Over the last several years, there has been a recurring conversation, including questions and concerns, that has surfaced about how policing in America should be. In Mountain View, we believe in honoring and recognizing our diversity and we believe in making every effort to not only acknowledge challenges in our community, but working together to build one another up and move ever forward, together.
Over the years, we've heard those concerns, and we wanted to take a moment to provide additional information on the questions we receive regarding how your Mountain View Police Department operates, from training, including topics such as implicit bias, crisis intervention and de-escalation, and use of force, to budget, who we hire, and more.
Transparency and trust in our community with regards to how we protect and serve you is top of mind for us – we understand that the more we are able to open our doors to you on all levels, the more we can connect, communicate, and work together. The information provided here is a compilation of information you may find in other areas of our website, including our annual report, our policies and practices page, and more.
Trust with our community has been and will continue to be of paramount importance to the Mountain View Police Department. We are unequivocally committed to enhancing our partnership with those who call Mountain View home, particularly as we explore areas where we can be more transparent about our practices, our daily work, and our long-term goals for ensuring that this city remains a safe and inclusive place for all who choose to live, work, and visit here.
This time in history has met us at our doorstep, and we are ready and willing to engage with our communities of color in new and creative ways to increase our ability to honor and recognize our diversity. We realize this time comes with challenges; we intend to meet these challenges with integrity, attentiveness, and grace to move forward in unison with all members of our community.
The Mountain View Police Department has provided and continues to provide, among other topics, implicit bias training, de-escalation training, and other relevant education to our diverse staff, and we acknowledge the need for continuous learning and improvement in this area.
We also believe that sharing police contact data is merely a starting point in our path forward together, and we recognize that data alone does not tell a complete story. We believe that additional analysis is necessary to gain a true understanding of the impacts police officers have on communities of color in order to address any disproportionate findings. This is why we feel it is important to collaborate with external academic partners to gain a better understanding of policing data and identify areas for improvement. We look forward to having open-minded and open-hearted dialogue with the community to enhance racial equality across all of our community contacts.
In November 2020, the City Manager’s Office and Police Department jointly partnered with Stanford University and hired a research fellow to examine all of MVPD’s traffic stop data from 2014-2020. The summary of results from the research fellow can be found here.
We firmly believe in working every day to ensure that we are serving Mountain View residents in the ways they expect of us – with a high level of integrity, trust, and compassion. The safety of our community is our highest priority, and we take our promise to uphold that effort seriously. Our core values guide us in what we know you expect of us, but also what we expect of ourselves, both on and off the job. All matters of personal and professional misconduct are taken seriously.
Racial or bias-based policing is strictly forbidden. We are committed to providing law enforcement services to the community with due regard for the racial, cultural or other differences of those served. It is the policy of this department to provide law enforcement services and to enforce the law equally, fairly and without discrimination toward any individual or group.
Over the past several months, we have listened as community members have considered how funds can be reallocated from the police department into other community services and priorities, including housing, schools, and more. In the past several years, officers have been increasingly tasked with navigating complex social issues, among them mental and behavioral health, substance abuse, the homeless crisis, and more. At MVPD, we have increased our partnerships and training in these areas to equip officers with the skills and resources to manage situations involving these factors. For example, more than 50 percent of our officers have received additional training in crisis intervention communication skills, for incidents where de-escalation and additional mental and behavioral health training can assist in reducing the emotional and psychological stress that can come with a crisis, be it one involving an individual dealing with mental health concerns, a domestic dispute, etc.
In addition, our Neighborhood and Event Services Unit is a two-person team that directly responds to quality of life concerns as we continue to see a growing housing crisis in Silicon Valley. This team’s top priority is ensuring that those who are homeless or unstably housed in Mountain View get connected to the help they may need, be it through community-based organizations (CBOs), county services, or other avenues through faith-based groups. This team consists of two officers and a Community Service Officer. This unit now works directly with CBOs including Community Services Agency, the Day Laborer’s Center, and more to help assist in connecting people with housing and food needs, medical and dental care, etc. As the needs of our community are further reassessed, and as we continue to have a dialogue about the role of police in our community, we will update you on how, and if, this specialized team will continue in its capacity.
