Chief's Community Update - February 19, 2023
Thank you for visiting our website and taking a moment to read this community update.
On February 14, our patrol officers responded to two Shotspotter activations in the same general area of Beat 1. Responding Officers received information from witnesses that led to them to the 1200 block of Laurel Avenue. Officers located the suspect vehicle with three suspects near it. A search the suspect vehicle revealed a loaded short barrel AR-15 rifle type ghost gun with a high-capacity magazine. The 18-year-old suspect had borrowed his father’s car and was driving around firing the rifle in the air from the driver’s seat of the car. The suspect was booked into the county jail. Thank you to our community members who aided with this investigation. Without your help, we could not have made this arrest and seized a very dangerous short barreled ghost gun.
Community member Antoine Brooks created a community survey to help me gather community input on several topics of interest. I launched the survey during last week’s Community Update. If you have not completed the survey yet, please take a moment to submit your thoughts. All collected data is managed by Antoine. Thank you Antoine for your partnership.
Personnel:
This week I look forward to attending the Police Academy graduation for our newest Police Officer, Wendy Venegas. You should see her patrolling our community in the near future.
We extended final job offers to two new Police Recruits, Enrique Robles and Oscar Sanchez. They both accepted the offers and will start the Police Academy this week. We look forward to watching their development.
Thank you to those community members who had been referring applicants to us.
Anonymous tips and immediate service
We appreciate all the anonymous tips we have been receiving. It is important to note that anonymous tips are not a resource for immediate police response as it is not monitored 24/7. For immediate police response, either call 9-1-1 or our non-emergency phone number 650-321-1112. For complaints related to property violations, please contact Code Enforcement department, which operates under our building department (https://www.cityofepa.org/building/page/code-enforcement).
When providing information to the police, we need specific information about the crime or criminal. As an example, if you are reporting someone for dealing drugs, we need to know:
- where and when they are selling the drugs
- a detailed description of them (white female, blue jeans, red jacket, baseball cap)
- any description of a vehicle
- any other information you have about the crime.
While we don’t expect you to jeopardize your safety to get this information, it is very important information if we make an arrest. Not only will your tip provide us with accurate information about the suspect, but we are also able to serve as a witness to the crime and we can testify in court. Please use these options for providing an anonymous tip.
You can make an anonymous tip to the police by calling or texting to (650) 409-6792.
If there is a topic you would like addressed in the next update, please feel free to send an email at jliu@cityofepa.org.
Thank you,
Jeff Liu
Interim Chief of Police
