord acquisitions have tripled Seaside’s area, and more officers are needed to patrol the additional space, Mayor Ralph Rubio says.

But before writing the police department a blank check, Seaside should gather public input to determine “how much people want to see officers in their neighborhoods, whether it’s patrolling or walking, and how much contact they want to have,” Rubio said at the meeting.

He later said there’s a “very fine line” between making people feel safer and making them feel intimidated by Big Brother. “We have committed to a community policing posture,” Rubio says. “If people look at the police as an occupying force, that wouldn’t be a good thing. But if the police make an effort to build relationships with the community, that could be seen as a good thing.”