That being said, we are open to constructive conversations about other avenues for managing these challenges in our community.
As it stands, current funding for MVPD supports not just personnel costs, but also avenues for us to be able to go beyond the fundamentals of policing with tackling crime and enforcing the law. With our budget, we are able to also invest in ways in which we can better respond to our rapidly expanding community safely, with empathy and compassion for all, and with the best understanding possible of the needs of those who call Mountain View home.
Visit the City's Budget and Analysis.
Visit Current City Budget
Our department, and our community, expects Mountain View Police personnel to provide considerate, professional services to all. Every employee should treat community members and colleagues with the utmost regard, to work and act with integrity both personally and professionally, to provide exceptional service, and to work to always be present and engaged with the Mountain View community.
We believe in conscientious policing from those who work at MVPD. We appreciate and welcome your feedback, positive and negative, which helps us ensure that we are conducting ourselves in a manner that is best representative of the mindset of those in our community. Should you wish to make a comment or complaint, or to learn more about the administrative investigation process, see our Employee Complaint Process.
A complaint may be filed in person, in writing, by e-mail, or by telephoning the Department. Complainants making a complaint in writing are encouraged to be completed on a Personnel Complaint Report available at the Police Department or online.
An administrative investigation of an officer is governed by a variety of State laws and Department policies. The investigation shall proceed with due diligence. Upon completion, the report is forwarded to the employee's commanding officer. A review board comprised of Department supervisors, command officers and a representative from the Human Resources Division and Police Officer’s Association recommends a finding for each allegation. The Police Chief then reviews and assesses the findings.
Sustained allegations can result in discipline to include training, reprimand, suspension, demotion and/or termination. State law prevents the Department from disclosing the specifics of any disciplinary action, but the Department will notify the complainant of the disposition for each allegation in the investigation. For further information, please contact the Police Department’s Professional Standards Unit at (650) 903-6339.
The care and safety of our community remains top of mind for Mountain View Police personnel. Every day, officers have numerous interactions with community members, with a vast majority of those interactions remaining peaceful. We understand the magnitude of the weight with which we undertook our oath to protect and serve all people, and we acknowledge that in the course of their duties, there may be occasion to use reasonable force. Officers are trained to inherently understand their authority in a situation, as well as their limits.
We recognize, respect, and value all human life and we firmly believe in dignity without prejudice to anyone. Vesting officers with the authority to use reasonable force and to protect the public welfare requires monitoring, evaluation and a careful balancing of all interests. We emphatically believe in exhausting all options before having to resort to the use of force, and we are major proponents of crisis intervention techniques, as noted above.
Mountain View Police are required by law to document all use of force incidents, to include uses of force and threats of force (Policy 300.7). The department provides data regarding all officer-involved shootings and incidents involving use of force resulting in serious bodily injury to the California Department of Justice.
De-escalation is interwoven into the department’s operations and is included in the department’s policies for crisis intervention, conducted energy devices (Tasers), mental illness, and civil disputes. De-escalation techniques are included in various continued professional training topics.
To continue to maintain our commitment to serve at the highest level of understanding the needs and desires of our community, de-escalation training is regularly integrated into aspects of our training curriculum.
The topic of de-escalation has been embedded in several training courses in the Continuing Professional Training program for more than a decade. This topic is heavily incorporated into trainings that involve arrest scenarios and control courses (meaning how police officers work to calm combative subjects as well as how to move up and down a continuum of care and consideration for a subject). In addition to training, there have been cross discipline scenarios that have de-escalation as part of the training environment and discussion.
State training, which our officers must conduct in order to continue to serve Mountain View, also incorporates de-escalation tactical communication courses, which officers must re-train on every two years.
We have roughly 81,000 residents within city limits, but our population actually grows to more than 100,000 during the day due to the influx of individuals who work at the various companies that are based here in Mountain View. Based on the last Census:
Our City breakdown is:
Our Police Department personnel breakdown:
Definitions for each race category from the US Census Bureau.
To help us be better engaged with our community, we have more than a dozen officers who are official translators in languages including Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog, Portuguese, German, and American Sign Language.
To best encourage a diverse applicant pool, we attend hiring fairs at colleges, high schools, athletic events, and more to speak with those who may be looking to pursue a career in law enforcement.
