An oversight board also heard updates on efforts to hire new officers and the findings of a community opinion survey
La Mesa police may soon purchase cameras to scan the license plates of cars, a system already employed in El Cajon that critics say isDuring a monthly meeting Wednesday of the La Mesa Police Oversight Board, Police Chief Ray Sweeney said the department planned to propose buying a Flock Safety license plate reader camera system during the City Council meeting on Oct. 10.
As of Thursday, El Cajon’s cameras have detected 896,053 vehicles over the past 30 days, and of those, 3,539 vehcicles were on a state or federal watch list. Compared to 2022, participants in this year’s survey submitted lower scores on average on a variety of questions. These included whether they believed La Mesa officers listened to and treated everyone equitably and fairly, would react appropriately to a situation, and would be held accountable for their actions if they did something wrong.
One participant, a Black man in the 55-65 age range, wrote that he was deathly afraid for his 16-year-old son, whom he said he could protect “from drugs and gangs, but not from police with the guns.” “We live near an intersection and there is speeding and running the stop signs everyday and there is never ever any police giving tickets,” she wrote. “The traffic in La Mesa is just getting worse and worse. We don’t feel safe walking in our because of the speeding traffic.”