Public Safety Committee Will Hear Plan to Shift Community Service Area Configuration to Better Balance Coverage

Pasadena’s Public Safety Committee meets on Wednesday, November 10, to discuss a number of information items, including a proposed move to reconfigure the number of Community Service Areas covered by the Pasadena Police Department and another to procure drones that can be used by police officers when they need real-time video from inside buildings.

By reconfiguring its deployment from a five Community Service Area configuration to a four-CSA configuration, the Pasadena Police Department hopes to be able to add more officers to each service area, a preliminary presentation of the plan showed. It also showed the plan will allow for more discretionary time for community policing, prevention, intervention, and enforcement.

The proposal to reconfigure the CSA arrangement was finalized after the Police Department reviewed several proposed configurations based on mapping and on the number of citizen calls for service (CFS) received per calendar year from each Community Service Area.

As for the drones procurement, the agenda for the Public Safety Committee meeting shows the Police Department is planning to buy Loki MK 2.0 brand drones that can be used both outdoors and indoors and are capable of sustained flight of up to 16 minutes.

A two-aircraft drone set costs almost $11,000, the preliminary report showed.

Drones are usually deployed to the Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and are operated only by FAA-certified personnel.

Members of the community can access the special meeting via http://pasadena.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=9 and www.pasadenamedia.org.

Public comments may be submitted through www.cityofpasadena.net/commissions/public-comment.