Our MVPD team consists of people who have a wide range of interests, from what they majored to in college (psychology, English, law, business) to their previous careers before they joined us (personal trainer, tech sector, paramedic, veteran, etc.).
There is no one person that is “traditionally” the make-up of a police officer, and every bit of your background helps build a better officer for the future.
Policy 368 -- LEP Services:
https://mvpdpublicrecords.org/files/D2DF/Limited_English_Proficiency_Services.pdf
Once an application is submitted and accepted by the City of Mountain View, and once POST requirements are confirmed to have been met, all potential hires will be required to go through the following steps:
If an officer is new to the profession, they must successfully complete the state required Police Academy training prior to returning to the Mountain View Police Department.
If and when they graduate from the Police Academy, officers will then be required to go through in-house training, where they will spend several weeks learning department policies, practices, and understanding the expectations of the department. Then, new officers will be paired with a Field Training Officer (FTO), to spend roughly three months learning best practices of patrol work. During that time, officers are evaluated not just on their work, but on their character.
Should they pass the Field Training program, officers will be put on a probationary period for one year.
Officers that are hired from another agency (called laterals), are required to go through the same in-house training, field training, and probationary period as new officers.
On average, a new officer to the Mountain View Police Department will not be patrolling the streets on their own for roughly two years after they are hired to ensure they meet the high standards we, and you, have for those who protect and serve the City of Mountain View.
The Mountain View Police Department is committed to being representative of the community it serves.
We hire for character – we want those who come to serve our community to uphold the standards and expectations not just of us, but of our community.
On average, it will take roughly 6 months for an officer to complete the hiring process with the Mountain View Police Department. This is due in large part to the rigorous requirements officers must pass in order to be under consideration for a position.
Hiring Requirements:
Policy 1000 – Recruitment and Selection
Mountain View Police Department Officers are entrusted with the responsibility of keeping our city safe from crime and corruption. Therefore, a history of ethical and moral behavior is of the utmost importance. Your background will be looked at very closely. Candidates who have a history of unethical or immoral behavior will not be hired. You will be subjected to an intensive background evaluation, which will include, but is not limited to, the following:
Over 50 percent of our officers are trained in crisis intervention, exceeding the national standard of 20 percent.
In addition to our training for our officers, MVPD has a long-standing Crisis Intervention Team, which receives additional training and gains additional expertise in helping to de-escalate scenarios ranging from mental health crises, to domestic disputes, and more. On average, at least one member of the Crisis Intervention Team is on every patrol team and/ or available to be deployed to a scene from the department any hour of the day, any day of the week.
In addition to our training, officers regularly work to understand how mental health can play a factor in emerging issues in other areas of life, from substance abuse to unstable housing, to societal pressures ranging from school to social media.
The Mountain View Police Department is committed to providing a consistently high level of service to all members of the community and recognizes that persons in crisis may benefit from intervention. The Department will collaborate with mental health professionals to develop an overall intervention strategy to guide its members’ interactions with those experiencing a mental health crisis. This is to ensure equitable and safe treatment of all involved.
Policy 464 – Crisis Intervention Incidents
Policy 300 – Use of Force and De-Escalation
MVPD Training Material (Mobile Crisis Team)
Policy 449: Use of Audio and Video Recording Devices
Our school resource officers have been on campuses serving as an extra set of eyes and ears for student and teacher safety for over 20 years.
We take great pride in developing relationships with students. In fact, it’s one of our greatest priorities. We know them by name, and we like learning about their hobbies and interests. We know these students are someone’s son or daughter, and that interactions with them matter. We want them to know that we too want them to succeed in life.
When we are called for a criminal matter to a campus, our ultimate goal is to have the student learn – not to have punitive punishments. We understand that more often than not, there is much more going on than what we see on the surface. Our goal is to get to the root of that, and make sure the student is safe, both on campus and at home.
We value and respect the growth that students face, both inside the classroom and in the community, and we are proud to partner with our school districts to be able to offer programs such as Dreams and Futures, Cops that Care, and more so that our next generation of children can learn, live, and grow in a healthy environment, surrounded by support.