Letter from City Manager Chi to Neighborhood Groups

The following letter was sent over the weekend to Northeast Neighbors Board Member Tricia Crane in response to a request by five Santa Monica neighborhood groups that the City Council and City Manager reject the resignation of Police Chief Ramon Batista.

Hello Tricia,

Thank you for sending this note on behalf of the Friends of Sunset Park, the Santa Monica Mid-City Neighbors, the Northeast Neighbors of Santa Monica, the Pico Neighborhood Association, and the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition. I was forwarded your email last night, and I wanted to share some thoughts with you regarding the issues you raised.

As I read through your email, I was struck by your request that the City Council engage in the matter related to Chief Batista’s resignation. I wanted to share that per the Santa Monica City Charter, the City Council has no authority to either remove or appoint any individual who works for the City (save for the City Attorney, the City Clerk, and the City Manager), and that prohibition on intervening in personnel matters extends to the position of Police Chief. The authority – and responsibility – for all personnel related situations in the City falls ultimately to me, in my capacity as City Manager.

Given that reality, I wanted to let you know that I have accepted Chief Batista’s resignation, and have been working through the leadership transition in the Police Department with him and Acting Chief Jacob. I can understand and appreciate the concern that develops when personnel transitions occur, and especially so when it comes to changes in public safety-related leadership roles. In addition, as you pointed out in your note – and as I have shared in public statements – I do have great respect for Chief Batista and admire all that he has done for Santa Monica during the past few years.

Beginning this past May, I have spent significant time interfacing with, learning about, and observing how the City of Santa Monica operates. Based on my assessment, I would concur with your point that there is a lot that we have accomplished on the public safety front during the last few years under Chief Batista’s leadership. As we think about where we are headed moving forward, I am also supremely confident that Acting Chief Jacob and our team in the Santa Monica Police Department will be able to build upon the current public safety baseline that Chief Batista helped achieve.

In fact, I want to further emphasize that the public safety operational analysis that Acting Chief Jacob and I have engaged in reviewing during the past week has me convinced that we will be able to notably expand our public safety efforts in the City moving ahead.

Given my relative newness to the City, I am of course still acclimating to and learning about how everything works in Santa Monica. However, with over 20+ years of local government experience and having worked in a variety of different communities, the public safety issues that exist here in our community are familiar to me, and my observations and opinions regarding where I think we are headed in the future under Acting Chief Jacob’s leadership are grounded in my lived-experience of having seen and addressed very challenging law enforcement issues throughout the course of my career.

Most recently, I served as City Manager in Irvine, which has been recognized as the safest large city in the country for the past 17 years. Irvine is a community that is 67 square miles in size with a population of ~320K people. During my time there, we built and started operating an expansive real-time crime center; installed and operationalized an expansive city-wide camera network; and deployed the first drone as a first responder program in Orange County.

In addition, prior to my time with Irvine, I served as City Manager in Huntington Beach, which from a public safety perspective has many similarities to Santa Monica. HB is a beach community with a large pleasure pier, an active downtown, and a significant homeless population – albeit smaller than the population we’re dealing with in Santa Monica.  Of note, I would point out that while Huntington Beach is a bigger city than we have here in our community (with HB being 33 square miles in size, and having a population of ~200K people), the HB police operation was comparable in scale and size to what we have here in Santa Monica (Huntington Bach has around ~220 sworn police officers, if memory serves me correctly). I’d also note that across nearly all law enforcement public safety metrics, Huntington Beach outperforms Santa Monica.

I share this background information with you only to provide context regarding why my observations and thoughts about the law enforcement situation in Santa Monica might merit consideration. Now all communities are different, and all cities have different public safety issues to contend with. I am aware that the challenges we face here in Santa Monica are unique – and in some ways more complex – than I have experienced in other jurisdictions. However, I am encouraged that every member of our City Council in Santa Monica has shared with me that public safety is a top priority. I would also note that our elected officials have given me complete support when it comes to my observation that we need to look to invest additional resources to develop new law enforcement programs that expand upon on our current safe and clean efforts. I am also encouraged by the perspective and approach that Acting Chief Jacob has articulated and outlined regarding how we should contemplate making public safety improvements in Santa Monica moving ahead.

There’s no doubt that Chief Batista helped stabilize and build-up our law enforcement operation here in Santa Monica during the past few years.  We also certainly have much more work to do, which is made harder by the circumstances created by the current administration in our Federal and State governments, whose actions have created real challenges for law enforcement in California. However, as I mentioned previously, we do have a terrific baseline to work from here in Santa Monica, thanks in part to Chief Batista’s efforts. I am confident that under Acting Chief Jacob’s leadership – and with the effort of the men and women who work in our Police Department – we will be able to continue making real public safety improvements in Santa Monica.

Thank you for caring so much about Santa Monica, and for taking the time to share your perspective with me.   Please know that I would welcome the chance to meet in person with you and the other identified neighborhood associations who sent the initial correspondence to me and the City Council. Our team here at City Hall has been actively working to coordinate time for me to meet with all 7 of the official Neighborhood Organizations in Santa Monica, and I am looking forward to connecting with you at some point here soon.

Best regards,

Oliver