After eight months in development, the final draft of the Santa Maria Police Department’s first formal strategic plan is now available to the public.
The multi-year plan outlines a variety of the department’s future goals, with scheduled action items ranging between January 2022 and December 2024. Santa Maria Police Chief Marc Schneider described the document as a roadmap for current and future staff members of the department, during the Santa Maria City Council’s Dec. 7 meeting.
Schneider referred to the plan as “a clear vision of what we want to accomplish here at the Police Department,” and said it offers the public (including future hires) a way to view the department’s long-term priorities.
The first objective outlined in the plan deals with promoting health and wellness for members of the Police Department. By Jan., 30, 2022, the department will identify a Wellness Committee, whose purpose will be “to ensure that the department is accomplishing its Wellness Program goals and objectives,” according to the document.
“It’s a priority for us to really focus on our people and to provide them with an opportunity to not only be physically well, but also emotionally well,” Schneider said during the Dec. 7 meeting.
The plan also states that by June 30, 2022, the Wellness Committee will organize and publish a calendar of training events and activities to promote health and wellness. The group is also assigned to develop and distribute a “wellness pamphlet” full of health and wellness resources and offerings to all department employees by Dec. 21, 2022.
Other objectives in the plan include “engaging our community,” which addresses the department’s goal of communicating with the public through social media and in-person events, and “protecting our city,” which outlines the department’s employment of modern policing strategies, including drones.
Some of the plan’s action items are more detailed than others. For example, while the document lists a deadline for the department’s Wellness Committee to host its first appreciation luncheon/barbecue for employees and their families (by June 30, 2023), specifics on some of the plan’s training topics are absent or undefined.
Santa Maria Councilmember Gloria Soto pointed this out during the Dec. 7 meeting.
“I didn’t see anything on implicit bias training,” Soto said. “So, I’m curious what the Police Department is doing to receive training on that?”
“There’s actually quite a bit of training, we just didn’t, obviously, list everything. But that is part of it,” Schneider said. “We’ve actually had a handful of folks already go through our implicit bias training. In 2022, we’ll be trying to get the remainder of the department through that as well.”
This article appears in Dec 16-23, 2021.
