A plan to beef up security in Santa Fe’s downtown area was approved by City Council last night.
The resolution allocates $750,000 from the general fund to contract a private security firm.
Interim community development director Randy Randall took councilors' questions about the plan and explained that extra security workers would be there not to arrest people—that remains the job of the police—but to help support police in keeping things calm.
District 4 councilor Jamie Cassutt explained why she would be voting against the resolution, citing what she observes in her district and hears from constituents.
“I am not in favor of putting extra security resources towards the downtown area given the amount crime and challenges and similar vagrancies that I have seen along Cerillos and Zafarano ,and impacting my district.," Cassutt said.
"I dunderstand that we have these problems all over the city, of people behaving poorly, however we do tend to have a lot more eyes downtown.”
Other councilors agreed with Cassut but wound up voting in favor. They acknowledged that the initiative is a pilot program and kicks off a period of evaluating deployment of additional security resources citywide with downtown as the starting point.
Mayor Alan Webber, who participated in the meeting from home, due to a bout with Covid, said that hiring private security is standard operating procedure in many cities. He added that such strategies are often supported by a private-public partnership and that business owners frequently help finance the approach.
Randall said that one of the reasons for locating the pilot program downtown is because of its importance to the city’s overall economic strength.
“This is a stop gap to prevent Santa Fe from getting an image and a reputation that would be very detrimental to one of our most improtant economic drivers,” Randall said.
Last night councillors also approved a police department request to spend just over a million dollars on three new police vehicles, including two armored cars and bomb disposal vehicle.
